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Cotton MS Nero A X/2
- Record Id:
- 040-003316720
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001101582
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100033558643.0x000001
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165158643.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Cotton MS Nero A X/2
- Title:
-
Four anonymous poems in Middle English: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Scope & Content:
-
Cotton MS Nero A X originally contained 4 items, consecutively numbered, which were bound together by Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631) and separated into 2 volumes in 1964. The texts are often referred to as articles 1-6, following the numbering in Thomas Smith, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptum Bibliothecae Cottonianae (Oxford: Ex Theatro Sheldoniano, 1696), pp. 49-50. The present volume, Cotton MS Nero A X/2, contains article 3, comprising four Middle English poems (ff. 41-130). Articles 1-2 and 4-6 are kept separately as Cotton MS Nero A X/1.
There are two foliation sequences in the manuscript: an early sequence in ink and a modern sequence in pencil. Here the modern sequence is used.
Contents:
ff. 41r-59v: Pearl (Boffey, Middle English Verse, 2744);
ff. 60r–86r: Cleanness (Boffey, Middle English Verse, 635);
ff. 86r–94r: Patience (Boffey, Middle English Verse, 2739);
ff. 94v–130r: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Boffey, Middle English Verse (2005), 3144). On f. 129r is an inserted couplet above the image (Boffey, Middle English Verse (2005), 2262.5)
The text was copied by one scribe in a dialect of S.E. Cheshire, or N.E. Staffordshire between 1375 and 1400: see Wright, English Vernacular Hands (1960), p. 15 and Doyle, Alliterative Poetry (1982). The Poet's dialect, as opposed to the scribe's, is thought to be further south in Staffordshire: see Duggan, 'Meter, Stanza, Vocabulary, Dialect', (1997), pp. 240-42, and Elliott, 'Landscape and Geography' (1997), pp. 105-17.
Decoration:
12 full-page coloured drawings (ff. 41r, 41v, 42r, 42v, 60r, 60v, 86r, 86v, 94v, 129r, 129v, 130r). Decorated initials throughout: 21 in Pearl, 13 in Cleanness, 5 in Patience and 9 in Gawain. Initials comprise 3-, 4- and 6-line blue initials with red flourishing, with 8- and 9-line red initials with blue flourishing at the start of Cleanness, Patience and Gawain. 14-line red and blue initial with red flourishing at the start of Pearl. Some initials decorated with ink-drawings of faces (ff. 44r, 52r, 54v, 103r). Maniculae in margins.
The miniatures were added c. 1400-1410: see Horrall, 'MS Cotton Nero A x' (1986).
The subjects of the miniatures are:
f. 41r: The narrator/dreamer asleep beside a stream. The maiden is standing between two structures, one apparently a church;
f. 41v: The dreamer standing in a stream;
f. 42r: The dreamer pointing to the Pearl Maiden across the stream;
f. 42v: The dreamer and Pearl Maiden in the heavenly Jerusalem (these all appear on a bifolium before the start of Pearl);
f. 60r: Noah and his family in the ark (appears between Pearl and Cleanness);
f. 60v: Daniel at Belshazzar's feast;
f. 86r: Jonah thrown into the whale's mouth by two fishermen (at the start of Patience);
f. 86v: Jonah preaching in Nineveh;
f. 94v: Gawain, King Arthur and Guinevere at table; Gawain and the Green Knight with a severed head (at the start of Gawain])
f. 129r: Bertilak's lady in Gawain's bedchamber;
f. 129v: Gawain and the Green Knight at the Green Chapel;
f. 130r: Gawain with Arthur and Guinevere.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Cotton Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001101582
040-003316720 - Is part of:
- Cotton MS : Cotton Manuscripts
Cotton MS Nero A X/2 : Four anonymous poems in Middle English: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Hierarchy:
- 032-001101582[1373]/040-003316720
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Cotton MS
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
Parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165158643.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1375
- End Date:
- 1424
- Date Range:
- 1375-1424
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
-
Letter of introduction required to use this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: approximately 180 × 155 mm.
Foliation: ff. 90 (bound in a separate volume). There are two foliation sequences in the manuscript, an early sequence in ink and a modern sequence in pencil. Here the modern sequence is used.
Layout: written in one column of 36 lines to a page.
Script: Gothic cursive (textura rotunda with anglicana features).
Collation: i2(ff. 41-42), ii-viii12(ff. 43-126), ix4(ff. 127-130).
Binding: Bound separately from the other volume of this manuscript. British Museum, 1964.
Note: The initial page displays a piece of vellum with the notation, 'The patch of vellum on the facing page was removed from f. 86, where it had been used to repair two natural holes, when the MS. was rebound in November 1964.'
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England (N.W. Midlands), written in the dialect of S.E. Cheshire or N. E. Staffordshire: see McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin, A Linguistic Atlas, III, Grid 397 364, 'Cheshire', Linguistic Profile no 26, pp. 37-38.
