Harley MS 5270

This manuscript contains a copy of Peter Lombard’s Libri Quattuor Sententiarum. This copy has previously been dated to the 14th century (see A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts (1808), III, p. 257), but new analysis of the script and page layout indicates that it was produced in the late 12th or early 13th century.

At an unknown point before or in the late 16th century, four leaves (now ff. 1-2, and ff. 163-164) were taken from another medieval manuscript in order to supply the Libri Quattuor Sententiarum with flyleaves. These leaves contain previously unidentified fragments from a 13th-century copy of the Speculum Ecclesiae by the historian Gerald of Wales (b. c. 1146, d. 1220x23): folios 1 and 2 (bound upside down) contain fragments of chapters 23-26, and folios 163 and 164 fragments of chapters 26-30 (see Giraldi Cambrensis Opera (1873), IV). The copy these leaves were taken from was contemporary with the only surviving complete copy of the Speculum Ecclesiae in Cotton MS Tiberius B XIII, a manuscript badly damaged in the Cotton Library fire of 1731. Scholars have identified extracts of the Speculum Ecclesiae in two other manuscripts, but both are of a much later date: Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 290 (682) [14th or 15th century], and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS James 2 [copied from the Cotton manuscript in the early 17th century]. This makes the fragments in Harley MS 5270 an important witness to the early English transmission of the work of Gerald of Wales.

Contents:

ff. 2r-162v: Peter Lombard, Libri Quattuor Sententiarum.

The manuscript contains additions:

ff. 1r-1v, 163r-164v: Leaves from a copy of Gerald of Wales, Speculum Ecclesiae; featuring large and small initials in blue and red, some with penwork decoration in the other colour; written in the 13th century.

Decoration:

1 large green initial with arabesque penwork decoration in blue and red. Large and small green or red initials with penwork decoration in the opposite colour throughout.