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Add MS 38817
- Record Id:
- 040-002058174
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002058172
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000001159.0x00024c
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100063640459.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 38817
- Title:
- Bede, De Tabernaculo (excerpt); Revelatio Sancti Ragneri Martyris; Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum; Cuthbert, De Obitu Venerabilis Bede
- Scope & Content:
-
This 12th-century manuscript contains De Tabernaculo (On the Tabernacle) and the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) by Bede the Venerable (d. 673, d. 735), an English Benedictine monk, theologian, and historian, followed by a letter about his death, written by Cuthbert, a disciple of Bede. A contemporary table of contents, added by another hand (f. 4v), suggests that the manuscript originally contained more works, including a life of St Malachy, the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons), and a number of eschatological works. These include a work on the resurrection of the dead at the Last Judgement, and three well-known visions of heaven and hell: the Vision of Wetti, Vision of Barontus, and Vision of Orm. The original contents suggest that the scribes who composed the manuscript or their intended readers were especially interested in Bede's Historia for the visions of the afterlife that it includes (e.g. the Vision of Dryhthelm). However, the manuscript's readers also appear to have used the Historia as a source for devotional or liturgical reading. This is indicated by the subject headings they have added in the margins of passages about St Augustine and the Northern saints Chad, Cuthbert, Hild, Oswald, and Oswine. These passages may have been read as lections during the communal worship on these saints' feast days (see Webber, 'Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica as a Source of Lections’ (2015), pp. 56, 68).
Contents:
f. 2r: Bede, De Tabernaculo.
ff. 2v-4r: A work about the Invention and Translation of St Ragener of Northampton, with the rubric ‘Incipit Revelatio S. Ragneri martyris’.
ff. 5r-91r: Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, a prologue (ff. 5r-5v) followed by Books I-V (with separate tables of contents).
ff. 91r-91v: Cuthbert, Epistola de Obitu Venerabilis Bedae (Letter on the Death of Bede the Venerable).
The manuscript contains a number of additions:
f. 4v: A table of contents, added in the 12th century: ‘In hoc volumine continentur hii libri. Ecclesiastica historia Gentis anglorum – Vita gloriosa Malachie archiepiscopi – Historia britonum a Gilda sapiente composita – visiones a mortuis resurgentium – visiones Wettini – De XII . per annum chorolanntibus – Visiones Baronti monachi . defuncti . Visiones Orm pueri XIII . diebus defuncti’.
f. 1r: A 16th-century letter to a member of the Savile family in which ‘Henry Meggeson’ explains that he has sent the manuscript to Savile through ‘Thomas Lather', beginning ‘Mr Sawill After my hartiest commendations’.
ff. [iii] and [v] are leaves from a 16th-century printed book of Psalms.
[ff. 1v, 91r, and 91v are blank].
Decoration:
1 large diagram illustrating the architectural plan of the tabernacle of Moses as described by Bede, in red, blue and yellow on f. 2r. 1 large zoomorphic initial with interlace decoration filled with blue, green and red on f. 5r; 1 large interlace initial with knotwork and foliate decoration in green and red against a background in blue, with the head of a hybrid figure and a roundel displaying the head of a monk (Bede) on f. 6r; 1 large initial in blue with arabesque penwork decoration in red and green on f. 2v; 2 large initials in green with penwork decoration in red and blue (ff. 52v, 72r); medium and small initials in green and red, occasionally in blue, some with arabesque penwork decoration in red, or green and red. Display script (capitals in brown ink) highlighted in red and green (f. 5r). Rubrics in red and green. Quotation marks in red and green or red and blue. Roman numerals in red. Paraph markers in brown ink. A drawing of a human head added in pencil or faint black ink on f. 63v. Some manicules in brown ink have been added to the margins throughout the manuscript.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
England and France 700-1200 Project - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002058172
040-002058174 - Is part of:
- Add MS 38816-38824 : Dunn Manuscripts
Add MS 38817 : Bede, De Tabernaculo (excerpt); Revelatio Sancti Ragneri Martyris; Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum; Cuthbert, De… - Hierarchy:
- 032-002058172[0002]/040-002058174
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Add MS 38816-38824
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100063640459.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1150
- End Date:
- 1199
- Date Range:
- 2nd half of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 260 x 185 mm (text space: 210 x 145 mm, in 2 columns).
Foliation: ff. 92 ( + 4 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves and 2 unfoliated 15th- or 16th-century paper leaves at the beginning + 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the end); a parchment tab on f. 19; 2 paper pastedowns on f. [v] (numbered as ‘ii’ and ‘iii’); f. [iv] and f. [vi] have been numbered as ‘i’ and ‘iv’.
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: Pre-1600. Blind-stamped and –tooled brown leather binding for the upper cover; original Romanesque binding with foliate, architectural and anthropomorphic figures. Blind-tooled brown leather (post-1600) for the lower cover, replacing a previous binding. Re-backed and the spine inscribed in gold at the British Museum: ‘BEDA’.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Kirkham, Northern England.
