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Royal MS 13 A I
- Record Id:
- 040-002106813
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000277.0x000389
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100161504927.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 13 A I
- Title:
- Historia Alexandri Magni and other texts relating to Alexander the Great
- Scope & Content:
-
The manuscript includes four works forming a compendium of Alexander's legends in Latin.
Contents:
ff. 2r-51v: Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia Alexandri Magni, translated from Greek into Latin by Julius Valerius, beginning, 'De nectanabi prudentia atque...'
ff. 51v-78r: Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem de situ Indiae, written in Latin, beginning, 'Semper me mortui etiam inter...'
ff. 78v-94v: Epistolae Alexandri, a set of five letters between Alexander and Dindimus, king of the Brahmans, written in Latin, beginning, 'Se pius ad aures meas fando peruenit...'
ff. 94v-98r: 'Parva recapitulatio de eodem Alexandro et de suis', an 11th-century collection of Latin texts recording the birth of Alexander the Great, his alleged visit to Jerusalem and events after his death (printed in Hill, 'The Middle English and Latin Versions’ (1980), pp. 18-20), beginning, 'Tempore quo hic Alexander natus legitur...'
Decoration:
1 full-page ink drawing in colours preceding the text (f. 1v), representing a king (probably Alexander the Great) seated, with crown, sceptre, and orb, and a woman (perhaps the personification of Philosophy) standing on his right, holding a pot and asperging brush.
Initials in green, some with penwork decoration in red, initials in red, some with penwork decoration in green, initials in purple, or/and in blue.
Display script in red, green and blue (f. 52r), or in red and purple (ff. 4v, 78v, 79v, 89v, 91r, 94v). Chapter numbers in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002106813 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 13 A I : Historia Alexandri Magni and other texts relating to Alexander the Great - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1033]/040-002106813
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100161504927.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1075
- End Date:
- 1099
- Date Range:
- 4th 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: 170 x 110 mm (text space: 125 x 70 mm).
Foliation: ff. 98 (+ 4 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end).
Collation: Gatherings of 8 leaves (except for last gathering which is of 10 leaves).
Script: Caroline minuscule. Written by two hands: A (ff. 2r-78r) and B (ff. 78v-98v). According to unpublished notes by Michael Gullick; Scribe A is close to Cambridge, Clare College 30 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 23.
Binding: Post-1600. Royal library binding of brown leather, marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England.
Provenance:
Inscribed 'Jo[h]n ap D[avi]d?', 16th century (f. 2).
Philological notes in Latin, 16th/17th century (ff. 81-94v).
Humphrey Lloyd (b. c.1527, d. 1568), Welsh antiquary, brother-in-law of John Lumley: inscribed 'Sum Humfredi Lloyd 155' (f. 5r).
John Lumley, 1st baron Lumley (b. c. 1533, d. 1609), collector and conspirator: inscribed with his name (f. 2r); listed in the 1609 catalogue of his collection, no. 971 (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: included in the catalogue of 1666, Royal Appendix 71, f. 20v; and perhaps in the 1698 catalogue of the library of St James's Palace (see Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae (Oxford: Sheldonian, '1697'), no. 8524).
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Information About Copies:
- Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=8847&CollID=16&NStart=130101
- Publications:
-
H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), I, p. 106.
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, p. 74.
D. Talbot Rice, English Art 871-1100, Oxford History of English Art, 2 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 207.
Francis Wormald, English Drawings of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), p. 72, no. 39.
J. Leclerq, 'Les manuscrit de l'abbaye d'Haumont', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 7 (1953), 59-67 (p. 62).
D. J. A. Ross, ‘A Check-list of Manuscripts of Three Alexander Texts: The Julius Valerius Epitome, the Epistola ad Aristotelem and the Collatio cum Dindimo’, Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 10 (1956), 127-32 (p. 130).
The Lumley Library: The Catalogue of 1609, ed. by Sears Jayne and Francis R. Johnson (London: British Museum, 1956), p. 124.
B. Hill, 'Epitaphia Alexandri in English Medieval Manuscripts', Leeds Studies in English, 8 (1975), 96-104 (pp. 96, 99).
B. Hill, 'The Middle English and Latin Versions of the Parva Recapitulatio of Alexander the Great', Notes and Queries, 27/1 (1980), 4-20 (p. 12).
Thomas Hahn, 'Notes on Ross's Check-List of Alexander Texts', Scriptorium: Revue internationale des études relative aux manuscrits, 34 (1980), 275-78 (p. 276).
David J. A. Ross, Studies in the Alexander Romance (London: Pindar, 1985), pp. 158, 159-62, 164-68,
The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines, and Premonstratensians, ed. by David N. Bell, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 3 (London: British Library, 1992), p. 174.
Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 241 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), no. 481.
Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), pp. 120, 126-29, 204.
Charles Russell Stone, The Roman de toute chevalerie: Reading Alexander Romance in Late Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), p. 35.
Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth, ed. by Richard Stoneman (London: British Library, 2022), p. 71, no. 30.
- Exhibitions:
- Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth, British Library, London, 21 October 2022 - 19 February 2022
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)