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Yates Thompson MS 26
- Record Id:
- 040-002354775
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002354332
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000772.0x0002bf
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100174221520.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Yates Thompson MS 26
- Title:
- Bede, Prose Life of St Cuthbert
- Scope & Content:
-
The manuscript contains:
ff. 2v-4r: Letter of Bede to Bishop Eadfrith forming a prologue to his prose Life of St Cuthbert, incipit: 'Domino sancto ac beatissimo patri Eadfrido episcopo'.
ff. 4r-4v: Letter of Bede to the priest John (the letter accompanying the metrical Life of St Cuthbert), rubric: 'Epistula Bede presbiteri venerabilis ad Johannem presbiterum'; incipit: 'Domino in domino dominorum dilectissimo Iohanni'.
ff. 4v-6v: List of contents.
ff. 7v-82v: Bede, prose Life of St Cuthbert, incipit: 'Principium nobis scribendi de vita beati Cuthberti'; imperfect; leaves are missing containing end of chapter 25, beginning of chapter 28, ends of chapters 31, 35 (including rubric to chapter 36), 36 (with rubric to chapter 37), beginning of chapter 41, whole of chapter 43, end of chapter 45.
ff. 83v-85v: Account of two miracles, at the tomb and through the relics respectively of St Cuthbert, extract from Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, book 4, chapters 29, 30 [31, 32]; incipit: 'Erat in eodem monasterio'.
ff. 87r-129v: Symeon of Durham, history of the translation of St Cuthbert, rubric: 'Quomodo in peregrine habitu a ministerio Elfredi…'; incipit: 'Deus omnipotens iuste et misericors'; printed in Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et Collectanea, vol. 1, ed. by H. Hinde, Surtees Society, 51 (1868), p. 158.
ff. 130r-145v: Extracts relating to St Cuthbert from Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio (also known as the Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesiae), from Books 3, ch. 3, 16; 4, ch. 9, Preface (with part of book 4, ch. 3 at the end), 4, ch. 1, 3, 5, 6, 8; 3, ch. 18, 21, 23, 24 (edition: Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie: Tract on the origins and progress of this the Church of Durham, ed. by David Rollason (2000)); rubric: 'Quomodo in loco ubi prius iacuerat miracula choruscare et infirmi sanitatem ceperunt recuperare'; incipit: 'Translato sancti Cuthberti corpore'.
ff. 146r-149r: 'Relatio de Sancto Cuthberto', incipit: 'Anno dominice incarnationis sexcentesimo lxxxo vo ordinatus est beatus pater Cuthbertus', printed in Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et Collectanea, vol. 1, ed. by H. Hinde, Surtees Society, 51 (1868), p. 223.
ff. 149r-150v: Account of the early provosts of Hexham, incipit: 'Edwardus qui regnavit ante Willelmum', printed from this manuscript in W.H.D. Longstaffe, 'The Churches of Durham and Hexham, from the Lawson MS', Archaeologia Aeliana, new ser. 2 (1858), pp. 1-10, and The Priory of Hexham, its Title-Deeds, Black Book, etc., vol. 3, ed. by James Raine, Sutrees Society, 46 (1864), appendix, p. vii.
Decoration:
46 full-page miniatures, in colours and gold (ff. 1v, 2r, 9r, 10v, 11r, 14r, 16r, 17v, 18r, 21r, 22v, 24r, 26r, 26v, 28v, 30r, 31r, 31v, 33v, 35v, 39r, 41r, 42v, 44r, 45v, 47r, 48v, 50v, 51r, 53v, 54r, 55v, 58v, 60r, 61r, 62v, 63v [half-page], 64r, 66r, 71v, 73r, 74v, 77r, 79r, 80r, 83r, 84v).
2 large decorated foliate initials, in colours and gold (ff. 2v, 7v).
1 smaller puzzle initial in red and blue with pen-flourishing in blue and red (f. 4r).