Provenance:
The Augustinian priory of the Holy Trinity or Christ Church, Kirkham, North Yorkshire, founded c. 1122: their ownership inscription, added in a 12th-century script on f. 4v: ‘Liber ecclesie Christi de Kirkheam’; in a 12th- or 13th-century script on f. 1v: ‘Liber Sancte Trinitatis De Kirkhaam [sic]’ (see also Ker, Medieval Libraries (1964), p. 106); the scribe of ff. 5r-91v is the same as Burney MS 216, ff. 5r-88v and Arundel MS 36, ff. 1r-12v; the latter manuscript also has a Kirkham inscription, each manuscript with similar initials (ex info. Michael Gullick, cited in The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons, ed. by Webber and Watson (1998), p. 32; see also Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria (2003), p. 189).
? Sir John Savile the elder (b. 1545-1607), lawyer and judge of Bradley, North Yorkshire: perhaps identifiable with the ‘Mr Sawill’ who is addressed in a 16th-century letter on f. 1r accoding to the Catalogue of Additions (1969), pp. 253-54; the Savile family of Yorkshire may have acquired Kirkham manuscripts after the priory’s dissolution in 1539: Henry Savile, of Banke (b. 1568 d. 1617) owned Arundel MS 36, another Kirkham manuscript.
Sir John Savile (b. 1818, d. 1896), diplomat and collector: his sale, London, Sotheby’s, 1861, lot 23; see also the note on f. [vi] recto: ‘From Kirkham Priory - Savile Sale 1861, lot 23 £100’, in pencil note; probably purchased by Sir Thomas Phillipps who was present at this sale.
Sir Thomas Phillipps (b. 1792, d. 1872), baronet, collector of books and manuscripts, after 1837: his shelf-mark on f. 1r and f. 2r: ‘Phillipps MS 25402’; see also the note on f. [vi] recto: ‘Phillipps, no doubt’, in pencil note; not in the Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca D. Thomae Phillipps (1837); his sale, London, Sotheby’s, 6 June 1898, Lot 100; apparently unsold and offered again by Bernard Quaritch (b. 1819, d. 1899), bookseller, for £70.0.0; Quaritich, London, July 1898, Lot 2 (Quaritich catalogue no. 180); perhaps purchased by Laurence William Hodson.
Laurence William Hodson (b. 1846, d. 1933) book, manuscript and art collector, of Compton Hall at Wolverhampton, owned in 1906: a printed label pasted on f. [v] recto: ‘FROM THE LIBRARY OF LAURENCE W. HODSON, COMPTON HALL, NEAR WOLVERHAMPTON’; his sale, London, Sotheby’s, 3 December 1906, Lot 39 (see the pencil note on f. [vi] recto: ‘Hodson > [...] Hodson Sale [...] December 1906’).
Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (b. 1872, d. 1962), museum director and book collector, owned in 1906 but sold or donated before 1912 : his name (‘Cockerell’) inscribed in the British Library’s annotated copy of the Sotheby’s catalogue for Hodson’s sale; perhaps sold or donated the manuscript to George Dunn, with whom he was well acquainted (see Christopher de Hamel, 'Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts from the Library of Sir Sidney Cockerell (1867-1962)', TheBritish Library Journal, 13 (1987), 186-210 (p. 190)).
George Dunn (b. 1865, d. 1912), Woolley Hall, owned at an unknown point between 1906 and 1912: A printed label pasted on f. [v] recto: ‘FROM THE LIBRARY OF GEORGE DUNN OF WOOLLEY HALL NEAR MAIDENHEAD’; his sale, London, Sotheby’s, 2-6 February 1914, lot 812 (see the note on f. [v] recto); purchased from him by the British Museum for £51.0.0. through Quaritch Ltd (according to the British Library's annotated copy of the Sotheby's sale catalogue).
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1911-1915, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1925; repr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), I: Descriptions, pp. 253-54.
Rudolf Brotanek, ‘Nachlese zu den Hss. der Epistola Cuthberti und des Sterbespruches Bedas’, Anglia, 64 (1940), 159-90 (pp. 161, 170).
Max Ludwig Wolfram Laistner and Henry Hall King, A Hand-List of Bede Manuscripts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1943), p. 74.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by Neil Ripley Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 106.
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. liii.
Andrew G. Watson, The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1969), p. 77.
Anne Lawrence, ‘The Artistic Influence of Durham Manuscripts’, in Anglo-Norman Durham 1093-1193, ed. by David Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), pp. 451-469 (p. 469 n. 52).
Michael Gullick, ‘The Origin and Importance of Cambridge, Trinity College R. 5. 27’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 11:3 (1998), 239-62 (pp. 239, 240 n. 4).
Teresa Webber and Andrew G. Watson, The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 6 (London: British Library, 1998), p. 32.
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2003), pp. 189, 228, 232-33, pl. 26.
Mary Carruthers, ‘The ‘Pictures’ of Jerusalem in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 156’, in Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, ed. by Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 97-121 (p. 119 n. 39).
Teresa Webber, 'Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica as a Source of Lections in Pre- and Post- Conquest England', in The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. by Martin Brett and David Woodman (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 47-74 (pp. 56, 68, 72).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)
- Notes:
- This manuscript is part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700-1200.