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Sloane MS 2250
- Record Id:
- 040-002114615
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002112337
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000603.0x0003a1
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Sloane MS 2250
- Title:
-
Physician's folding almanac
- Scope & Content:
-
Contents:
A portable copy of the Kalendarium of John Somer (ff. 3r-10r), with a zodiac man diagram (f. 12r) and tables of eclipses of the sun and moon (ff. 13v-14r, 15r-16r). The calendar includes tables for 1482 to 1501 (f. 3r).
One of 29 English folding almanacs, of which 10 are in the British Library: see Carey, Folded Almanac (2003).
Decoration:
1 large miniature in colours (f. 12r). Large initials originally in gold (some now mainly bole only) on blue and pink grounds. 5 full-page tables in colours and gold (ff. 13v-14r, 15r-16r). Small initials in blue with red penwork decoration or originally in gold (now mainly bole only) with brown penwork decoration. Paraphs in red or blue with red penwork decoration. Calendars and tables in red and brown.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Sloane Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002112337
040-002114615 - Is part of:
- Sloane MS 1-4100 : Sloane Manuscripts
Sloane MS 2250 : Physician's folding almanac - Hierarchy:
- 032-002112337[2238]/040-002114615
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Sloane MS 1-4100
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
8 parchment folios, each folded into six parts
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Sloane_MS_2250 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1415
- End Date:
- 1449
- Date Range:
- 1st half of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to use this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 345 x 145 mm (330 x 130 mm; 175 x 55 mm when folded) .
Foliation: ff. 1-16 (8 folded leaves)
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Folded leaves sewn together at the lower edges. The outer parchment cover has a triangular piece of parchment attached with holes in it.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England.
Provenance:
The shape of the outer parchment, including holes for a cord, suggests that this was a reference work designed to be suspended from a physician's girdle.
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 at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of Additional Manuscripts: Sloane 1994-2267 (London: British Museum unpublished manuscript of unedited descriptions, no date), no. 2250 [available in The British Library Manuscripts Reading Room].
Harry Bober, 'The Zodiacal Miniature of the Tres Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry: Its sources and meaning', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 11 (1948), 1-34 (p. 26, pl. 11).
Lynn Thorndike, ‘Eclipses in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, Isis, 48 (1957), 51-57 (pp. 52 n. 9, 53).
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. 88.
The Kalendarium of John Somer, ed. by Linne R. Mooney (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998), pp. xi [S2], 68-69.
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medical Miniatures (London: British Library, 1984), pp. 67-68, fig. 27.
Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts, 2nd edn (London: British Library, 1998; first publ. as Medieval Medical Miniatures, 1984), p. 53, fig. 45.
J. P. Gumbert, 'Über Faltbücher, vornehmlich Almanach', in Rationalisierung der Buchherstellung in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit, ed. by Peter Rück and Martin Boghardt (Marburg an der Lahn Institut für Historische Hilfswissenschaften, 1994), pp. 111-22 (p. 112, n. 13).
Linne R. Mooney, 'English Almanacks from Script to Print', in Texts and their Contexts: Papers from the Early Book Society, ed. by John Scattergood and Julia Boffey (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), pp. 11-25 (p. 17).
Sophie Page, Astrology in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2002), pp. 56-57, pl. 46.
Hilary M. Carey, 'What is the Folded Almanac? The Form and Function of a Key Manuscript Source for Astro-medical Practice in Later Medieval England', Social History of Medicine, 16 (2003), 481-509 (p. 506, fig. 2).
Treasures of the British Library, ed. by Nicolas Barker and others (London: British Library, 2005), p. 23.
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. 10).
Pamela Robinson, 'A "very curious Almanack": the gift of Sir Robert Moray FRS, 1668', Notes & Records of the Royal Society, 62 (2008), 301-14 (p. 308 and n. 26).
J. P. Gumbert, Bat Books: A Catalogue of Folded Manuscripts Containing Almanacs or Other Texts, Bibliologia, 41 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), no. 37, pp. 138-39. - Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)