1 smaller initial in olive green with red penwork decoration (f. 87r).
Smaller initials in red with blue or brown pen-flourishing/penwork decoration or in blue with red pen-flourishing/penwork decoration.
Small initials in plain red or blue.
The subjects of the miniatures are:
f. 1v: A monk (Bede?) kissing the feet of St Cuthbert, (preface to Bede's prose Life of St Cuthbert).
f. 2r: A scribe (Bede?) writing at a desk (preface to Bede's prose Life of St Cuthbert).
f. 9r: Missing miniature, which was probably executed on thin parchment, pasted down and removed (illustrating the cure of Cuthbert's knee by an angel, Chapter 2): remaining frame and part of a horse outside of the miniature field.
f. 10v: St Cuthbert praying to God to change the winds beside the river Tyne (Chapter 3).
f. 11r: Two monks at the monastery of Tynemouth praying for the safety of those blown away in a gale (Chapter 3).
f. 14r: The young St Cuthbert praying and his horse discovering bread and cheese for him (Chapter 5).
f. 16r: The young St Cuthbert being received by Boisil at Melrose Abbey (Chapter 6).
f. 17v: The young St Cuthbert washing the feet of an angel, who is visiting him in the guise of a traveller (Chapter 7).
f. 18r: St Cuthbert discovering three loaves of bread in a previously empty storehouse (a miracle from God in return for his kindness to a visiting angel) (Chapter 7).
f. 21r: St Cuthbert speaking to Boisil (Chapter 8).
f. 22v: St Cuthbert preaching to villagers (Chapter 9).
f. 24r: St Cuthbert praying in the sea at Coldingham, while the spy watches him above; at the lower right, Cuthbert having his feet miraculously dried by otters (Chapter 10).
f. 26r: St Cuthbert in a boat at sea returning from the land of the Picts (Chapter 11).
f. 26v: St Cuthbert discovering a dolphin cut and prepared for cooking (Chapter 11).
f. 28v: St Cuthbert and his companion sharing a fish with the eagle that brought the fish (Chapter 12).
f. 30r: St Cuthbert driving away a devil (Chapter 13).
f. 31v: St Cuthbert extinguishing a fire set by a devil (Chapter 14).
f. 33v: St Cuthbert healing the wife of Hildmaer, a prefect of King Ecgfrid (Chapter 15).
f. 35v: St Cuthbert teaching the monks in the monastery of Lindisfarne (Chapter 16).
f. 39r: St Cuthbert building his hermitage on the island of Farne with the help of an angel (Chapter 17).
f. 41r: St Cuthbert digging a water pit with another monk for his hermitage on the island of Farne (Chapter 18).
f. 42v: St Cuthbert speaking to the birds and driving them away from the crops which he had sown (Chapter 19).
f. 44r: A crow bringing lard to St Cuthbert, in atonement for the crows carrying off straw from the house of St Cuthbert's brethren (Chapter 14).
f. 45v: St Cuthbert miraculously discovering a roof beam for his church in the waves of the ocean (Chapter 21).
f. 47r: St Cuthbert speaking to a crowd and giving instruction in the way of salvation to those who have come to him from across Britain (Chapter 22).
f. 48v: The abbess Aelfflaed and one of her nuns being healed by St Cuthbert's girdle (Chapter 23).
f. 50v: The abbess Aelfflaed at the feet of St Cuthbert (she is begging him for information about her brother, king Ecgfrith) (Chapter 24).
f. 51r: Ecgfrith, king of the English, along with his bishop Trumwine, visiting St Cuthbert at Lindisfarne (Chapter 24).
f. 53v: St Cuthbert accepting the bishopric from a synod (Chapter 24).
f. 54r: A man ministering to his ailing servant with holy water blessed by St Cuthbert (Chapter 24 and 25).
f. 55v: St Cuthbert and Ecgfrith's widow being shown the city walls and fountain at Carlisle (Chapter 27).
