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Sloane MS 314
- Record Id:
- 040-002112660
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002112337
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000505.0x0003da
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100193732463.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Sloane MS 314
- Title:
- Geoffrey Chaucer, 'Treatise on the Astrolabe', with a treatise on geomancy and an account of a necromantic ritual
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains a copy of the 'Treatise on the Astrolabe', written by poet Geoffrey Chaucer (b. c. 1340s, d. 1400), together with a treatise on geomancy, an account of a necromantic ritual, and a fragment of a baptismal office from a 13th-century missal.
It has been suggested that the volume was consulted and used by Walter Stevins (fl. 1553-1556) as the basis for his revised edition of Chaucer's 'Astrolabe' (now Sloane MS 261). It features numerous marginal corrections, annotations and additions written in the same hand. On this identification and a discussion of this edition, see Brae, Treatise on the Astrolabe (1870), pp. 6-11, and Eisner, Treatise on the Astrolabe (2002), pp. 78-79.
Contents:
f. 1v: An added title, incorrectly asserting that the manuscript is written in Chaucer's hand: 'Tractatus Astrologico Magicus, with a Discourse written by Sr Geoffrey Chaucers' own hand of the Astrolabe'.
ff. 2r-64v: A treatise on geomancy, written in Latin and Middle French prose, beginning, 'Et est Gremmgi Indyana, que vocatur filia astronomie quam fecit unus sapientum Indie...'
ff. 65v-106r: Geoffrey Chaucer, 'Treatise on the Astrolabe', written in Middle English prose, beginning, 'Litil Lewys my sone...', with numerous marginal annotations, additions and corrections throughout, principally written in the hand of Walter Stevins.
f. 106v: An account of a necromantic ritual by Master John de Belton, written in Latin prose, imperfect at the end; the text entitled, 'Experimentum bonum magistri Johannis de Beltone, et vocatur Flos florum', and beginning, 'Primo et principaliter, sedeat magister in circulo prout infine huius experimenti patebit…'
f. 107r-v: A fragment of a 13th-century missal, containing part of the baptismal office, written in Latin.
ff. 1r, 35v and 65r are blank.
Decoration:
46 diagrams in pen-and-ink, some with annotations in red (ff. 68v-106r), with several spaces left blank, probably intended for others.
Figures and tables in red and/or black (e.g. ff. 10v, 13r, 45v).
Large initials in red or brown. Large initials in red and/or green (f. 107r-v).
Highlighting of letters in red (ff. 2r-106v). Line-fillers in red.
Rubrics.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Sloane Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002112337
040-002112660 - Is part of:
- Sloane MS 1-4100 : Sloane Manuscripts
Sloane MS 314 : Geoffrey Chaucer, 'Treatise on the Astrolabe', with a treatise on geomancy and an account of a necromantic ritual - Hierarchy:
- 032-002112337[0323]/040-002112660
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Sloane MS 1-4100
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100193732463.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
French, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1425
- End Date:
- 1449
- Date Range:
- 2nd quarter of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Paper; parchment (f. 107).
Dimensions: 205 x 135 mm (written space: 140 x 90 mm).
Foliation: ff. i + 107 (+2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end); f. i is a paper flyleaf.
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: British Museum in-house. Brown half leather binding, with the Sloane arms gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers; marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England (possibly East Midlands).
Provenance:
'Johannis Pomiteisius': inscribed, 'Ex libris Johannis Pomiteisii' in a 16th-century hand (f. i recto).
John Maitland (b. 1616, d. 1682), 1st Duke of Lauderdale: his sale, John Bullord, 25 January 1692, lot 73.
Sir Hans Sloane (b. 1660, d. 1753), baronet, physician and collector: his symbol (f. 2r), and inscribed former shelfmarks, 'MS B 811', 'XVI.D' (f. i recto).
The manuscript was apparently loaned by Sloane to John Urry (b. 1666, d. 1715), scholar and editor of Chaucer's works, according to a report by the antiquarian Thomas Hearne (Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years (1925), I, pp. 320-31, 342-43). It was later loaned to the library of Thomas Tanner (b. 1674, d. 1735) at some point before 1748, when it was referenced as a Sloane manuscript ('in bibl. Tho. Tanneri, b. 87'), in his posthumously published Bibliotheca Britannio-Hibernica, a dictionary of the authors who flourished in England, Scotland and Ireland before the opening of the 17th century.
Purchased as part of the Sloane collection from Sloane's executors and incorporated into the newly founded British Museum in 1753.
- Publications:
-
Bibliotheca instructissima ex bibliothecis duroum doctrssimorum theologorum … (London: John Bullord, 1692).
Thomas Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica (London: William Bowyer, 1748), p. 169.
Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Sloanianae(Manuscripts 1-1091) ([London: British Museum], no date), no. 314.
The Treatise on the Astrolabe of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. by Andrew Edmund Brae (London: John Russell, 1870), pp. 6-11.
A Treatise on the Astrolabe by Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. by Walter W. Skeat (London: N. Truber & Co for The Early English Text Society, 1872), p. xii.
Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science: During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era, 6 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923), II, pp. 94, 120, 237, 800.
Caroline Frances Eleanor Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, 1357-1900, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), I, pp. 320-21, 335, 342-43.
Ramona Bressie, 'MS Sloane 3548, Folio 158', Modern Language Notes, 54 (1939), 246-56 (p. 248 n. 5).
Chaucer's Treatise on the Astolabe. MS. 4862-4869 of the Royal Library in Brussels, ed. by P. Pintelon (Antwerp: De Sinkkell, 1940), p. 24.
Michael C. Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995- ), I, Works before the Canterbury Tales, pp. 123-24.
Edgar Laird, 'Geoffrey Chaucer and other contributors to the Treatise on the Astrolabe', in Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602, ed. by Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 145-65 (p. 163 n. 61).
A Treatise on the Astrolabe, ed. by Sigmund Eisner (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), pp. xxi, 78-79.
Jean-Patrice Boudet, Entre science et nigromance: astrologie, divination et magie dans l'occident médiéval, XIIe-XVe siècle (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006).
Corinne Saunders, Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), p. 109.
Frank Klassen, The Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance (2013), p. 126.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)