05 May 2020
An atlas fit for a Tudor queen
The Tudor period saw Britain transform into a major maritime power, boasting a formidable navy and sending ships on voyages of exploration around the world. With this transformation came a surge of interest in maps and map-making at the Tudor Court.
A few weeks ago, we announced that we had digitised the Burghley Atlas (Royal MS 18 D III), an important Early Modern collection of maps made for Elizabeth I’s principal minister Sir William Cecil. Today, we are highlighting another newly digitised item, widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of 16th-century cartography: The Queen Mary Atlas (Add MS 5415 A).
The Queen Mary Atlas was made by a Portuguese map-maker called Diogo Homem (b. 1521, d. 1576). After being exiled from Portugal in 1544 following a murder accusation, Diogo stayed in England and then in Venice. He made the Queen Mary Atlas between 1555 and 1558, most likely while he was still living in England.
The Atlas takes its name from Queen Mary I (r. 1553–1558), who is thought to have commissioned it as a gift for her husband Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–1598). However, it was not completed until after Mary’s death and was instead given to her sister Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603). One of the maps in the manuscript shows the arms of Spain, joined with England, resting over the British Isles. The arms of Spain have been visibly defaced. According to one tradition, the erasure of the Spanish arms may have been done by Elizabeth herself, whose navy famously defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588.
The Atlas consists of a total of nine maps. The first represents the extent of the whole world that was known in the mid-16th century. A Latin inscription within its decorative border reads: 'Form of the whole world and survey of the navigation of the lands of the Earth' (Universalis mundi figura atque navigationum orbis terrarium scitus). You can see that the Australian continent is completely missing and much of northwestern America is still uncertain.
Another inscription in the lower right-hand corner of the map features Diogo’s signature, indicating that he completed it in 1558, the year Elizabeth came to the throne.
The remaining eight maps focus on specific regions or continents. Diogo highlights the coastlines of each country in these charts, outlining them in different colours: red, blue, green, orange, and in some cases gold. He also prioritises the locations of ports and islands over mainland cities and other topographical features, meticulously inscribing their names on the chart in minute lettering.
What marks the Queen Mary Atlas as one of the finest examples of cartography from this period is the richness of its illustrative details and embellishments. The seas, for example, feature numerous ships of various designs and sizes, from Spanish galleons to Ottoman barges. Some are even engaged in naval battles with each other.
Likewise, animals make frequent appearances, particularly in the maps of Africa and the Middle East. Northern Africa is home to a pride of lions and a pair of grazing camels. The lands around the Persian Gulf (modern-day Iran) include a tusked elephant walking through a landscape. Ethiopia features a black rhinoceros, whose distinctive skin has been represented as plated armour.
Then there are the sea monsters: scaled serpents, whales, sharks, and gigantic leviathans emerge from the waters and oceans. Perhaps they warn the viewer of the perils that might await a ship’s crew on the other side of the world.
Diogo includes detailed illustrations of some of the most prominent towns and cities, particularly those concentrated around the Mediterranean. They are represented with turrets and ramparts, and the domes and spires of churches and cathedrals, as well as the minarets of mosques in Arabia. In addition, each city is topped with the banner or heraldic arms of their ruling families and monarchs. The city of Rome (top right) with its seven hills, is decorated with the arms of the Papacy: the keys of St Peter below the papal tiara.
In addition to the maps, there are three double-page openings at the beginning of the manuscript devoted to tables and prefatory material. A large cosmographical wheel combines solar and lunar calendars. Tables of solar declination, which were used by navigators to establish the latitude of a ship at sea, appear as well. Finally, there is a particularly fine zonal map of the world, surrounded by ruddy-faced representations of the different classical winds blowing upon the globe.
With its nautical focus, marine monsters and topographical wonders, the Queen Mary Atlas shows us a world in which geographical knowledge was rapidly advancing and in which two Tudor queens sought to put Britain on the map. You can now explore the manuscript in full on our Digitised Manuscripts site.