f. 58v: A priest ministering to the dying wife of a gesith with holy water blessed by St Cuthbert (Chapter 29).
f. 60r: St Cuthbert anointing an ill girl with holy oil and healing her (Chapter 30).
f. 61r: St Cuthbert healing Hildemer, the prefect, with bread that he had blessed (Chapter 31).
f. 62v: St Cuthbert healing a child ill with the plague (Chapter 33).
f. 63v: St Cuthbert's vision of the soul of a man who was killed by falling from a tree (Chapter 34).
f. 64r: St Cuthbert at a dining table, having a vision of a man whose soul was carried to heaven (Chapter 34).
f. 66r: St Cuthbert performing a miracle by tasting water and giving it the flavour of wine, while a guest of the abbess Verca (Chapter 35).
f. 71v: St Cuthbert helping a monk who suffers from diarrhoea to enter his boat (Chapter 38).
f. 73r: A priest performing the last sacraments for St Cuthbert and angels carrying St Cuthbert's soul to heaven (Chapter 39).
f. 74v: Monks at St Cuthbert's hermitage using torches to signal to the monks of Lindisfarne the death of St Cuthbert (Chapter 40).
f. 77r: The opening of St Cuthbert's tomb in 698, eleven years after his death, and the discovery of his intact body (Chapter 42).
f. 79r: A sick man being healed while praying at St Cuthbert's tomb (Chapter 44).
f. 80r: A man being healed by shoes belonging to St Cuthbert (Chapter 45).
f. 83r: St Cuthbert's arm emerging from his tomb to heal a paralytic (Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, 4, 31-32, in Bede's prose Life of St Cuthbert).
f. 84v: A monk healing the eye of a youth by touching it with hairs from Cuthbert's head (Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, 4, 32, in Bede's prose Life of St Cuthbert).
The miniatures illustrating chapters 4, 26, 28, 32, 36, 37 (or 38?), 41, 43, and 46 are missing. Six of the miniatures which do not form pairs have a 16th-century note ‘pictura diminuta’ (ff. 21r, 30r, 31v, 33 v, 61r, 79r).
A duplicate copy of the volume, but with only preliminary drawings for its miniatures, was produced at Durham around the same time and is now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.1.64.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Yates Thompson Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002354332
040-002354775 - Is part of:
- Yates Thompson MS 1-59 : Yates Thompson Manuscripts
Yates Thompson MS 26 : Bede, Prose Life of St Cuthbert - Hierarchy:
- 032-002354332[0027]/040-002354775
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Yates Thompson MS 1-59
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100174221520.0x000001
- 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:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 135 x 95 mm (text space: 110 x 65 mm).
Foliation: ff. vi + 150 (+ 9 unfoliated flyleaves: 2 modern paper and 2 parchment leaves at the beginning and 3 modern paper and 2 parchment leaves at the end; f. i is a paper label pasted on f. ii verso; f. ii is a former parchment pastedown at the beginning; ff. iii-iv are modern paper leaves inserted on mounts; f. v is a parchment leaf at the beginning; f. vi is a book plate pasted on f. v recto); f. 20 should follow f. 21.
Collation: i12-1 (ff. 1-11; 1 leaf cancelled), ii12-1 (ff. 12-22), iii-iv12 (ff. 23-46), v12-1 (ff. 47-57; 1 leaf missing after f. 54 ), vi12-3 (ff. 58-66; leaves missing after ff. 57, 61 and 66), vii12-2 (ff. 67-76; leaves missing after ff. 67 and 75), viii12-2 (ff. 77-86; leaves missing after ff. 78 and 80), ix6 (ff. 87-92), x12 (ff. 93-104), xi10 (ff. 105-114), xii12 (ff. 115-126), xiii6 (ff. 127-132), xiv12 (ff. 133-144), xv6 (ff. 145-150).
Script: Protogothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Blind-tooled black leather.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Durham, England.
