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Royal MS 6 E VII

Record Id:

040-003345826

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-002105724

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100035495493.0x000001

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Royal MS 6 E VII

Title:

James le Palmer, Omne Bonum

Scope & Content:

Contents:

James le Palmer (b. before 1327, d. c. 1375), Omne Bonum, a general encyclopaedia arranged in alphabetical order. The work is now bound in four volumes, Royal MS 6 E VI/1, Royal MS 6 E VI/2, Royal MS 6 E VII/1 and Royal MS 6 E VII/2.

Royal MS 6 E VII contains the entries from 'Ebrietas' to 'Zacharias' , arranged in two volumes as follows:

Royal MS 6 E VII/1: Ebrietas-Humanus (ff.1-224);

Royal MS 6 E VII/2: Jacob-Zacharias (ff. 225-532). The text was not completed towards the end: there is only one article under each letter from 'N' to 'Z'.

This is the only known and probably an autograph copy of the text probably produced by James le Palmer between c. 1360 and 1375: his name 'Jacobus' is quoted in the preface, 'Ego Jacobus ... Cuius cognomen alios volo ex causa latere, presens opus cum magno labore ac iugi mentis desiderio compilavi' (Royal MS 6 E VI/1, f. 18v). His hand is identified with the scribe of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 165 containing a colophon, 'Iste liber est liber jacobi le palmere quem scripsit manu sua propria deo gratias' (f. 585r) (see Sandler Omne Bonum (1996), pp. 16-19). The author has been identified with James le Palmer, clerk of the Exchequer mentioned in numerous documents between 1357 and 1375, when he was granted a pension of £20 a year by Edward III (see Sandler, Omne Bonum (1996), pp. 20-21).

Decoration:

Numerous large and small historiated initials in colours and gold, with marginal extensions with vine leaves. Initials in blue with red pen-flourishing. Running titles and titles in the margins in red frames. Numerous human heads, hands, or busts in brown ink. Paraphs in red.

Catchwords, bifolium signatures; guide letters for initials; instructions for illuminators (Artist C, for the transcription see Sandler, 'Notes' (1989), pp. 561-64).

Illuminated by four artists (see Sandler, Omne Bonum (1996), pp. 76-82 and Appendix 3).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Royal Collection

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002105724
040-003345826

Is part of:

Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts

Royal MS 6 E VII : James le Palmer, Omne Bonum

Contains:

Royal MS 6 E VII/1 : James le Palmer, Omne Bonum (Ebrietas-Humanus)
Royal MS 6 E VII/2 : James le Palmer, Omne Bonum (Jacob-Zacharias)

Click here to View / search full list of parts of Royal MS 6 E VII

Hierarchy:

032-002105724[1928]/040-003345826

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

2 parchment volumes

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1359

End Date:

1376

Date Range:

c. 1360-c. 1375

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to use this manuscript.

Custodial History:

Origin: England, S. E. (London).

Provenance:

Thomas Wolsey (b. 1470/71, d. 1530), royal minister, Archbishop of York, and cardinal: 'TC' monogram, perhaps for Thomas Cardinalis (see Carley (2000), p. xxxiii), 16th century (Royal MS 6 E VI/1, f. 1r).

The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): Westminster inventory number 'no. 1326' (Royal MS 6 E VI/1, f. 1r), acquired by the Upper Library at Westminster after the inventory of 1542; in the catalogue of 1666, Royal Appendix 71, f. 13v; and in the 1698 catalogue of the library of St James’s Palace (see [Edward Bernard], Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae (Oxford: Sheldonian, '1697', but 1698?), no. 8275).

Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.

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:

Augustus Hughes-Hughes, Catalogue of Manuscript Music in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1965, a facsimile of the edition of 1906-09), III, p. 260.

H. P. Cholmeley, John of Gaddesden and the Rosa Medicinae (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), p. 125.

George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), I, pp. 157-59.

Francis Wormald, 'More Matthew Paris Drawings', Walpole Society, 31 (1942-43), 109-12 (p. 111).

C. H. Talbot, ‘A List of Cistercian Manuscripts in Great Britain’, Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion, 8 (1952), 402-18 (p. 411).

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. 53.

Michael Evans, 'An Illustrated Fragment of Peraldus's Summa of Vice: Harleian MS 3244' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 45 (1982), 32-55 (p. 25 n. 75)..

Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medical Miniatures (London: British Library, 1984), pp. 117-18, fig. 53.

Lucy Freeman Sandler, 'The Handclasp in the Arnolfini Wedding: A Manuscript Precedent', The Art Bulletin, 66 (1984), 488-91 (pp. 489-90).

Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘Face to Face with God: A Pictorial Image of the Beatific Vision’, in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1986), pp. 224-35 (pp. 228-34, figs 1-5).

Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 5 ( London: Harvey Miller, 1986), no. 124.

Lucy Freeman Sandler, 'Notes for the Illuminator: the Case of the Omne Bonum', The Art Bulletin, 71 (1989), 551-64 (p. 552).

Lynda Dennison, 'Oxford, Exeter College MS 47: The Importance of Stylistic and Codicological Analysis in its Dating and Localization', in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. by Linda l. Brownrigg, Proceedings of the Second Conference of The Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, July 1998 (Los Altos Hills, California: Anderson-Lovelace, 1990), pp. 41-59 (pp. 55, 56).

Lucy Freeman Sandler, 'Omne bonum: Compilatio and Ordinatio in an English Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Fourteenth Century', in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. by Linda l. Brownrigg, Proceedings of the Second Conference of The Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, July 1998 (Los Altos Hills, California: Anderson-Lovelace, 1990), pp. 183-200.

Alison Stones, review of Lucy Sandler Freeman, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 5, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, 66 (1991), 691-95 (p. 693).

Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 40, fig. 59.

Lucy Freeman Sandler, 'The Image of the Book-Owner in the Fourteenth Century: Three Cases of Self-definition', in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1991 Harlaxton Symposium (Harlaxton Medieval Studies III: Stamford, 1993), ed. by N. Rogers, pp. 58-80 (pp. 74-79).

Lucy Freeman Sandler, Omne Bonum: A Fourteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996).

The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000 ), H2.1326, p. xxxi, n. 33.

Justin Clegg, The Medieval Church in Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2003), p. 10, fig. 6.

Sophie Page, Magic in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2004), pp. 36-37, pl. 38.

Lucy Freeman Sandler, The Lichtenthal Psalter and the Manuscript Patronage of the Bohun Family (London: Harvey Miller, 2004), p. 157 n. 54.

Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘Word Imagery in English Gothic Psalters: The Case of the Vienna Bohun manuscript (ÖNB, cod. 1826), in The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of its Images, ed. by F. O. Büttner, (Belgium: Brepols, 2004), pp. 387-95 (p. 390 n. 14).

Greg Buzwell, Saints in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2005), p. 28.

Michelle Brown, The Holkham Bible: A Facsimile (London: British Library, 2007), p. 16.

Deirdre Jackson, Marvellous to Behold: Miracles in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2007), p. 67, pls 23, 57, 58.

Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), pls. 2-25.

Scot McKendrick, John Lowden and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 92 [exhibition catalogue].

John Sabapathy, Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170-1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 73n, 77.

Kathryn A. Smith, ‘Found in Translation: Images Visionary and Visceral in the Welles-Ros Bible’, Gesta 59: 2 (2020), 91-130 (p. 107).

Lucy Freeman Sandler, 'Religious Instruction and Devotional Study: The Pictorial and the Textual in Gothic Diagrams', in TheVisualisation of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Marcia Ann Kupfer, Jeffrey Howard Chajes, and Adam S. Cohen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 429-48 (pp. 436-38).

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Wolsey, Thomas, royal minister, Archbishop of York, and cardinal, 1470/71-1530,
see also http://isni.org/isni/000000012099862X

Related Archive Descriptions:

Royal MS 6 E VI