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Royal MS 12 D XVII
- Record Id:
- 040-002106754
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000277.0x0002ee
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100101103280.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 12 D XVII
- Title:
- Bald's Leechbook
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains texts pertaining to medical remedies, diagnoses, charms, and a prognostic text about the Dog Days (ff. 54v-55v). The text is divided by tables of contents into three books. According to a Latin colophon, the first two books were compiled for a certain Bald by Cild (f. 109r). This colophon probably refers to an exemplar of the current manuscript. The third book, sometimes known as 'Leechbook III', appears to have been copied from a separate exemplar, and some of its contents overlap with the first two books.
The manuscript contains:
ff. 1r-6v: Table of Contents to Book I;
ff. 6v-58v: Book I;
f. 49r: remedy added in the margin in the 11th century;
ff. 58v-64v: Table of Contents to Book II;
ff. 65r-108v: Book II;
ff. 109r-111r: Table of Contents to Book III;
ff. 111r-127r: Leechbook III (ends imperfectly).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002106754 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 12 D XVII : Bald's Leechbook - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[0974]/040-002106754
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100101103280.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Old
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 0940
- End Date:
- 0955
- Date Range:
- mid-10th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment and ink.
Dimensions: 270 x 205 mm.
Foliation: ff. i + 128 (where f. 128 is medieval parchment flyleaf and f. i contains pasted fragments of a medieval binding, + 4 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and 4 at the end).
Script: Square minuscule.
Binding: Post-1600.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: ? Winchester, mid-10th century: written by same scribe as the copyist of the Old English Bede in Cotton MS Otho B XI and as a scribe of the third batch of entries in the A version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, who copied the annals from 924 to 946 and year numbers to 955 (Ganz, 'Square Minuscule' (2012), p. 189). A six-line verse colophon between book II and book III states that 'Bald habet hund [hunc] libru[m] cild que[m] conscribere iussit' ('Bald owns this book, which he ordered Cild to write/compile'), (f. 109r). Bald probably owned an exemplar of parts of this manuscript; the colophon probably does not refer to the present manuscript.
Provenance:
Added Latin inscriptions and musical notation, 12th or 13th century (e.g., f. 125v).
Strip of binding, inscribed 'Medicinale anglicum' in a 13th century hand (f. i).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): Westminster inventory number 'no. 139 ', (f. 1) and included in the inventory of books in the Upper Library at Westminster of 1542 (f.26).
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Information About Copies:
-
Bald's Leechbook: British Museum Royal Manuscript 12 D.xviii, ed. by C.E. Wright and Randolph Quirk, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 5 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1955).
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, ed. by A.N. Doane and others, 1 (Binghamton, New York, and Tempe, Arizona, 1994), no. 298.
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk.manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, ed. by O. Cockayne, Rolls Series, 3 vols (London: Longmans, 1864-66), vol II (1864) [includes edition and translation].
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), II, 48.
Bald's Leechbook (British Museum Royal Manuscript 12 D XVII), ed. by C. E. Wright and Randolph Quirk, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 5 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1955).
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), no. 264.
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. 200.
L.E. Voigts, 'British Library, Royal 12 D.XVII, f. 30v', Old English Newsletter, 13 (1959), 12-13.
R. Torkar, 'Zu den altenglischen Medizinaltexten in Otho B.xi und Royal 12 D.xvii, mit einer Edition der Unica (Ker, No. 180 art. 11a-d)', Anglia, 94 (1976), 319-38.
M.L. Cameron, 'The sources of medical knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England', Anglo-Saxon England, 11 (1982), 135-55 (pp. 147-50).
A.L. Meaney, 'Variant Versions of Old English Medical Remedies and the Compilation of Bald's Leechbook', Anglo-Saxon England, 13 (1984), 235-68.
M.L. Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3, 6, 10-12, 15, 16, 20-22, 30, 35, 42-46, 60, 71-74, 77, 82, 83, 88, 89, 91, 129, 133, 169-75.
Patrick Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth Century Cultural History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993), pp. 78-80.
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H2.622
Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), no. 479.
Monsters and the Monstrous in Medieval Northwest Europe, ed. by K. E. Olsen & L. A. J. R. Houwen (Leuven: Peeters, 2001).
Richard Gameson, The Scribe speaks? Colophons in early English Manuscripts, H.M Chadwick Memorial Lectures, 12 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Department of Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic, 2001), p. 51.
Anne Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. xv, 1, 14, 15, 43, 49-51, 53, 54, 56, 64, 75, 91, 94, 103, 104.
The Leofric Missal I, ed. by Nicholas Orchard, Henry Bradshaw Society, 113 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2002), p. 111.
Richard Scott Nokes, 'The several compilers of Bald's Leechbook', Anglo-Saxon England, 33 (2004), 51-76.
David Howlett, Insular Inscriptions (Chippenham: Antony Rowe, 2005), pp. 100-01.
K. D. Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1200 containing Music (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), no. 184.
David Ganz, ‘Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, ed. by Elisabeth Leedham-Green and Teresa Webber, 3 vols (Cambridge: University Press, 2006), Vol I: To 1640, pp. 91-108 (p. 99).
Michelle P. Brown, Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age (London: The British Library, 2007), pp. 131,144.
László Sándor Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900-1100: Study and Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 40-41, 532, 553.
Marijane Osborn, 'Anglo-Saxon Ethnobotany: Women's Reproductive Medicine in Leechbook III' in Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden ed. By Peter Dendle and Alain Touwaide (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), pp.145-61.
David Ganz, 'Square Minuscule' in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain Volume I: c. 400-1100, ed. by Richard Gameson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 188-96 (pp. 189, 193).
Richard Gameson, 'The material fabric of early British books', in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume I: c. 400-1100, ed. by Richard Gameson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 13-93 (pp. 39 n. 95, 59 n. 196, 65).
Freya Harrison and others, 'A 1,000-Year-Old Antimicrobial Remedy with Antistaphylococcal Activity', mBio, 6 (2015), 1-7.
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, ed. by Claire Breay and Joanna Story (London: The British Library, 2018), no. 108 [exhibition catalogue].
- Exhibitions:
- Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, British Library, London, 19 October 2018 - 19 February 2019
The Middle Ages, (online), 26 March 2015- - Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)