Provenance:
The priory of Durham Cathedral: inscribed in red ink 'liber sancti cuthberti' (f. 2v); included in Durham library catalogues of 1391 and 1416 as 'O. Vita Sancti Cuthberti et miracula eiusdem curiose illuminata ii fo. 'dubiorum'; probably borrowed and returned to Durham by Richard le Scrope, archbishop of York (d. 1405), whose name, 'Ricardus Archiepiscopus Eboracensis', is written beside the volume's entry in the Durham catalogue of 1416 (see Library of Durham Cathedral, at various periods from the Conquest to the Dissolution, ed. by B. Botfield, Surtees Society, 7 (Durham: Surtees Society, 1838).
Inscribed in faint brown ink in a 17th-century hand 'Mary Coll'(?) (f. 150v).
Inscribed in the lower borders, upside down, in brown ink 'Mary' (f. 95v), and 'John' (f. 116v), probably the Catholic John Forcer of Harbour House, Durham (d. 1725), who according to the Durham Cathedral librarian, Thomas Rudd, owned the manuscript between 1717 and 1726.
Sir Henry Lawson (b. 1750, d. 1834) 6th Baronet of Brough Hall, owned by him in 1828: mentioned in Raine, St Cuthbert: With an Account of the State in which his Remains were found upon the Opening of his Tomb in Durham Cathedral, in the Year 1827 (1828), p. iv; a handwritten transcription of this passage is inserted on ff. iii recto-iv recto.
Sir William Lawson (b. 1796, d. 1865), 1st Baronet of Brough Hall, lent by him to the Special Exhibition of Works of Art at the South Kensington Museum, 1862 (see Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and More Recent Periods: On Loan at the South Kensington Museum, ed. by J.C. Robinson (1862), no. 6804).
Sir John Lawson (b. 1829, d. 1910), 2nd Baronet of Brough Hall: lent by him to the National Exhibition of Works of Art at Leeds, 1868 (see National Exhibition of Works of Art at Leeds (1868)) the printed label of the 'National Exhibition of Works of Art. Leeds, 1868. Museum of Art’, inscribed: 'Sir J. Lawson Br.' ‘Proprietor' (f. i, pasted on f. ii verso); his sale, Sotheby's, 24 July 1906, lot 515; bought by Yates Thompson.
Henry Yates Thompson (b. 1838, d. 1928), collector of illuminated manuscripts and newspaper proprietor: with his book-plate inscribed '[MS] LXXXV / £bsne.e.e [i.e. £1650.0.0] / [bought through Bernard] Quaritch / Sotheby's / July / 1906' (f. vi, pasted on f. v recto); in his sale, 23 March 1920, lot 32; bought by the British Museum 'with the aid of the National Art Collections Fund and Individual Subscribers' (gold-tooled leather label inside upper cover), it became Additional 39943 and was re-numbered after the creation of the 'Yates Thompson' shelfmark, following Mrs Yates Thompson's bequest of other manuscripts in 1941.
- Former Internal References:
- Add MS 39943
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript, see Digitised Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
James Raine, St Cuthbert: With an Account of the State in which his Remains were found upon the Opening of his Tomb in Durham Cathedral, in the Year 1827 (Durham: Humble, 1828), p. iv.
National Exhibition of Works of Art at Leeds: Official Catalogue (Leeds: Edward Baines and Sons, 1868), no. 521.
W. Forbes-Leith, The Life of St Cuthbert (Edinburgh: printed for private circulation, 1888) [facsimile].
A Descriptive Catalogue of Twenty Illuminated Manuscripts, Nos. LXXV to XCIV (Replacing Twenty Discarded from the Original Hundred) in the Collection of Henry Yates Thompson (Cambridge: University Press, 1907), no. LXXXIV, pp. 79-90.
