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Sloane MS 2499
- Record Id:
- 040-002114866
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002112337
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000653.0x0000b4
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165172605.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Sloane MS 2499
- Title:
- Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (Long Text)
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains the Long Text of the Revelations of Divine Love written by Julian of Norwich (b. 1342, d. after 1416).
There are two distinct versions of Julian's account of and reflections on a sequence of visions of the Crucified Christ that she experienced as she was lying on her sickbed with a nearly fatal illness in 1373:
(a) the Short Text: Julian may not have written down the first account of these events until the mid 1380s. This version, known as A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman or the Short Text, is extant in the mid-15th-century Amherst Manuscript (Add MS 37790).
(b) the Long Text: in or after 1393, encouraged by supplementary revelations, Julian, now living as an anchoress in a cell at the parish church of St Julian at Conisford in Norwich, began rewriting her Vision into an expanded version that she completed at some point before her death after 1416. This version, known as A Revelation of Love or the Long Text (since it is four times longer than the Short Text), is extant in a single medieval manuscript (Westminster, Westminster Cathedral Treasury MS 4), in heavily abridged form as a series of excerpts.
The earliest complete copies of A Revelation of Love are three early modern manuscripts made by English recusant nuns in Northern France. They include the present manuscript (Sloane MS 2499), dating to the 17th century. The other two are Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Fonds Anglais MS 40, dating to the 17th century, and Sloane MS 3705, dating to the first half of the 18th century, which is thought to be a copy of Sloane MS 2499.
This manuscript may be in the hand of Clementina Carey (d. 1671), a Benedictine nun of Our Lady of Consolation in Cambrai, who founded the daughter house Our Lady of Good Hope in Paris.
Contents:
ff. 1r-57v: Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love [Long Text], with the heading: 'Revelations to one who could not read a letter Anno Domini 1373'.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Medieval and Renaissance Women
Sloane Collection - Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002112337
040-002114866 - Is part of:
- Sloane MS 1-4100 : Sloane Manuscripts
Sloane MS 2499 : Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (Long Text) - Hierarchy:
- 032-002112337[2489]/040-002114866
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Sloane MS 1-4100
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100165172605.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1645
- End Date:
- 1655
- Date Range:
- c 1650
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper.
Dimensions: 370 x 235 mm, mounted on paper guards to fit a volume with a width of 260 mm (text space: 330/340 x 165/170 mm).
Foliation: ff. 57 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 5 at the end); original pagination '1'-'110' in the upper right corners throughout has been crossed out and replaced with modern foliation in pencil; 1 unfoliated paper pastedown on f. [iii]verso (bibliographical notes) and 1 on f. 58v (note of examination).
Collation: Each leaf has been mounted separately onto a paper guard.
Script: 17th-century script.
Binding: British Museum in-house; blue half leather binding with the arms of Hans Sloane gold stamped on the outside upper covers; rebound in 1972.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
Cambrai or Paris.
Provenance:
? An unidentified owner: their (?) pressmark '6 5' in the upper margin of f. 1r.
Guide, family of: owned Sloane MSS 2484-2678, according to the Index to the Sloane manuscripts (1904), p. 231.
Sir Hans Sloane (b. 1660, d. 1753), baronet, physician and collector: His shelf-marks 'MS 2338' [crossed out], 'MS A. 228' [crossed out], '301' [crossed out], and '2499' in the right upper margin of f. 1r; his arm gold stamped on the outside covers of the 1972 British Museum binding, replacing and copying an original Sloane binding; purchased as part of the Sloane collection from Sloane's executors and incorporated into the newly founded British Museum in 1753.
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of Additional Manuscripts: Sloane 2497-2719 (London: British Museum unpublished manuscript of unedited descriptions, no date), no. 2499 [available in The British Library Manuscripts Reading Room].
Samuel Ayscough, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the British Museum, 2 vols (London: John Rivington, 1782), II, p. 880.
Edward J. L. Scott, Index to the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1904).
Frances Reynolds, 'An Edition of MS. Sloane 2499 of Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love' (Unpublished MA thesis, University of Leeds, 1947).
A Revelation of Love, ed. by Marian Glasscoe (Exeter: University of Exeter: 1976) [edited from this manuscript].
A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, 2 vols, Studies and Texts, 35 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978), I, p. 8.
Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translation, ed. by Sr Anna Maria Reynolds CP and Julia Bolton Holloway, Biblioteche e Archivi, 8 (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001).
The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, ed. by Georgia Ronan Crampton, TEAMS Middle English Text Series (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan, 1994) [edited from this manuscript].
Frances Beer, Revelations of Divine Love, Translated from British Library Additional MS 37790: The Motherhood of God: An Excerpt, Translated from British Library MS Sloane 2477 [sic: '2499'] (Cambridge: Brewer, 1998).
Felicity Riddy, 'Julian of Norwich and Self-Textualization', in Editing Women, ed. by Ann M. Hutchison (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 101-124.
Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, Translated from the Britih Library Sloane 2499 Manuscript, trans. by Julia Bolton Holloway (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2003).
Santha Bhattacharji, 'Julian of Norwich', in the Oxford Dictionary of Online Biography (2004 [Print]; 2014 [Online]) [accessed 9 June 2022].
The Writings of Julian of Norwich, A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) [edited from this manuscript].
Elisabeth Dutton, 'The Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Tradition and the Influence of Augustine Baker', in A Companion to Julian of Norwich, ed. by Liz Herbert McAvoy (Cambridge: Brewer, 2008), pp. 116-126.
Teresa Morris, with a preface by Julia Bolton Holloway, Julian of Norwich: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Handbook (New York: Mellen, 2010), p. 12.
Julia Bolton Holloway, Julian among the Books: Julian of Norwich's Theological Library (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), pp. 37-42.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)