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27 April 2020
Designing the Arnstein Bible
Following our blogpost on the Worms Bible earlier this month, today I focus on another remarkable German Romanesque Bible in the Library’s collection: the Arnstein Bible. Like the Worms Bible, it is enormous (540 x 355 mm), and now in two volumes. The first volume includes Genesis to Malachi, and the second Job to Revelation, with large illuminated and decorated initials at the beginning of the biblical books. The manuscript is fully digitised, and available to view online (Harley MS 2798 and Harley MS 2799).
The Bible was made at the Premonstratensian abbey of St Mary and St Nicholas in Arnstein, on the Lahn river about 30 kilometres east of Coblenz, which was founded in 1139 by the last count of Arnstein, Ludwig III (d. 1185), who became a lay brother there.
In date, the Arnstein Bible was produced around twenty-five years after the Worms Bible. Originally, the manuscript included historical annals recording important events related to the Abbey (now Darmstadt, Hessische Landesbibliothek, MS 4128), that reveal an approximate date for it of 1172. We also know the name of the man who wrote it, identified in the entry for that year as a brother called Lunandus.
Lunandus had a formidable task to undertake in planning out the design and layout of this enormous book. The text is written out in 39 lines to a page, with generous margins. Most of the biblical books and introductory material are presented in two columns of 130 mm in width.
An indication that this Bible is a great monastic book is the inclusion of not one, but rather three translations of the book of Psalms, arranged in three parallel columns, each of 80 mm width. This allowed the reader to study the variant Psalm texts across the page (see this previous blog post for more on St Jerome’s (d. 420) three translations of the Psalms in this Bible).
For Lunandus, planning the layout for the transition from two to three columns and back again presented particular challenges. The three comparable versions of the Psalms proper finish about three-quarters of the way down the page (f. 57r). The next texts that had to be included only required one version; however the rest of the page was still ruled for three columns. Lunandus had to signal that the reader must switch from comparing the variant Psalm translations across the page to reading one column and then going to the next, sequentially.
He did this by identifying the following texts with a series of rubrics, or headings in red ink (the term rubric is derived from the Latin 'rubrica', the name of the red ochre pigment used to make the colour red). Lunandus presented the short so-called Psalm 151 in the first column and started the prologue to the next biblical book in the second and third columns.
The rubric in the first column summarises the contents of Psalm 151: 'Hic p[salmu]s pr[opr]ie scriptus est David [et] extra numerum cum pugnaret cum gloria et in hebraicis codicibus non habetur' (This Psalm was written by David himself and is outside the number [of the Psalms] and is not contained in Hebrew bibles. It is about the time when David fought with glory.) The short text in seven verses follows below this heading.
The adjoining rubric, spread out over columns two and three, explains that the Psalms have ended, 'explicit libor psalmorum' (here ends the book of Psalms), and that the prologue to Proverbs is about to begin (incipit). The start of this prologue begins in the middle column. Here Lunandus left room for an enlarged initial letter on eight lines, the letter ‘C’ of the first word ‘Chromatio’, the name of the original addressee. The rest of the word is written in individual letters vertically to the right of the first letter. The initial itself is embellished with stylized acanthus leaf decoration punctuated with characteristically Germanic gold bands ornamented by small round dots that are cinched around the foliate form.
This sophisticated presentation of text and image represents a stunning achievement in scholarship and design. Like other great or giant Romanesque Bibles, the Arnstein Bible represents a testament to the commitment of its makers to the elegant presentation of the Word of God.
Kathleen Doyle
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Further reading
Walter Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination (Cornell, 1982), pp. 26, 230, 253 no. 8, pls 157, 162.
