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Sloane MS 1975
- Record Id:
- 040-002114333
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002112337
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000603.0x00028a
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165172195.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Sloane MS 1975
- Title:
- Medical and herbal miscellany
- Scope & Content:
-
ff. 1v–7r: Table of contents. Preface, ‘In hoc continentur libri quatuor medicine ypocratis. platonis. apoliensis urbis. de diversis herbis. Sexti papiri. placiti. ex animalibus. et ex diversis avibus. Idem ex libris dioscoridis. ex herbis semininis. ut quis voluerit. si pro qua fuerit querere cura propter imbecillitates hominum. que per anni metas revoluent per quatuor quadrangula temporum. recurrat per canonum numero .cc. novem. ut dum per singulas herbas curas requirit. per numerum qui subictus est revolvens unumquemque librum sine mora repperiet curam quam querit.’
f. 7r: List of months with correspondence to Egyptian days.
f. 7v–8r: Pseudo-Hippocrates, Epistula ad Antiochum regem.
ff. 8r–9v: Pseudo-Hippocrates, Epistula ad Maecenatem.
ff. 10r–12v: Epistola Antonimusi ad Maecenatem Agrippam, together with a short treatise on the properties of the herb Betony.
ff. 12v–49v: Pseudo-Apuleius, Herbarium.
ff. 49v–73r: Pseudo-Dioscorides, De herbis femininis.
ff. 73r–74r: Epistola de bestiola, quam aliqui melem vocant, ‘Rex egyptiorum. Octoviano augusto salutem. Plurimis exemplis expertus sum victoriam tuam et prudentiam.’
ff. 74r–93r: Sextus Pacitus, De medicina ex animalibus.
Decoration:
Numerous miniatures (over 200) of plants and animals with medicinal properties in colours and gold and silver. 3 large initials in colours with zoomorphic and foliate decoration on gold grounds (ff. 1v, 7v, 8r). Large and small initials in blue, green, or red, a few with penwork decoration.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Sloane Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002112337
040-002114333 - Is part of:
- Sloane MS 1-4100 : Sloane Manuscripts
Sloane MS 1975 : Medical and herbal miscellany - Hierarchy:
- 032-002112337[1981]/040-002114333
- 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_100165172195.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1175
- End Date:
- 1199
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Dimensions: 300 × 200 mm (written area 215 x 150 mm, in two columns).
Foliation: ff. 95 (+ 5 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the beginning, and 4 at the end).
Collation: i-xii8 (ff. 1-94), xiiione (f. 95). Quire signatures in roman numerals.
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Marbled endpapers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: ?Northern England or ?Northern France.
Collins (2003: 205) suggests that this manuscript is a direct copy of Harley MS 1585. Morgan (1982) states that it is from the same workshop as Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1462.
Provenance:
?The Cistercian abbey of St Mary, Ourscamps: an effaced 14th-century ownership inscription (f. 91r): see Schneider (1962: 46, no. 10).
?Paul Petau (b. 1568, d. 1614), French antiquary. Added text in cursive script (ff. 94v–95r).
Sir Hans Sloane (b. 1660, d. 1753), baronet, physician and collector. Purchased as part of the Sloane collection from Sloane's executors and incorporated into the newly founded British Museum in 1753.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of Additional Manuscripts: Sloane 1900–1993 (London: British Museum unpublished manuscript of unedited descriptions, no date), no. 1975 [available in the British Library Manuscripts Reading Room].
Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 5.
Karl Sudhoff, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chirurgie im Mittelalter: Graphische und textliche Untersuchungen in mittelalterlichen Handschriften, 2 vols (Leipzig: Barth, 1914-1918), I, Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin, 10, pp. 11-15, 81 (as 'Sl. II'), 93-94, pls I, XIX.
Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 6 vols (London: Macmillan, 1923-1941), I, pp. 597, 609, 696.
Charles Singer, 'The Herbal in Antiquity', Journal of Hellenic Studies, 47 (1927), 1-52 (pp. 38, 43, pl. X).
[C.H. Talbot], 'Cistercian Manuscripts in England', Collectanea Ordinis Cisterciensium Reformatorum, 14 (1952), 208-12, 264-77 (p. 272).
Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters, ed. by Harry Bober, 4 vols (London: Warburg Institute, 1916-1966), III: Handschriften in englischen Bibliotheken (1953), p. 245.
C. R. Dodwell, The Canterbury School of Illumination 1066-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), p. 109 n. 6.
P. Ambrosius Schneider, ‘Deutsche und französische Cistercienser-Handschriften in englischen Bibliotheken’, Cistercienserchronik, 61/62 (1962), 43-54 (p. 46 no. 10).
Loren MacKinney, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 5, 2 parts bound together (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965), with Thomas Herndon, Part II, Medical Miniatures in Extant Manuscripts: A Checklist, no. 84.
Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals (New York: Dover Publications, 1971, repr. of Longmans, Green, 1922), p. 190.
Robert Herrlinger, History of Medical Illustration from Antiquity to A. D. 1600 (Nijkerk: Pitman Medical & Scientific Publishing, 1970), pp. 32-33, pls III, XIII, XIV, fig. 47.
Wilfred Blunt and Sandra Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal (London: Frances Lincoln, 1979), p. 41.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979), pl. 22.
Wilfrid Blunt and Sandra Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal (London: Lincoln, 1979), pp. 41-43, pls 40, 42-43.
Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), I: 1190-1250, no. 10, pls 26, 28 [with additional bibliography].
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medical Miniatures (London: British Library, 1984), pp. 31, 83-84, 100-02, figs 36, 45, pl. VIII.
John E. Murdoch, Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by I.B. Cohen (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1984), nos 167, 191, 264.
Two East Anglian Picture Books: A Facsimile of the Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary and Bodleian Ms. Ashmole 1504, ed. by Nicholas Barker (London: The Roxburghe Club, 1988), p. 31.
Europa und der Orient: 800-1900, ed. by Gereon Sievernich and Hendrik Budde (Berlin: Bertelsmann Lexikon, 1989), no. 6/49 [exhibition catalogue (identified as Sloane 1977)]
Wilifred Blunt and Sandra Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal, 2nd edn (London: Lincoln, 1994), pp. 41, 53, pls 40, 42-43.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), no. 38.
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd edn (London: British Library, 1998; first publ. as Medieval Medical Miniatures, 1984), pp. 18, 26, 65, 79-81, figs 57, 72-73.
Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 205, 207-08, 228 n. 111, 235 n. 246, pl. XX, fig. 57.
Sophie Page, Magic in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2004), pp. 24-26, pl. 24.
Jean A. Givens, Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 90, pl. 27.
Peter Murray Jones, ‘Image, Word, and Medicine in the Middle Ages’, in Visualising Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550, ed. by Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, and Alain Touwaide, AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, 5 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 1-24 (p. 5, fig. 1.2).
The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. by David Badke, [accessed 14 August 2009].
- Exhibitions:
- Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 30 July 2016 - 2 January 2017
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)