Provenance:
King Edward III of England (r. 1327-1377), perhaps connected with his court, inscribed 'Hony soit q[ui] mal pence[e]' and 'Hugo de', in a hand of the 15th century (f. 128v).
(?)Henry Savile of Banke, collector of manuscripts, (d. 1617), in his catalogue dated before 1607 (Harley MS 1879, f. 8v, no. 274): see Watson, The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke, p. 68.
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (b. 1571, d. 1631), 1st baronet, antiquary and politician: his binding instructions, also included in the first catalogue of his collection (Harley MS 6018, no. 279), in the Cottonian catalogues, Additional MS 36789 (f. 4) and Additional MS 36682 (f. 114r). See Tite, The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library, p. 131.
Cotton’s collection was augmented by his son, Sir Thomas Cotton (b. 1594, d. 1662), 2nd baronet, and grandson, Sir John Cotton.
Sir John Cotton (b. 1621, d. 1702), 3rd baronet: bequeathed the entire Cotton collection of books and manuscripts to trustees ‘for Publick Use and Advantage’, 12 and 13 William III, c. 7. Formed one of the foundation collections of the British Museum in 1753.
- Former External References:
- Cotton MS Nero A X, article 3
- Former Internal References:
- Cotton MS Nero A X, article 3
Cotton MS Nero A X, ff. 41-130 - Information About Copies:
-
Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain, facsimile, ed. by I. Gollancz, Early English Text Society, Original Series 162 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1923).
Full digital coverage of ff. 41-130 available at University of Calgary, The Cotton Nero A.x. Project at http://www.gawain.ucalgary.ca/. [This site primarily uses the older ink foliation sequence.]
Full digital coverage available: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
Alexander, Jonathan, and Paul Binski, eds., Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1987), no. 718.
Andrew, Malcolm, The Gawain-Poet: An Annotated Bibliography, 1839-1977 (New York: Garland, 1979).
Blanch, Robert J., The Gawain Poems: A Reference Guide, 1978-1993 (Albany NY: Whitston, 2000).
Boffey, Julia, and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: British Library, 2005), pp. 44, 151, 179, 208.
Benson, Larry D., ‘The Authorship of St Erkenwald’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 64 (1965), 393-405.
Brewer, Derek, and Jonathan Gibson, eds., A Companion to the Gawain-Poet (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1997).
Chaganti, Seeta, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), pp. 96-100, figs. 4.1 and 4.2.
Chapman, Coolidge Otis, An Index of Names in ‘Pearl’, ‘Purity’, ‘Patience’ and ‘Gawain’ (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1951).
Clopper, Lawrence M., ‘The God of the Gawain-Poet’, Modern Philology, 94, (1996), 1-18.
Cooper, R. A., and D. A. Pearsall, ‘The Gawain Poems: A Statistical Approach to the Question of Common Authorship’, Review of English Studies, 39 (1988), 365-85.
Doyle, A. I., ‘The Manuscripts’, in Middle English Alliterative Poetry and its Literary Background, ed. by David Lawton (Cambridge: Brewer, 1982), pp. 92-93.
Doyle, A. I., 'English Books In and Out of Court from Edward III to Henry VII', in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 163-82 (pp. 166-67).
Duggan, H. N., ‘Meter, Stanza, Vocabulary, Dialect’, in Brewer, Derek and Jonathan Gibson, eds, A Companion to the Gawain-Poet (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 221-42.
Edwards, A. S. G., ‘The Manuscript: British Library MS Cotton Nero A x’, in Brewer, Derek and Jonathan Gibson, eds, A Companion to the Gawain-Poet (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 197-220.
Elliott, Ralph, ‘Landscape and Geography’, in Brewer, Derek and Jonathan Gibson, eds, A Companion to the Gawain-Poet (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 105-18.
Fein, Susanna, ‘Twelve-line Stanza Forms in Middle English and the Date of Pearl’, Speculum, 72 (1997), 367–98.
Fletcher, Chris, Roger Evans and Sally Brown, 1000 Years of English Literature: A Treasury of Literary Manuscripts (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), pp. 26-27.
Fredell, Joel, 'The Pearl-Poet Manuscript in York', Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 36 (2014), 1-39.
Friedman, J. B., ‘Figural Typology in the Middle English Patience’, in The Alliterative Tradition in the Fourteenth Century, ed. by B. S. Levy and Paul Szarmach (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1981), pp. 99-129.
Greg, W. W., ‘Review of Gollancz’s Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain’, Modern Language Review, 19 (1924), 223-28.
Guddat-Figge, Gisela, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances, Münchener Universitäts-Schriften Philosophische Fakultät Texte und Untersuchungen zur Englischen Philologie, ed. by Helmut Gneuss and Wolfgang Weiss, 4 (Munich: Wilhem Fink, 1976), no. 40.
