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Harley MS 7653
- Record Id:
- 040-002053511
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002053511
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000984.0x000292
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100058099614.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 7653
- Title:
-
The Harley Prayerbook
- Scope & Content:
-
A fragment of a decorated prayerbook with an Old English gloss. Its text and decoration link it to a group of Southumbrian prayerbooks known as the 'Tiberius Group'. In particular, its script and contents are related to those in Royal MS 2 A XX (the Royal Prayerbook), Harley MS 2965 (the Book of Nunnaminster), and Cambridge University Library MS Ll.1.10 (the Book of Cerne). The text includes both male and female pronouns and forms.
The manuscript contains:
ff. 1r-2v: an act of invocation with aspects of the lorican form (a prayer recited for protection);
ff. 2v-3v: a prayer for protection against sinful actions;
f. 4: an invocation addressed to angels, martyrs and other saints;
ff. 4v-7: various prayers.
Decoration: Small initials in brown. Highlighting of letters in single colours or in combinations of green, yellow or red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002053511", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 7653: The Harley Prayerbook" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002053511 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 7653 : The Harley Prayerbook - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[7667]/040-002053511
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100058099614.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0775
- End Date:
- 0825
- Date Range:
- late 8th to first quarter of 9th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 235 x 160 mm.
Foliation: ff. 7 (+ 7 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 7 at the end).
Script: Insular hybrid minuscule.
Binding: British Museum in-house, rebound in 1933.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Kingdom of Mercia (now central and western England). Its decoration and script are of the Southumbrian 'Tiberius Group' and are similar to Mercian charters and artworks. In particular, the 'et' ligatures of this manuscript and other aspects of its script are very similar to those found in Royal MS 2 A XX: see Brown, Book of Cerne (1996), p. 154. The book may have been written by a woman or intended for a female audience: some of the forms and pronouns are female, for example 'pro me dei famula oretis' (f. 1r).
Provenance:
? Worcester: Added annotation symbol resembling a rune-like dotted 'Y', dating from the Anglo-Saxon period, indicating a probable shared provenance, is also found in Royal MS 2 A XX (which contains additions made at Worcester).
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.
- Former Internal References:
- Add MS 5004
- Information About Copies:
-
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, ed. by A.N. Doane and others, 13 (Binghamton, New York, and Tempe, Arizona, 1994), no. 279.
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 7653.
F. E. Warren, The Antiphonary of Bangor (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1895), pp. 83, 86-97 [includes edition].
[E. Maunde Thompson and G. F. Warner], Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1881-1884), Part II: Latin, p. 61, pl. 23.
Codices Latini Antiquiores, ed. by E. A. Lowe, 11 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-1966), II: Great Britain and Ireland (1935), no. 204.
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 244.
Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, ed. by Michael Lapidge, Henry Bradshaw Society, 106 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1991), no. 25.
The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. by Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (London: British Museum, 1991), no. 162 [exhibition catalogue].
Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian, ed. by Bernhard Bischoff and Michael Lapidge, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 238.
Michelle P. Brown, The Book of Cerne: Prayer, Patronage and Power in Ninth-Century England (London: British Library, 1996), pp. 141-42, 151-54, 168-69, 171-72.
Carol Farr, The Book of Kells: Its Function and Audience (London: British Library, 1997), pp. 65, 98 n. 65.
Michelle P. Brown, 'Female Book-Ownership and Production in Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of the Ninth-Century Prayerbooks', in Lexis and Texts in Early English: Studies Presented to Jane Roberts, ed. by Christian J. Kay and Louise M. Sylvester (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 45-67.
Michelle P. Brown, ‘Mercian Manuscripts? The ‘Tiberius’ Group and Its Historical Context’, in Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. by Michelle P. Brown and Carol A. Farr (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), pp. 281-91 (p. 282).
Jane Stevenson, 'Anglo-Latin Women Poets', in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe and Andy Orchard, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), II, 86-107 (pp. 90-91).
Barbara Raw, ‘Anglo-Saxon Prayerbooks’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999-2012), I: 400-1100 (2012), ed. by Richard Gameson, pp. 460-67 (pp. 460-63).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)