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Harley MS 4971

Record Id:

040-002050815

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002050815

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000859.0x0001ea

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 4971

Title:

Grammatical, legal, and philosophical tracts

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002050815", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4971: Grammatical, legal, and philosophical tracts" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} },{ "id" : "041-003314454", "parent" : "040-002050815", "text" : "Harley MS 4971, ff 4-41: Grammatical and legal tracts, letters and documents" },{ "id" : "041-003314455", "parent" : "040-002050815", "text" : "Harley MS 4971, ff. 42-92: Legal texts" },{ "id" : "041-003314456", "parent" : "040-002050815", "text" : "Harley MS 4971, ff 93-128: Le Manuel des pechiez" },{ "id" : "041-003314457", "parent" : "040-002050815", "text" : "Harley MS 4971, ff 1, 129-131: Aristotle, De anima" }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002050815

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 4971 : Grammatical, legal, and philosophical tracts

Contains:

Harley MS 4971, ff 4-41 : Grammatical and legal tracts, letters and documents
Harley MS 4971, ff. 42-92 : Legal texts
Harley MS 4971, ff 93-128 : Le Manuel des pechiez
Harley MS 4971, ff 1, 129-131 : Aristotle, De anima

Click here to View / search full list of parts of Harley MS 4971

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[4971]/040-002050815

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

Parchment codex

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Anglo-Norman
English, Middle
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1200

End Date:

1499

Date Range:

13th century-15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Dimensions: 255 × 185 mm.

Foliation: ff. 1–131 (ff. 1, 129–131 are medieval parchment flyleaves + 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 4 at the end).

Collation: i (f. 1), a^two (ff. 2–3; singletons), i^10–1 (ff. 4–12; 1st excised), ii–iii¹⁰ (ff. 13–32), iv^10–1 (ff. 33–41; 9th excised); v–x⁸ (ff. 42–89), xi^8–5 (ff. 90–92; 4th–5th mising, 6th–8th excised); xii–xiii¹⁰ (ff. 93–112), xiv–xv⁸ (ff. 113–128); xv² (ff. 129–130), i (f. 131).

Binding: British Museum in-house. Rebound 22 May 1967.

Custodial History:

Origin: England.

Provenance:

Benedictine abbey of St Edmund, King and Martyr, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk: inscription from the late 14th or early 15th century, ‘Liber monachorum sancti Edmundi in quo subscripta continentur’ (f. 3r), followed by list of contents and folio references, in the same hand as ink foliation given throughout the manuscript.

John Norton: 15th-century inscription, ‘Liber Iohannes Norton’ (f. 3r).

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.

Publications:

H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), III, pp. 288-92.E. J. Arnould, Le Manuel des Péchés: Etude de Litterature Religieuse Anglo-Normande (13eme siecle) (Paris: Droz, 1940), pp. 367-69, 399-435 [for an edition of the text].M. Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman in the Cloisters: The Influence of the Orders upon Anglo-Norman Literature, Edinburgh University Publications Language and Literature, 2 (Edinburgh: University Press, 1950), p. 116.M. Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 180Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 20.C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 451.Terry Nixon, 'List of Manuscripts in The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes, Etudes de langue et littérature francaises publiées, 2 vols, ed. by Keith Busby et al., 2 vols (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1993), I, pp. 9-15 (pp. 10, 12, 14) II, pp. 82–83 and fig. 432.Michelle Brown, 'The Role of the Wax Tablet in Medieval Literacy: A Reconsideration in Light of a Recent Find from York', British Library Journal, 20 (1994), 1-16 (p. 9).

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)