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Royal MS 13 E VI
- Record Id:
- 040-002106887
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x00002a
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165176362.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 13 E VI
- Title:
- Ralph of Diceto, Series causae inter Henricum regem et Thomam archiepiscopum, Abbreviationes chronicorum, and Imagines historiarum
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains copies of the major works of Ralph of Diceto (b. c. 1120, d. c. 1202), a medieval chronicler, archdeacon of Middlesex and dean of St Paul's Cathedral. The Abbreviationes chronicorum (Abbreviations of chronicles) and Imagines historiarum (Images of History) are two chronicles that cover the history of the world from the birth of Christ to the year 1202. This version of the Imagines historiarum ends in 1199 with the coronation of King John (r. 1199-1216).
The manuscript features Ralph's pictorial indexing system: a collection of marginal pictorial devices and signs used to indicate the presence of particular subjects or events within each chronicle, such as councils, royal unctions, and disputes between the king and the Church. The volume also includes his Series causae inter Henricum regem et Thomam archiepiscopum, a summary of the events leading up to the dispute between Henry II (r. 1154-1189) and Thomas Becket (b. 1119/20, d. 1170), Archbishop of Canterbury.
It has been suggested that the manuscript was made for the Benedictine abbey of St Albans, and copied from an exemplar from St Paul's London, believed to be the author's own copy of the text (now Lambeth Palace MS 8). The historian, artist, and monk of St Albans, Matthew Paris (b. c. 1200, d. 1259) added a number of marginal notes to the manuscript, as well as a small portrait of Lucius, a legendary 2nd-century King of the Britons.
Contents:
ff. i recto-verso: Ralph of Diceto, Series causae inter Henricum regem et Thomam archiepiscopum;
ff. 1r-48r: Ralph of Diceto, Abbreviationes chronicorum;
ff. 49r-136r: Ralph of Diceto, Imagines historiarum.
[f. 48v is blank].
The manuscript contains a number of later additions, including:
ff. 136r-137v: a continuation of the previous text in various thirteenth-century hands, with added entries for the period 1200 to 1215.
Decoration:
Marginal images and signs in colours, in colours and gold, or in colours and silver, referred to adjacent fragments of the text (ff. 16r, 24v, 25v-29v, 31v, 32r, 34r, 34v, 36r-37r, 49v, 40r, 44r-45r, 46v-47v, 70v, 112r, 121r, 122r), with a table explaining their meaning (f. 1r). Initials in gold with red and blue pen-flourishing, in green with red pen-flourishing, or in red with blue pen-flourishing. Small initials in red or green throughout the text. A marginal image of King Lucius, added by Matthew Paris (f. 11r).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002106887 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 13 E VI : Ralph of Diceto, Series causae inter Henricum regem et Thomam archiepiscopum, Abbreviationes chronicorum, and Imagines historiarum - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1105]/040-002106887
- 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_100165176362.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1194
- End Date:
- 1209
- Date Range:
- c 1199-1209
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment.
Dimensions: 414 x 300 mm (text space: 310 x 225 mm).
Foliation: ff. i + 137 (+ 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end; 1 blank parchment leaf after f. 51).
Script: Gothic, written below the top line.
Binding: British Library in-house. Rebound in 1982.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Southern England (probably St Albans).
Provenance:
The Benedictine abbey of St. Albans: the St Albans library shelfmark 'A 6 g[ra]d[us] 2 p' (f. i recto); obits of abbots (ff. 97v, 125v) and other entries related to the abbey of St Albans, added in the margins: 'In inventio sancti Albani et rege Offa' (f. 23r), a note of the dedication of St Albans in 1116 (f. 45r), a note of the controversy between the abbey and Lincoln cathedral in 1152 (f. 56v); a marginal image of King Lucius (f. 11r) and notes (ff. 11r, 40v, 41r) by Matthew Paris (b. c. 1200, d. 1259), monk of St Albans, historian and artist.
Added entries in various thirteenth-century hands, covering the period 1200 to 1215 (ff. 136r-137v).
Borrowed by Richard de Mores (Morins), prior of the Austinian house at Dunstable in 1209-1210, from which he made excerpts (see Lucas, 'Borrowing and Reference' (2006), p. 260 n. 110) .
Thomas Wolsey (b. 1470/71, d. 1530), royal minister, archbishop of York, and cardinal: 'TC' monogram, perhaps for Thomas Cardinalis (see Carley, The Libraries of King Henry VIII (2000), p. xxxiii), 16th century (f. i recto).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): Westminster inventory number 'no. 1044' (f. i recto), included in the inventory of books in the Upper Library at Westminster of 1542; in the list of works noted by John Bale in c. 1548, no. 18.; and in the catalogue of 1666, Royal MS Appendix 71, f. 21r.
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://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
Radulfi de Diceto decani Lundoniensis opera historica, ed. by W. Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls Series, 68 (London: Longman, 1876), I, pp. xci, xciv-xcv.
Felix Liebermann, Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen (Strassburg: Trubner, 1879), pp. 166-72.
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, pp. 112-13.
Richard Vaughan, 'The Handwriting of Matthew Paris', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 5 (1953) 376-94 (pp. 377, 381, 391).
Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), pp. 24, 129 n. 2, 186.
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. 167.
C. R. Cheney, 'The Making of the Dunstable Annals', in Essays in Medieval History presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. by T. Sandquist and M. Powicke (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), pp. 79-98 (pp. 85-88).
Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 2 vols (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), I: c. 550 - c. 1307, pp. 230-36, pl. VII.
Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), pp. 114-19.
Grover A. Zinn, Jr, 'The Influence of Hugh of St. Victor's Chronicon on the Abbreviationes Chronicorum by Ralph of Diceto', Speculum, 52 (1977), 38-61 (pp. 45 n. 44, 59).
Rodney M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066-1235, 2 vols (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982), I, no. 38; II, pl. 250.
Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the 'Chronica Majora' (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1987), pp. 44-45.
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H2.1044, H4.18, p. xxxi.
Pamela Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 888-1600 in London Libraries, 2 vols (London: British Library, 2003), I, p. 39.
Peter J. Lucas, 'Borrowing and reference: access to libraries in the late middle ages', 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. 242-62 (p. 260, n. 110).
Joanna Fronska, 'Turning the Pages of Legal Manuscripts: Reading and Remembering the Law', in Meaning and Motion: The Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art, ed. by Nino Zchomelidse and Giovanni Freni (Princeton: Department of Art and Archeology, Princeton University, 2011), pp. 191-214 (p. 206).
Dorothy Kim, 'Matthew Paris, Visual Exegesis, and Apocalyptic Birds in Royal MS. 14 C. VII', The Electronic British Library Journal, 2014, Article 5: http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2014articles/article5.html [Accessed: 20/01/2021].
Judith Collard, 'The Visual Representation of Authority in the Historia Anglorum of Matthew Paris', in Thirteenth-century England. XV. Authority and Resistance in the Age of Magna Carta: Proceedings from the Aberystwyth and Lampeter Conference, 2013, ed. by Janet Burton, Phillipp Schofield and Bjorn Weiler (Martlesham: The Boydell Press, 2015), pp. 181-206 (pp. 193-95).
Laura Cleaver, Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World, 1066-1072 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 87, 91, 93-95.
- Exhibitions:
- Chroniclers of History, St Albans Museum and Gallery, St Albans, 29 July 2021 - 31 October 2021
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)