British Library Journal (volume 16, number 1, spring 1990)

Collection Details

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Missing folios in Cotton MS. Nero A. I
(1990-05)
Cross, J. E.
THE manuscript, Cotton Nero A. I, has been reproduced in facsimile edition entitled: A Wulfstan Manuscript containing Institutes, Laws and Homilies: British Museum Cotton Nero A. I, recognizing its importance to Anglo-Saxonists, and, by caption, indicating its associations, and designating some of the literary production in Latin of Wulfstan and his aides. Wulfstan was an influential and responsible prelate. Bishop of London by 996, advanced to the see of Worcester and the Archbishopric of York in 1002, adviser to successive Kings of England, Ethelred and Cnut, and probably best known to students as author of the 'Sermo Lupi ad Anglos', an emotive castigation of the supine English in face of the invading Scandinavians.
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A binding by the Scales Binder, circa 1456-65
(1990-05)
Foot, Mirjam M.
THE main centres of English bookbinding during the second half of the fifteenth century were London, Oxford and Cambridge. Although a fair number of plain leather bindings of this period have survived, fewer than a dozen binderies producing tooled leather bindings are known to have started work before 1475. Possibly the earliest of these is that of the Scales Binder. He worked in London from the 1450s until after 1481 and his work, noted by M. R. James, was first systematically described by G. D. Hobson. Hobson identified twelve bindings from this binder, whom he named after one of his most characteristic tools, a pair of scales. J. B. Oldham and Graham Pollard also discussed this binder's work, but the most detailed account was published by Nicolas Barker who identified seven more examples and observed that the tools used to decorate the bindings fall into two groups. The first consists of twelve bindings, all covering manuscripts, noneof which is demonstrably later than 1465. The second group of seven bindings covers twoundated manuscripts and five printed books dated between 1466 and 1481.
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Count Lodovico Nogarola and the divorce of Catherine of Aragon
(1990-05)
Rhodes, Dennis E.
BORN of an ancient noble family of Verona, Count Lodovico Nogarola died in 1554: the year of his birth seems to be unrecorded. Of his many writings a large number remained unpublished. The short book with which the present article deals was evidently his first venture into print.
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Books seen by Samuel Ward 'In Bibliotheca regia' circa 1614
(1990-05)
Carley, James P.
As early as the 1530s the antiquary John Leland (1503?-1552) envisaged the establishment of some sort of royal library, designed as a repository for the manuscript collections being removed from their previous monastic homes. From the period in which Leland was gathering, there is one particularly valuable piece of evidence: a list of the 910 books found in the Upper Library at Westminster Palace in 1542. The list was arranged alphabetically and each book given an inventory number; this was then inscribed in the upper right margin of the first or second folio. At much the same time a second collection must have been inventoried, since there are at least 190 surviving manuscripts and approximately seventy-five printed books bearing inventory numbers from 911 to 1450. These books were also arranged in alphabetical order.
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The 'Sloane Group': related scientific and medical manuscripts from the fifteenth century in the Sloane Collection
(1990-05)
Voigts, Linda Ehrsam
IN his entry on Sir Hans Sloane in the Dictionary of National Biography, Norman Moore observed that the Sloane Manuscripts 'must always be one of the main sources of medical history in England from the time of Charles II to that of George II'. While the validity of that observation is not in dispute, it is equally important to acknowledge that the Sloane Collection in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Library is likewise the richest source of scientific and medical writings from medieval England. The Sloane Collection (Sloane MSS. 1-4100) and Sloane manuscripts with Additional MS. numbers (Add. MSS. 5018-5027, 5214-5308) comprise some 4205 catalogue entries (4100 and 105 respectively). Admittedly, this numbering includes Oriental manuscripts, annotated printed books and maps, no longer in the Department, while in some instances two numbers have been assigned to a single manuscript, so the collection in fact probably contains fewer than 4000 codices. Nevertheless, the Sloane Collection is a remarkable assembly of manuscripts. As Moore's observation implies, the majority of manuscripts in the Collection are medical codices from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but earlier periods are by no means neglected. By my reckoning I have seen in the Sloane Collection more than 500 manuscripts that either can be dated before 1500, most of them from fifteenth-century England, or, if post-medieval, that contain sixteenth- or seventeenth-century transcriptions of medieval texts. As one would expect, given Sloane's interests, most of these medieval texts are scientific or medical.
