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Harley MS 5285

Record Id:

040-002051131

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002051131

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000859.0x000326

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 5285

Title:

Plautus, Comoediae

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1*r-v: Short texts concerning Plautus, with excerpts from Horace, De arte poetica; Quintilian, Instituto Oratoria; Gellius (Agellius), Noctes atticae; Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia; Eusebius of Caesaria, Chronica; Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Deo; Paulus Diaconus, De significatione verborum.

ff. 1r-98r: Titus Maccius Plautus, Comoediae, eight comedies each preceded by a prologue:

ff. 1r-17v: Amphitruo;

ff. 17v-31v: Asinaria;

ff. 31v-46v: Captivi ('Captivi duo');

ff. 46v-56v: Curculio ('Gurgulio');

ff. 56v-68v: Casina ('Cassia');

ff. 68v-75v: Cistellaria;

ff. 75v-84v: Epidicus;

ff. 84v-97r: Aulularia.

ff. 97v-99r: Tabula verborum.

The scribe and annotator is Sozomeno da Pistoia; notes by him include cross-references to books in his own library (de la Mare, Italian Humanists (1973), p. 94).

Decoration:

8 white vine initials in gold and colours on blue grounds, one at the beginning of each play (ff. 1r, 18r, 32v, 46v, 69r, 75v, 85v). Numerous initials in blue. Rubrics and running titles in red (faded). Abbreviations of characters' names in red (e.g. 'St' for Staphila).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002051131", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 5285: Plautus, Comoediae" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002051131

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 5285 : Plautus, Comoediae

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[5287]/040-002051131

Container:

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

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1415

End Date:

1415

Date Range:

1415

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 260 x 165 mm (text space: 185 x 115 mm).

Foliation: ff. 1* + 99 (+ 3 unfoliated paper and 1 unfoliated parchment flyleaf at the beginning + 1 unfoliated parchment and 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end).

Script: Humanistic.

Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Florence or Pistoia, central Italy.

Written by Sozomeno (b. 1387 at Pistoia, d. 1458) in 1415: ownership inscription in Greek and date, 'Kal[endas] Sextilis M.cccc^oxv' (f. 97r).

Provenance:

The Opera di San Jacopo in Pistoia: inscribed by two notaries: Ser Bartolomeo da Forlì, chancellor of Pistoia in 1460: 'Ego Bartholomeus forliviensis cancellarius Pistoriensis subscripsi' (f. 1r) and Franciscus Luce, 15th century, 'Ego franciscus luce notarius opere subscripsi' (f. 99v).

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:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III, no. 5285.

J. J. G. Alexander and A. C. de la Mare, The Italian Manuscripts in the Library of Major J. R. Abbey (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), p. xxiv n.1.

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. 369.

Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), no. 830.

Albinia C. de la Mare, The Handwriting of Italian Humanists (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, 1973), pp. 92, 94, 98, 99, 103 no. 9, pl. XX d.

Renaissance Painting in Manuscripts: Treasures from the British Library, ed. by Thomas Kren (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1983), p. 90, Ill. 9.

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. 185.

Irene Ceccherini, Sozomeno da Pistoia (1387-1458) : scrittura e libri di un umanista (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2016), no. 20, pp. 124-28.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Plautus, Titus Maccius, Roman playwright, c 254-184 BC
Zomino [Sozomeno] da Pistoia, humanist and cleric, 1387-1458,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000002525047,
see also http://viaf.org/viaf/66823116