Hamilton, Marie P., The Pearl Poet, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, ed. by J. Burke Severs, 2 (New Haven CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1970).
Hill, L. L., ‘Madden’s Divisions of Sir Gawain and the “Large Initial Capitals” of Cotton Nero A.X.’, Speculum, 21 (1946), 67-71.
Hilmo, Maidi, 'Creating a Visual Narrative of the Spiritual Journey to the New Jerusalem in the Pearl Manuscript', in Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 138-59.
Hilmo, Maidi, 'The Power of Images in the Auchinleck, Vernon, Pearl, and Two Piers Plowman Manuscripts', in Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches, ed. by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo and Linda Olson (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 153-206 (pp. 179-89).
Horrall, Sarah M., ‘Notes on British Library, MS Cotton Nero A x,’ Manuscripta, 30 (1986), 191-98.
Kelliher, Hilton, and Sally Brown, English Literary Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1986), pl. 4.
Lee, Jennifer A., ‘The Illuminating Critic: The Illustrator of Cotton Nero A x’, Studies in Iconography, 3 (1977), 17-46.
Lowe, Jeremy, Desiring Truth: The Process of Judgment in Fourteenth-Century Art and Literature, Studies in Medieval History and Culture, 30 (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 12, 42, 131, 140-41, 181, 192, 213.
McIntosh, Angus, M. L. Samuels and Michael Benskin, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986), LP (Linguistic Profile) no. 26, online at http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme_frames.html.
Minnis, A. J., Charlotte C. Morse and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds., Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
Muscatine, Charles, ‘The Pearl Poet: Style as Defense’, in Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972), pp. 37-69.
Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain, reproduced in facsimile from the unique MS. Cotton Nero A.x. in the British Museum, with an introduction by I. Gollancz, Early English Text Society, Old Series, 162 (London, Early English Text Society, 1923).
The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1978, repr. 1987, 1996, 2002, 2007).
Porter, Pamela, Courtly Love in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2003), pp. 50-53.
Putter, Ad, An Introduction to the 'Gawain'-Poet (London: Longman, 1996).
Putter, Ad, and Myra Stokes, ‘Spelling Grammar and Metre in the Works of the Gawain-Poet’, Parergon, 18 (2000), 77-95.
Reichardt, Paul F., ‘Paginal Eyes: Faces Among the Ornamented Capitals of BL MS Cotton Nero A x, Art. 3’, Manuscripta, 36 (1992), 22-36.
Reichardt, Paul F., ‘“Counted ... bi a clene noumbre”: the Design of the Pearl Manuscript’, Manuscripta, 38 (1994), 116–37.
Reichardt, Paul F., ‘Sir Israel Gollancz and the Editorial History of the Pearl Manuscript’, Papers On Language and Literature, 31 (1995), 145-63.
Reichardt, Paul F.,‘A Seventeenth Century Acknowledgement of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in an Early Catalogue of the Cottonian Library’ Studies in Bibliography, 49 (1996), 129-33.
Reichardt, Paul F., 'Several Illuminations, Coarsely Executed’: The Illustrations of the Pearl Manuscript,’ Studies in Iconography, 18 (1997), 119–42.
Roberts, Jane, Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings up to 1500 (London: British Library, 2005), no. 37, p. 173.
Scott, Kathleen, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (Harvey Miller: London, 1996), II, no. 12, pls. 33-35.
Sir Gawayne; A Collection of Ancient Romance Poems, ed. by Frederic Madden (Bannatyne Club, 1839).
Smith, Thomas, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptum Bibliothecae Cottonianae (Oxford: Ex Theatro Sheldoniano, 1696), pp. 49-50.
Spearing, A.C., The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
Tite, Colin G. C., The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton's Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use (London: The British Library, 2003), p. 131.
University of Calgary, The Cotton Nero A.x. Project http://people.ucalgary.ca/~scriptor/cotton/index.html (accessed 29th July 2016) [for an edition and bibliography].
Vantuono, W., ‘Patience, Cleanness, Pearl and Gawain: The Case for Common Authorship’, Annuale Mediaevale, 12 (1971), 37-69.
Vantuono, W., ‘A Name in the Cotton MS. Nero A.x. Article 3’, Mediaeval Studies, 37 (1975), 537-42.
Vantuono, W., ‘John de Mascy of Sale and the Pearl Poems’, Manuscripta, 25 (1981), 77-88.
Ward, H. L. D., and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London, 1883–1910), I (1883), pp. 387–88.
Watson, A. G., The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1969), p. 68.
Whitaker, Muriel, ‘Pearl and some Illustrated Apocalypse Manuscripts’, Viator, 12 (1981), 116-34.
Wright, C. E., English Vernacular Hands from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1960), pl. 15.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)