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Harley MS 4986

Record Id:

040-002050830

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002050830

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000859.0x0001f9

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 4986

Title:

Pharmacopeial compilation

Scope & Content:

Illustrated pharmacopeial compilation; partly imperfect. The compilation is a copy of a late-antique and early medieval corpus of pharmacopeial texts.

Contents includes:

1. Pseudo-Antonius Musa, De herba vettonica liber (ff. 1*r-2*r, 1r);

2. Pseudo-Apuleius Platonicus, De medicaminibus herbarum liber (ff. 1r-44r);

3. Epistula ad Marcellinum (f. 44v);

4. De taxone liber (ff. 44v-45r);

5. (Pseudo-?) Sextus Placitus, Liber medicinae ex animalibus, with additions (ff. 45r-50r);

6. Anthimus, De observatione ciborum (ff. 51r-56v);

7. Gargilius Martialis, Medicinae ex holeribus et pomis, excerpt (ff. 56v-64r);

8. Theodorus Priscianus, Diaeta (ff. 64r-66r);

9. A text relating to clysters (ff. 66r-66v);

10. Additions to bestiary (ff. 67r-68v);

11. Medical recipes (circa 170 recipes) (ff. 68v-80r).

Decoration: Miniatures of plants and animals in colours (ff. 1*v-50r). Initials in red.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection
Harley Science Project

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002050830", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 4986: Pharmacopeial compilation" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} },{ "id" : "041-002125157", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 1*r-2*v, 1r: Pseudo-Antonius Musa, De herba vettonica liber" },{ "id" : "041-002125166", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 1r-44r: Pseudo-Apuleius Platonicus, De medicaminibus herbarum liber" },{ "id" : "041-002133990", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, f 44v: Epistula ad Marcellinum" },{ "id" : "041-002133991", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 44v-45r: De taxone liber" },{ "id" : "041-002133992", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 45r-50r: (Pseudo-?) Sextus Placitus, Liber medicinae ex animalibus, with additions" },{ "id" : "041-002133993", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 51r-56v: Anthimus, De observatione ciborum" },{ "id" : "041-002133994", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 56v-64r: Gargilius Martialis, Medicinae ex holeribus et pomis, excerpt" },{ "id" : "041-002133995", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 64r-66r: Theodorus Priscianus, Diaeta, imperfect" },{ "id" : "041-002133996", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 66r-66v: A text relating to clysters" },{ "id" : "041-002133997", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 67r-68v: Additions to bestiary" },{ "id" : "041-002133998", "parent" : "040-002050830", "text" : "Harley MS 4986, ff 68v-80r: Medical recipes (c. 170 recipes)." }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002050830

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 4986 : Pharmacopeial compilation

Contains:

Click here to View / search full list of parts of Harley MS 4986

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[4986]/040-002050830

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

84 folios.

Digitised Content:

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_4986 (digital images currently unavailable)

Thumbnail:

Languages:

German
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1060

End Date:

1199

Date Range:

Late 11th century-2nd half of the 12th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

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Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment manuscript. Old parchment repairs to original parchment flaws throughout.

Dimensions: 260 x 190 mm (text space: 195 x 140 mm).

Foliation: ff. ix + 1* + 2* + 81 + 24* (all unfoliated flyleaves are modern paper leaves; f. 24* is a fragment in a paper frame; f. 81 is a later addition from a 14th-century manuscript). Old foliation in brown pen '1*-2*,1-24, 24*, 25-81' (ff. 24*, 50v, 80v are blank).

Collation: Gathering arrangement not discernible owing to the tightness of the binding and the absence of catchwords.

Layout: Pricked and ruled (single vertical bounding lines) in hard point for single columns of 30 lines. Text above ruled lines.

Script: Caroline minuscucle (late Caroline script with some protogothic features); written by several scribes. Glosses in Latin, German and Greek by contemporary and later hands, including Peutinger (see f. 1r).

Binding: British Museum/British Library binding with the Harley arms and motto gilt-tooled at centre of covers; formerly bound with Harley MS 5294.

Custodial History:

Origin: Germany.

Provenance:

Added leaf from a 14th-century scholastic manuscript (f. 81).

