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Royal MS 7 C IV
- Record Id:
- 040-002106227
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000277.0x00022d
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100054149545.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 7 C IV
- Title:
-
Defensor of Ligugé, Liber scintillarum, with Old English glosses; Pauca de vitiis and peccatis (imperfect) with Old English glosses
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains the Liber scintillarum (Book of Sparks): a florilegium of extracts from the Bible and the Church Fathers written around 700 by a Benedictine monk of the abbey of Ligugé, Defensor of Ligugé. It also includes Old English interlinear glosses. The quires containing the Liber scintillarum have been bound incorrectly (for the right order see Rhodes, Defensor's Liber scintillarum (1889)). It is followed by a florilegium entitled Pauca de vitiis et peccatis (Little on the Vices and Sins) that includes extracts from Ecclesiasticus and Isidore of Seville (d. 636)'s Sententiae (Sentences).
Contents:
ff. 1r-100v: Defensor of Ligugé, Liber scintillarum with interlinear Old English glosses.
ff. 100v-106r: Anonymous, Pauca de vitiis and peccatis (imperfect), including Old English interlinear glosses to the Bible (ff. 100v-102r) and Isidore's Sententiae (ff. 102r-106r).
The manuscript contains a number of additions:
f. iv: An alphabet from 'A' to 'G' linked to Roman numerals written by an early 15th-century hand.
ff. 106v-107r: An extract from the Early Middle English Poema morale (Moral Poem), lines 17 to 18, 'me is bestolen on er [...] Ne maeg ic geseo before me [..] for he may se a mows [...]', added in the 12th or 13th century (f. 106v); numerous notes, verses of satirical poems and pen trials in various hands of the 14th and 15th centuries; a drawing of a face and of two coat of arms (f. 106v). An extract from Psalm 48:13 (f. 107r).
Decoration:
Large initials in red and green. Rubrics in red. Numerous margins trimmed off.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- England and France 700-1200 Project
Royal Collection - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002106227 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 7 C IV : Defensor of Ligugé, Liber scintillarum, with Old English glosses; Pauca de vitiis and peccatis (imperfect) with Old English glosses - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[0462]/040-002106227
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100054149545.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1025
- End Date:
- 1074
- Date Range:
- 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 11th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment.
Dimensions: 320 x 205 mm (text space: 235 x 130 mm).
Foliation: ff. 107 (+ 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 at the end); ff. i, 107 are medieval parchment flyleaves.
Script: Insular minuscule.
Binding: British Museum/British Library in-house.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Canterbury, Southeastern England.
Provenance:
The Benedictine priory Christ Church, Canterbury, founded in 597: inscribed, 13th-century, 'De claustro Christi cantuarie' and 'Liber scintillarum' (f. 1r); included in the catalogue of Henry of Eastry (d. 1331), prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, as no. 246 (see M. R. James, The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge: University Press, 1903), p. 45).
An unknown 12th- or 13th-century English owner: added quotations from the Early Middle English Poema morale, 'elde me is bestolen on er [...] Ne maeg ic geseo before me [..] for he may se a mows [...]', added in the 12th or 13th century (f. 106v).
'Frater T. Asceford': his name inscribed in a 15th-century script (f. 106v).
Unidentified 14th- or 15th-century owners: added Latin quotations, a drawing of a head, and of a shield with unidentified arms, 15th-16th century (f. 106v).
John Apsley of Thakeham, Sussex (d. 1587): inscribed, 'Johannes Apsley de Thakeham me possidet et per viginti annos possidebat: 1567, fol. 19' (f. 19r); note in his hand (f. 40r).
John Lumley, 1st baron Lumley (b. c. 1533, d. 1609), collector and conspirator: inscribed with his name (f. 1r); listed in the 1609 catalogue of his collection, no. 597 (see The Lumley Library, (1956)); passed to Henry, prince of Wales.
Henry Frederick, prince of Wales (b. 1594, d. 1612), eldest child of James I: his collection became part of the Royal Library: in the 1698 catalogue of the library of St James's Palace (see Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae (Oxford: Sheldonian, '1697' but 1698), no. 8250); the St James's Palace library pressmark 'Scrin. 25' (f.1v).
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
Defensor's Liber Scintillarum, with an Interlinear Anglo-Saxon Version Made Early in the Eleventh Century, ed. byE. W. Rhodes (London: Early English Text Society, 1889) [edition of the manuscript].
George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), I, p. 177.
Henri-Marie Rochais, 'Les manuscrits du Liber Scintillarum', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 4 (1950), 294-309 (pp. 300, 302).
The Lumley Library: The Catalogue of 1609, ed. by Sears Jayne and Francis R. Johnson (London: British Museum, 1956), p. 90.
Neil R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 256.
T. A. M. Bishop, 'Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part VII: The Early Manuscripts of Christ Church Canterbury', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 3 (1959-63), 413-23 (pp. 420-23).
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R. Ker, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 37.
Catalogue des manuscrits des collections d'Ablaing et Meijers,Bibliotheca Universitatis Leidensis: Codices manuscripti, 12 (Leyden, 1970), p. 158.
David N. Dumville, English Caroline Script and Monastic History, Studies in Benedictinism, A.D.950-1030 , Studies in Anglo-Saxon History, 6 (Suffolk: Boydell, 1993), pp. 108-10, 124, 146.
Richard Marsden, 'The Old Testament in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Preliminary Observation on the Textual Evidence', in The Early Medieval Bible: its Production, Decoration and Use, ed. by Richard Gameson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 101-24 (pp. 106, 120).
Helmut Gneuss, ‘Origin and Provenance of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: The Case of Cotton Tiberius A. III’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. by P. R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1997), 13-48 (p. 42).
P. J. Lucas and A. N. Doane, Latin Manuscripts with Anglo-Saxon Glosses, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, 5, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 12 (Tempe, Arizona: Pegasus Press, 1997), no. 10.
Paul E. Szarmach, 'A Return to Cotton Tiberius A III, art. 24, and Isidore's Synonyma', in Text and Gloss: Studies in Insular Learning and Literature Presented to Joseph Donovan Pheifer, ed. by H. Conrad O'Briain, A. M. D'Arcy, and J. Scattergood (Portland: Four Courts Press), pp. 167-81 (p. 168).
Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), no. 470.
Richard Sharpe and James Willoughby, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (Oxford: The Bodleian Libraries, 2015) »http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mlgb/book/1270/?search_term=Royal%20MS%207%20C.IV&page_size=500« [accessed 8 August 2016].
- 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.