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, 'The Hand of God and the Hand of the Scribe: Craft and Collaboration at Arnstein', in Die Bibliothek des Mittelalters als dynamischer Prozess, ed. by Michael Embach, Claudine Moulin and Andrea Rapp, Trierer Beiträge zu den Historischen Kulturwissenschaften, 3 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2012), pp. 53-78 (p. 62, fig. 22, colour plate 17).
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, The Art of the Bible: Illuminated Manuscripts from the Medieval World (London: Thames & Hudson and the British Library, 2016), no. 23.
23 April 2020
St George and the Garter
On St George’s Day (23 April) 1349, at St George’s Chapel in Windsor, the first annual assembly was held by the Order of the Garter, England’s oldest Order of Chivalry. Dedicated to George, the Order was founded by King Edward III (1312–1377) who wanted to revive the Knights of the Round Table of Arthurian Legend. Edward had appointed himself as the Order’s Sovereign, his son Edward the Black Prince (1330–1376) as Royal Knight, and 24 of his most loyal men as Knights Companions. He had chosen the French maxim ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ (‘Shamed be he who thinks ill of it’) as the Order’s motto, and a blue garter as its emblem, perhaps alluding to the girdle with which St George, according to medieval legend, had tamed a dragon before slaying it.
An assembly of Knights and Ladies of the Garter (women were accepted soon after the Order’s foundation), before an altar of St George (Rouen, 1444–1445): Royal MS 15 E VI (The Talbot Shrewsbury Book), f. 439r
The rituals and symbols of the Order of the Garter are described and depicted in many richly decorated medieval and early modern manuscripts. The Pageants of Richard Beauchamp (Cotton MS Julius E IV/3), for example, features an early depiction of the Order’s ceremony for installing new Knights. This ceremony requires the Sovereign, aided by senior Knights, to place the garter — a dark blue velvet riband with a gold buckle and edges — around the newly-elected Knight’s lower left leg, just below the knee. In this manuscript, King Henry IV can be seen giving the garter to Richard Beauchamp (1382–1439), 13th Earl of Warwick as a reward for successfully defeating the Welsh at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1405. (You can read more about the Pageants of Richard Beauchamp in this blogpost.)
Richard Beauchamp receives the garter from King Henry IV (England, 4th quarter of the 15th century): Cotton MS Julius E IV/3 (The Pageants of Richard Beauchamp), f. 4v
Many manuscripts describe the history of the Order of the Garter (Harley MS 5415) or explain its statutes and ordinances about membership, functions, qualifications, costumes and ceremonies (Cotton MS Nero D II, ff 252r–265v, Harley MS 235, Harley MS 278, Lansdowne MS 783, Lansdowne MS 1207). These books indicate that the Knights had few obligations, apart from attending the annual assembly, participating in religious services, and wearing the garter whenever appearing in public. Their privileges were both honorific and spiritual: members could hang their swords, helmets, banners, stall-plates with their names, and heraldic devices at St George’s Chapel at Windsor. After death, the remaining Knights would perform large numbers of masses (100 for Knights and 1000 for the Sovereign) for the benefit of their souls.
The Statutes and Ordinances of the Order of the Garter (England, after 1572): Lansdowne MS 1207, ff. 1v–2r
One important category of manuscripts relating to the Order of the Garter contains their members' coats of arms. Around 1415, the Order created its own officer of arms, known as the Garter King of Arms. In the 1430s, William Bruges (c. 1375–1450), the first to hold that office, created the Order’s first extant armorial, now known as the Bruges Garter Book (Stowe MS 594). The manuscript contains illustrations of the King and the 25 Founder Knights, all wearing heraldic tabards and Garter mantles and displaying their coats of arms. William Bruges himself, as the Garter King of Arms, is shown kneeling before St George.
William Bruges wearing a heraldic tabard that displays the arms of King Henry V, kneeling in prayer before St George (England, 1430s): Stowe MS 594, f. 5v
Other heraldic manuscripts from the Order contain collections of the arms of its then members. Their arms are easy to recognize since members had the right to encircle the shields (escutcheons) of their coats of arms with the blue garter, the Order’s emblem.