Two paper slips with the notes 'Antonius Musa Marco / Agrippe Salutem' and 'incipit herbarius Apulej Platonicus' pasted onto on f. [v recto].

Conrad Peutinger (1465-1547) of Augsburg, German antiquarian and humanist: owned in 1513 and lent to the philologist Michael Hummelberg: his ownership inscription 'Liber Chuonradi Peutinger Augusburi' (f. 1*r) and his glosses (see Konrad Peutingers Briefwechsel, ed. by E. König (Munich, 1923; Humanisten-Briefe, 1), pp. 229, 235-36)

Nathaniel Noel (fl. 1681-circa 1753), bookseller: acquired from him with other manuscripts for the Harleian 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, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley with the date of the manuscript's acquisition ‘20 Jan. 1721/2’ (f. 1*r).

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish 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. Harley shelfmarks '39.A.20 / 4346' in ink and '2/III D' in pencil, and the note 'Oxford / B H' in pen (f. 1*r).

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 4986.

Th. O. Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England. Being a collection of documents, for the most part never before printed, illustrating the history of science in this country before the Norman Conquest, Rolls Series, 35 (London, 1864-1866; rev. ed. with introduction by C. Singer, London, 1961), I, p. lxxxii.

Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 7.

Deutsche Handschriften in England, ed. by Robert Priebsch, 2 vols in 1 vol (Hildesheim: Olms, 1979, first publ. Erlangen: Junge, 1896-1901), II: Das British Museum mit einem anhang über die Guildhall-Bibliothek, no. 30.

Wilhelm Köhler, 'Die Karolingishen Miniaturen', in Zweiter Bericht über die Denkmäler Deutscher Kunst (Berlin: Reimer, 1912), pp. 52-77 (p. 58).

Charles Singer, 'The Herbal in Antiquity', Journal of Hellenic Studies, 47 (1927), 1-52 (pp. 38, 35, pl. VI).

E. Howald and H. E. Sigerist, Antonii Musae de herba vettonica liber. Pseudoapulei herbarius. Anonymi de taxone liber. Sexti Placiti liber medicinae ex animalibus.... Corpus Medicorum Latinorum, 4 (Leipzig-Berlin, 1927), p. viii.

Anthimi, De observatione ciborum. Ad Theodoricum regem Francorum epistula, ed. by E. Liechtenhan, Corpus medicorum latinorum, 8.1 (Berlin, 1943), pp. xiii-xiv.

Herbert Thoma, ‘Altdeutsches aus Londer Hss’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutscher Sprache und Literatur, 73 (1951), 197-271 (pp. 206-07).

A. Beccaria, I codici di medicina del periodo presalernitano (secoli IX, X e XI) (Rome, 1956), pp. 252-54, no. 77

Loren MacKinney and Thomas Herndon, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, New Series, 5 (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), no. 86.49.

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, p. 128 and p. 138, n. 7.

H. Grape-Albers, Spätantike Bilder aus der Welt des Arztes. Medizinische Bilderhandschriften der Spätantike und ihre mittelalterliche Überlieferung (Wiesbaden, 1977), pp. 3, 5 and passim, figs. 20, 65, 134.

B. Munk Olsen, L’Étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles, 3 vols (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982-1989), I, p. 29.

J. De Vriend, The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus, Early English Text Society, 286 (London, 1984), p. xlvi [with further bibliography].

W. Blunt and S. Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal, rev. edn (London, 1994), p. 53.

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: Accedunt Alia Itinera: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other Libraries 7 vols (London: Warburg Institute; Leiden: Brill, 1963-1997), IV (1989), p. 183.

Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 208-09.

Gargilius Martialis. Les remèdes tirés de légumes et des fruits, ed. and trans. by B. Marie (Paris, 2002), pp. lxxv-lxxvi.

Sophie Page, Astrology in Medieval Manuscript (London: British Library, 2002), p. 9, pl. 3; p. 23, pl. 9.

Rolf Bergmann and Stefanie Stricker, Katalog der althochdeutschen und altsächsischen Glossenhandschriften, 6 vols (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2005), II, pp. 889-91, no. 421.

M. A. D'Aronco, 'Gardens on Vellum: Plants and Herbs in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts', in Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed. by P. Dendle and A. Touwaide (Woodbridge, 2008), p. 126.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names: