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Harley MS 1605/1
- Record Id:
- 040-003666191
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-003666191
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100103236732.0x000001
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165165366.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 1605/1
- Title:
-
Fragments of an anonymous Anglo-Norman metrical translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript is the first of three volumes that comprise Harley MS 1605 (the others being Harley MS 1605/2 and Harley MS 1605/3). It contains fragments of an anonymous Anglo-Norman verse translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae. The text is known as the 'Harley Brut' but as it has no relation to Wace's Roman de Brut, it has also been referred to as Chanson de Brut (see Ward and Herbert, Catalogue, I (1883), pp. 272-74) or Geste des Bretuns (see Barbieri, Geste des Bretuns (2015).
Harley MS 1605/1 was joined with Harley MS 1605/2 and Harley MS 1605/3 in the Harleian Library, but perhaps only as a loose gathering. Humfrey Wanley (b. 1672, d. 1726), Library-Keeper of the Harleian Library, described the manuscript as a ‘parchment-Book in quarto, consisting of divers Tracts to be bound up together’ (see Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts (1808), II, p. 149). Harley MS 1605 appears to have been separated and bound into three separate volumes at the British Museum.
Contents:
ff. 1r-42v: Five fragments of an anonymous Anglo-Norman metrical Brut (3359 mono-rhymed alexandrine laisses), covering the death of the British King Lucius until Arthur’s fight with the giant at Mont-Saint-Michel [corresponding to Chapters 5-10 of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae]; and featuring a section of Anglo-Norman prophecies of Merlin (ff. 17r-23v) that survive in two other manuscripts (Add MS 45103; Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 104).
The manuscript contains a few later additions:
f. [ii]recto: A table collating the contents of this Anglo-Norman Brut with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae.
f. [ii]recto: A note by Sir Frederick Madden (b. 1801, d. 1873), Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, stating that the incorrect order of the folios was rectified in or after 1841.
Decoration:
Large (2-line) initials in blue or red. Added drawings of shields in brown ink on f. 9v.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
Harley Science Project - Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-003666191", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 1605/1: Fragments of an anonymous Anglo-Norman metrical translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-003666191 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 1605/1 : Fragments of an anonymous Anglo-Norman metrical translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[7820]/040-003666191
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165165366.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Anglo-Norman
English - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1245
- End Date:
- 1255
- Date Range:
- c 1250
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 213 x 150 mm (written space 160 x 75 mm).
Foliation: ff. 42 (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the beginning); one unfoliated paper (f. [i]) pastedown (bibliographical notes) mounted onto a paper guard between the inside of the upper cover and the paper flyleaf at the beginning (f. [ii]); old foliation in ink '1-121' (continous through the 3 volumes), substituted in the first volume by modern foliation in pencil '1-42' as leaves have been misplaced by the binder.
Collation: gatherings mounted incorrectly as i-iv8, v8-6 (second-seventh missing; originally the first quire), vi8, where v should be first and iv should follow vi. All leaves mounted on guards.
Script: Gothic.
Binding: British Museum in-house; brown leather binding with blind-stamped borders and the Harleian armorial bookplate gold-stamped at centres of the outsides of the upper and lower covers.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Henry Worsley (b. 1675, d. 1747), scholar and manuscript collector, envoy at the court of Portugal (1714-21) and governor of Barbados (1721-31); donated by him to Robert Harley together with other manuscripts from Worsley's collection (now Harley MSS 1585-1747, 1811, 1812) before December 1712 (see Diary, ed. by Wright and Wright (1966), I, pp. xix-xx; Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 361).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts. Harley shelfmarks '91.A.21 / 1605' and '7/VI B' in dark brown ink on f. 33r.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), Duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.
- Publications:
-
Jean Blacker, ‘Where Wace Feared to Tread: Latin Commentaries on Merlin's Prophecies in the Reign of Henry II’, Arthuriana, 6:1 (1996), 36-52.
Jean Blacker, 'The Anglo-Norman Verse Prophecies of Merlin', Arthuriana, 15:1 (2005), 1-125 (pp. 3, 5, 98).
Brian Blakey, 'The Harley Brut: An Early French Translation of Geoffrey's Historia regum Britannie', Romania, 82 (1961), 44-70.
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), p. 149.
Peter Damian-Grint, 'Vernacular History in the Making: Anglo-Norman Verse Historiography in the Twelfth Century' (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Birkbeck, University of London, 1994), pp. 368-473, 369-71 (Appendix II) [edition from this manuscript].
Peter Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), pp. 63-64.
R. J. Dean and M. B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature. A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999), pp. 15, 18-19, nos. 15, 20.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726 , ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I: 1715-1723, pp. xix-xx.
Geste des Bretuns en alexandrins, ou, Harley Brut, ed. by Beatrice Barbieri, Textes littéraires du Moyen Âge, 37 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015) [edition from this manuscript].
Rodney M. Thomson, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library (Lincoln: Cathedral Library, 1989), p. 78.
H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: Pitman, 1883–1910), I: (1883), pp. 272-74.
Otto Wendeburg, Über die Bearbeitung von Gottfried von Monmouth Historia Regum Brittaniae in der Hs. Brit. Harl. 1605 (Braunschweig: Limbach, 1881).
Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 361, 399.
Jane Zatta, ‘Translating the Historia: The Ideological Transformation Historia regum Britannie in Twelfth-Century Vernacular Chronicles’, Arthuriana, 8: 4 [Theoretical Approaches to Geoffrey of Monmouth] (1998), 148-61.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)