Illustrations from One Hundred Manuscripts in the Library of Henry Yates Thompson, 7 vols (London: Chiswick Press, 1907-1918), IV: Consisting of Eighty-Two Plates Illustrating Sixteen MSS. of English Origin from the XIIth to the XVth Centuries (1914), pp. 3-7, pls IV-XV.
Bertram Colgrave, 'The History of British Museum Additional MS. 39943', English Historical Review, 54 (1939), 673-77.
Bertram Colgrave, Two 'Lives' of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede's Prose Life (Cambridge: University Press, 1940), no. 22, pp. 31-32 [includes edition and translation].
F. Wormald, 'The Yates Thompson Manuscripts', The British Museum Quarterly, 16 (1952), 4-6 (p. 5).
André Grabar and Carl Nordenfalk, Romanesque Painting from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century (Lausanne: Skira, 1958), p. 148.
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. 73.
[Derek Howard Turner], Illuminated Manuscripts Exhibited in the Grenville Library (London, British Museum, 1967), no. 10, p. 25.
Josiah Q. Bennett, 'Portman Square to New Bond Street, or, How to Make Money though Rich', The Book Collector (1967), 323-39 (p. 332).
J.J.G. Alexander, Norman Illumination at Mont St Michel, 966-1100 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 141 n. 2.
Larry M. Ayers, 'A Miniature from Jumièges and Trends in Manuscript Illumination around 1200', in Intuition und Kunstwissenshaft: Festschrift für Hanns Swarzenski, ed. by Peter Bloch and others (Berlin: Mann, 1973), pp. 115-40 (p. 127, fig. 17).
C.M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066-1190, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 3 (London: Harvey Miller, 1975), p. 67.
Malcolm Baker, 'Medieval Illustrations of Bede's Life of St Cuthbert', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978), 16-49 [cited as YT].
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), I, p. 168 [rejected].
Richard Marks and Nigel Morgan, The Golden Age of English Manuscript Painting, 1200-1500 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1981), pp. 9, 40, 43, pls. 1-2.
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. 12 (a), pp. 57-59, pls 38-43.
English Romanesque Art 1066-1200: Hayward Gallery, London 5 April-8 July 1984 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984), no. 81, p. 131.
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N.R. Ker, Supplement to the Second Edition, ed. by Andrew G. Watson, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 15 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1987), p. 126.
Francis Wormald, Collected Writings, ed. by J.J.G. Alexander, T.J. Brown, and Joan Gibbs, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1984-1988), II: Studies in English and Continental Art of the Later Middle Ages, p. 55.
Walter Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts: The Twelfth Century, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), II, p. 167.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in The British Library (London: British Library, 1997), no. 51, p. 70.
Janet Backhouse, Pictures from the Past: Using and Abusing Medieval Manuscript Imagery, Medieval Research Centre: Text and Studies, 1 (Leicester: University of Leicester, 1997), p. 13, pls 7-8.
Dominic Marner, St Cuthbert: His Life and Cult in Medieval Durham (London: British Library, 2000) [partial facsimile of this manuscript].
Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London: British Library, 2003), p. 209, figs 78, 173.
Michelle P. Brown, Painted Labyrinth: The World of the Lindisfarne Gospels (London: British Library, 2003), pl. on p. 14.
Greg Buzwell, Saints in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2005), pp. 40-42.
Deirdre Jackson, Marvellous to Behold: Miracles in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2007), pl. 36.
Sacred: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their Sacred Texts (London: British Library, 2007), p. 187 [exhibition catalogue].
Richard Gameson, 'Bede in Durham Cathedral Library: Notes on Material Exhibited on 7 August 2008' ([n.p.]: [n. pub], [n.d.]), p. 7.
Joe Flatman, Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2009), pls 15, 38.
Richard Gameson, Manuscript Treasures of Durham Cathedral (London: Third Millennium, 2010), p. 90.
Watercolour, ed. by Alison Smith (London: Tate Publishing, 2011), no. 1 [exhibition catalogue].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)