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Harley MS 5311
- Record Id:
- 040-002051157
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002051157
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000859.0x000340
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 5311
- Title:
- Physician's folding almanac
- Scope & Content:
-
A portable physician's folding almanac based on the 'Kalendarium' of John Somer (d. in or after 1409), Franciscan friar at Bridgwater and astronomer. The manuscript includes:
1. leaf A (f. 10): entitled 'Canon tituli festis / mobilibus et / [.....] sanguinis': Calendar canon (recto), table of moveable feasts (verso, upper half), and bloodletting man (verso, lower half);
2. leaves B-E (ff. 9-6), entitled 'Januarius …. December': John Somer, Calendar (three months to a leaf, one month per half-leaf, the first displayed on versos, the following two on rectos) with lunar conjunctions of the 19-year Metonic cycle beginning on 1387, 1406, 1425, 1444, and saints corresponding to those in calendars for the use of Sarum produced in Southern England;
3. leaf F (f. 5), entitled 'Tabula lune cum / Canone et jma/gine Signorum': table of the planetary hours with references to humours and moon canon, (recto), tables of lunar-zodiacal correspondences (recto, upper half), and zodiac man (verso, lower half);
4. leaf G (f. 4), entitled 'Eclipses solis / cum canone': eclipse canon for solar eclipses (verso), solar eclipses diagrams from 1398 to 1462 (recto and verso);
5. leaves H-J (ff. 3-2), entitled 'Eclipses lune': lunar eclipses diagrams from 1404 to 1462 (ff. 3r, 3v, 2r);
6. leaf J (f. 2), entitled 'Spera apullei / De judiciis / urinarum': canon on the nature of those born under different planets (verso, upper half, side panels), sphere of Apuleius with canon (verso, upper half, central panel), and urine chart with complaints (verso, lower half);
7. leaf K (f. 1), entitled 'Tabula ad calculandum / pro futuris': Robert Grosseteste, De prognosticatione aeri, abridged (verso and recto), with astrological diagram (verso, lower half, central panel).
Decoration:
Miniatures in colours of the Bloodletting man (leaf A, f. 10) and the Zodiac man (leaf F, f. 5). Diagrams in colours or in coulours and gold of the Eclipse (leaves G-I, ff. 4-2), Sphere of Apuleius (leaf I, f. 2), uroscopy (leaf I, f. 2) and prognostics (leaf K, f. 1). Initials in blue with red pen-flourishing. Paraphs in blue. Rubrics in red. Initials highlighted in yellow.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
Harley Science Project - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002051157", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 5311: Physician's folding almanac" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002051157 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 5311 : Physician's folding almanac - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[5313]/040-002051157
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
10 folded separate folios.
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_5311 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1401
- End Date:
- 1411
- Date Range:
- c 1406
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 180 x 80 mm when folded; 340 x 230 mm when unfolded.
Foliation: ff. 10, folded into six parts. Original alphabetical foliation 'A-K' in red ink on the front of versos, in reverse order to the modern foliation '1-10' marked in pencil on the back of versos of folded leaves.
Layout: Ruled in red ink for columns of 36 lines.
Script: Gothic cursive (Anglicana); written in black or red ink.
Binding: Folded leaves sewn together in a tab at the lower edges. Kept in a leather box.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England.
Provenance:
William Brome (b. 1664, d. 1745), son of John Brome of Withington, county Hereford, antiquary and friend of Edward Harley: donated to Edward Harley in 1732 as recorded by Harley's inscription 'Given by the worthy & learned Mr Brome of Withington, Herefordshire, 1732' (f. A, i.e. 10r; see Wright 1972).
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 'Oxford, BH.' (f. A, i.e. 10r).
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. The note 'Oxford / BH.' and Harley shelfmarks '5311' in print on f. 10r; Harleian shelfmark '43.A.5' (f. A, i.e. 1r).
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 5311.
Harry Bober, 'The Zodiacal Miniature of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry: its Sources and Meaning', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 11 (1948), 1-34 (p. 26 n. 6, fig. c).
Broxbourne Library, Styles and Designs of Bookbindings from the Twelfth to the Twentieth Centuries, selected and described by Howard M. Nixon, with an introduction by Albert Ehrman (London: Maggs Brothers, 1956), p. 9 n. 3.
C. H. Talbot, 'A Mediaeval Physician's Vade Mecum', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Science, 16 (1961), 212-33 (pp. 220 n. 20, 221 n. 21).
Loren MacKinney and Thomas Herndon, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, New Series, 5 (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), p. 138 no. 86.51.
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. 83, 456.
Peter Murray Jones, 'Sicut hic depingitur . . . : John of Arderne and English Medical Illustration in the 14th and 15th centuries’, in Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, ed. by Wolfram Prinz and Andreas Beyer (Cologne: Acta humaniora, 1987), pp. 103-26 (p. 380, fig. 2).
Kathleen L. Scott, 'Design, Decoration and Illustration', in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 31-64 (p. 57 n. 31).
J. P. Gumbert, 'Über Faltbücher, vornehmlich Almanach' in Rationalisierung der Buchherstellung in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit, ed. by Peter Rück and Martin Boghardt (Marburg an der Lahn Institut für Historische Hilfswissenschaften, 1994), 111-22 (p. 112, n. 13).
Laurel Means, 'For as moche as yche man may not haue þe astrolabe: Popular Middle English Variations on the Computus', Speculum, 67 (1992), 595-623 (p. 600 n. 24).
Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), I, p. 71 n. 6, II, p. 97.
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd ed. (London: British Library, 1998), p. 53, fig. 46.
Linne R. Mooney, 'English Almanacks from Script to Print', in Texts and their contexts: papers from the Early Book Society, ed. by John Scattergood and Julia Boffey (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), pp. 11-25 (p. 17).
The Kalendarium of John Somer, ed. by L. R. Mooney (Athens, GA, 1998), pp. xi, 48, 52, 64-65 (MS. H4).
H. M. Carey, 'What is the Folded Almanac? The Form and Function of a Key Manuscript Source for Astro-medical Practice in Later Medieval England', Social History of Medicine, 16 (2003), 481-509 (pp. 495-500, 506 no. 12, 508 no. 12).
Peter Murray Jones, ‘Image, Word, and Medicine in the Middle Ages’, in Visualising Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550, ed. by Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain Touwaide, AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, 5 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 1-24 (p. 10, fig. 1.4).
J. P. Gumbert, Bat Books: A Catalogue of Folded Manuscripts Containing Almanacs or Other Texts, Bibliologia, 41 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), no. 36, pp. 135-37.
Chelsea Silva, ‘Opening the Medieval Folding Almanac’, Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory, The Provocative Fifteenth Century, Vol 2, 30 (2018), 49-65 (p. 64), https://doi.org/10.1080/10412573.2018.1436281, accessed 9 October 2019.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)