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Harley MS 4967
- Record Id:
- 040-002050811
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002050811
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000859.0x0001e6
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100063648375.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 4967
- Title:
- Peter of Blois, Speculum Iuris Canonici; Justinian, Institutiones; Liber Catonianus
- Scope & Content:
-
This composite manuscript is made of two parts produced at different locations and times. The first part (ff. 5r-76r) contains the Speculum Iuris Canonici (The Mirror of Canon Law) by the late-12th century theologian Peter of Blois and the Institutiones (Institutions) by Emperor Justinian I (b. c. 482, d. 565). The second part (ff. 77r-193v) is a composite miscellany of various school texts, called Liber Catonianus (The Book of Cato) with vernacular glosses that is datable to the middle of the 13th century.
Contents:
ff. 1r-4r: Short texts and notes, including a poem on f. 2r which is also in Royal MS 11 D III, f. 243r.
f. 4v: A table of contents of Justinian's Institutiones.
ff. 5r-19r: Peter of Blois (b. c. 1130, d. 1212), Speculum Iuris Canonici, beginning: 'Prometheus in caucasi montis cacumine'.
ff. 19r-73v: Justinian, Institutiones (Books 1-4) with Accursius' (b. c. 1185, d. 1263) gloss, beginning: 'imperatoriam maiestatem non solum armis decoratam'.
ff. 73v-75r: An unidentified scholastic tract, beginning: 'Si peccaverit in te frater tuus'.
ff. 77r-77v: A damaged fragment from an unidentified manuscript.
ff. 78r-185v, 192r-193v: Liber Catonianus, with marginal and interlinear glosses, beginning: 'Lux beata'.
The manuscript has later additions:
ff. 76r-76v contain pen-trials and a doodle of a human face.
ff. 186r-191v: John of Garland (d. after 1258), Synonyma (The Synonyms), in an early 15th-century script, beginning: 'Ad mare ne videar latices deferre'.
Decoration:
See Harley MS 4967, ff. 1-76 and ff. 77-193.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Harley Collection - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002050811", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4967: Peter of Blois, Speculum Iuris Canonici; Justinian, Institutiones; Liber Catonianus" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} },{ "id" : "041-002356126", "parent" : "040-002050811", "text" : "Harley MS 4967, ff 1r-76v: Peter of Blois, Speculum Iuris Canonici; Justinian, Institutiones" },{ "id" : "041-002356140", "parent" : "040-002050811", "text" : "Harley MS 4967, ff 77r-193v: Liber Catonianus" }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002050811 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 4967 : Peter of Blois, Speculum Iuris Canonici; Justinian, Institutiones; Liber Catonianus - Contains:
- Harley MS 4967, ff 1r-76v : Peter of Blois, Speculum Iuris Canonici; Justinian, Institutiones
Harley MS 4967, ff 77r-193v : Liber Catonianus
Click here to View / search full list of parts of Harley MS 4967 - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[7767]/040-002050811
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100063648375.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1175
- End Date:
- 1250
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter of the 12th century-1250
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: ff. 1-76: 245 x 160 mm (text space: 170/175 x 90/95 mm); ff. 77: 240 x 185 mm (text space: damaged, text now illegible); ff. 78-184: 240 x 185 mm (text space: 165/170 x 60/95 mm); ff. 186-193: 225 x 175 mm (text space: 180 x 150 mm).
Foliation: ff. 193 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning + 3 at the end); ff. 1-4 are original flyleaves.
Script: Gothic (above top line).
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house binding.
- Custodial History:
-
Provenance:
The three separate parts of this manuscript were joined together in Harley's library:
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d.1785), Duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-1812), III (1808), pp. 233-34 (no. 4967).
Hans W. Hach, 'Kurze Nachricht von einigen in Englischen Bibliotheken aufbewahrten Handschriften, welche Theile des Corpus juris civilis enthalten Von Herrn Dr. H. W. Hach jun. in Lübeck', Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, 5 (1825), 131-228 (pp. 139-41).
Harry L. D. Ward and John A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), II: ed. by Harry L. D. Ward (1893), p. 276.
Léopold Hervieux, Les Fabulistes latins, depuis le siècle d'Auguste jusqu'à la fin du moyen âge, 5 vols (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1884-96), III (1894): Avianus et ses anciens imitateurs, p. 98.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by Neil R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 207.
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 360, 451.
Geoffrey L. Bursill-Hall, 'Johannes de Garlandia - Forgotten Grammarian and the Manuscript Tradition', Historiographia Linguistica, 3 (1976), 155-77 (pp. 169-70).
Geoffrey L. Bursill-Hall, A Census of Medieval Latin Grammatical Manuscripts, Grammatica Speculativa: Sprachtheorie und Logik des Mittelalters, 4 (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1981), p. 118 (no. 144).
Tony Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-Century England, 3 vols (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991), I, pp. 39, 73, 75, 88, 138-39, 153, 156, 299, 326.
Arthur George Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 1066-1422 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 374 (n. 234).
Margaret Laing, Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1993), p. 98.
Vivien Law, 'Why Write a Verse Grammar', The Journal of Medieval Latin, 9 (1999), 46-76 (p. 67 no. 95).
Rodney Thomson, 'Minor Manuscript Decoration from the West of England in the Twelfth Century', in Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage in honour of Margaret M. Manion, ed. by Bernard J. Muir (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), pp. 19-34 (p. 28).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Notes:
- This manuscript is part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700-1200.