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Egerton MSS. 302 and 303: a Spanish chronicle cycle and its history
(1990-05)
Hook, David
IMPORTANT works of late medieval Spanish historiography are contained in the sixteenth-century manuscripts from the British Library which are the subject of this study. The reign of Enrique IV, from 1454 to 1474, is the subject of the Memorial de diversas hazaà±as by Mosen Diego de Valera, which occupies Egerton 302; that of his successors Isabel and Fernando, the Catholic Monarchs, is covered in Valera's Crà³nica de los Reyes Catà³licos, which is the first text in Egerton 303, and in the Memorias de los Reyes Catà³licos by the bachiller Andres Bernaldez, parish priest (cura) of Los Palacios in Andalusia, which follows on from the text of the Crà³nica, occupying the rest of the manuscript. Although Valera's career spanned the three reigns of Juan II, Enrique IV and the Reyes Catà³licos, the historiography of this prominent courtier and royal servant contained in Egerton 302 and 303 is all Isabelline in date: the Memorial was written about 1486-7, and the Crà³nica covers the events from 1474 to 1488, the presumed year of the author's death. The works contained in Egerton 302 and 303 are accessible in modern editions and the existence of these two manuscripts was known to the editors concerned. It does not appear to have been noticed that these two manuscripts formerly constituted a single entity containing three separate texts; the codicological evidence on this point is, however, conclusive. It also shows clearly that this collection was not the product of a single copying operation, but was the final result of several phases of development. Additional interest attaches to the collection represented by Egerton 302 and 303 because of its association with the celebrated Aragonese historian Jeronimo de Zurita (1512-80), whose autograph annotations appear in the margins of all three texts.
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Carolingian uncial: a context for the Lothar Psalter
(1990-05)
McKitterick, Rosamond
IN his famous identification and dating of the Morgan Golden Gospels published in the Festschrift for Belle da Costa Greene, E. A. Lowe was quite explicit in his categorizing of Carolingian uncial as the 'invention of a display artist'. He went on to define it as an artificial script beginning to be found in manuscripts of the ninth century and even of the late eighth century. These uncials were reserved for special display purposes, for headings, titles, colophons, opening lines and, exceptionally, as in the case of the Morgan Gospels Lowe was discussing, for an entire codex. Lowe acknowledged that uncial had been used in these ways before the end of the eighth century, but then it was 'natural 'not 'artificial' uncial.
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Colour notes in English Romanesque manuscripts
(1990-05)
Petzold, Andreas
COLOUR notes, indicating the colour to be used, have been recorded by Patricia Stirnemann in a group of late twelfth and early thirteenth-century French manuscripts. L. Gilissen has noted two other methods for indicating colour used in a group of thirteenth-century Cistercian manuscripts. One of these consists of writing the guide letter (that is the instruction left by the scribe to indicate which illuminated letter should be inserted in the empty space) in the same colour as that required for the initial and the other of placing a coloured mark adjacent to the guide-letter, again in the same color as that required for the initial. The purpose of this article is to describe colour notes similar to those observed by Stirnemann, but found in manuscripts produced in England in the late eleventh century and throughout the twelfth, and to consider their significance primarily in relation to Stirnemann's findings.
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An old Spanish translation from the 'Flores Sancti Bernardi' in British Library ADD. MS. 14040, ff. 111V-112V
(1990-05)
Taylor, Barry
ALTHOUGH written in Castilian throughout, MS. Add. 14040 has a number of connections with the Catalan-speaking Kingdom of Aragon. The first text (ff. 1-85V) is a translation of Ramon Lull's 'Libre del gentil e los tres savis' made in Valencia by 'Goncalo Sanches de Useda'; a colophon gives the date of the original copy ('acabolo de escrevir') as Monday 29 March era 1416 (= A.D. 1378). A new hand is responsible both for the second item (ff. 86r-IIIr), a collection of moral couplets with gloss, finished at Barcelona in A.D. 1399, and for the third, the present text. That a new quire coincides with the inception of the new hand is shown by the verso foliation: ff. 86v (-), 87V (ii),88v (iii), 89V (-), 90V (-), 91V (vi), 92V (vii), 93V (-), 94V (2?), 95V (3?), 96V (4), 97V(5), 98V (-), 99V (7?). The volume ends with an exemplum in a third hand (ff. 113r-114r), apparently added as a filler, for which Hernando Colon's mark of ownership in the bottom margin of f. 114V provides a terminus. None of these texts appears to have been printed.
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British Library Journal (volume 16, number 1, spring 1990)

British Library Journal (volume 16, number 1, spring 1990)

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