Armorial of the Order of the Garter (? London, 1588): Harley MS 1864, f. 2v
An important literary manuscript that is associated with the Order of the Garter’s early history is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, perhaps the most famous medieval English romance. This Middle English poem sees Gawain, one of King Arthur's most valiant knights, undertake a quest during which he acquires a magical green girdle. Upon his return to Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table agree to wear a green sash in memory of Gawain’s quest, just like the Knights of the Garter, who would wear their garters on ceremonial occasions. What is more, an early owner of the unique copy of the poem (Cotton MS Nero A X) inscribed a motto below the text that is almost identical to that of the Order: ‘hony soit q[ui] mal penc’. This raises interesting questions about the poem's underlying meaning, and whether it comments on the ideals and practices of the Order.
The Order of the Garter’s motto (above) and a full-page miniature of Sir Gawain returning to the court of King Arthur after completing his quest in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (North-West Midlands, c. 1400): Cotton MS Nero A X/2, f. 128v and f. 130r
The Order of the Garter was celebrated in other poetic manuscripts. For example, we have a poem by William Tesshe of York, uniquely surviving in Harley MS 3437, in which he praises the Order’s Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth I, and honours each of its Knights separately. The manuscript is decorated with their coats of arms in colours and gold.
Another unique poem, extant in Harley MS 6103, is dedicated to George Villiers (1592–1628), who was Marquess of Buckingham and Lord High Admiral of England when he was admitted to the Order in 1620. The poem styles him as St George, his namesake, and claims that he too will curb ‘The conquerd dragon which hee [St George] leadeth tame’. An accompanying full-page illustration adorns Villiers with attributes that are rife with Garter imagery. It displays him as a knight wearing full armour, riding a horse with the arms of the Order on its caparison, holding a lance with a banner that displays St George slaying the dragon in one hand, and a dragon on a leash in the other. The dragon is apparently tamed by the garter that is hanging from its neck, suggesting an analogy between the Order’s emblem and the girdle with which St George subjugated his dragon.
George Villiers with the symbols of the Order of the Garter (England, after 1620): Harley MS 6103, f. 3r
Music was central to the Order of the Garter’s religious celebrations at Windsor. The canons who performed its liturgical music produced original music compositions, and they were perhaps responsible for a creative and artistic rendering of a 16th-century melody for the Order’s motto (‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’) that has been inserted on a paper sheet into Royal MS 8 G VII. The music has been written on two 5-line staves that are shaped like the garter and a lance with which a knight charges a dragon. The composition is dedicated to the Earl of Arundel, probably Henry Fitzalan (1512–1580), the 12th Earl, who was admitted to the Order in 1544.
A canon for the Order of the Garter’s motto written on music staves that are shaped like the garter and a knight’s lance (England, 16th century): Royal MS 8 G VII, f. 1v
The Order of the Garter is nearly 700 years old. The rituals and symbols that its members practise today are preserved in manuscripts of great artistic and cultural value, many of which themselves date back centuries.
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13 April 2020
Medieval rabbits: the good, the bad and the bizarre
As this year’s Easter egg hunt is over, join us in a hunt through the pages of British Library manuscripts for some seasonal rabbits. Searching in our Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts yielded an amazing 80 images – they are everywhere! We found rabbits in the margins of prayer books and law books, in the borders of romances and chronicles, and even playing a supporting role in saints’ lives. Here are some of our favourites: from the cute and cuddly, to the dangerously criminal and the wonderfully weird.
Natural beauty
Each page of the Cocharelli Codex is decorated with features of the natural world, such as foliage, flowers, insects, birds, animals and seashells. The glorious meadow on this page includes a caterpillar, a dragonfly and two life-like hares.
Beasts of the earth
Medieval bestiaries are works containing images of animals with descriptions their attributes. The rabbit is described as ‘a wild and lithe beast’. In this image, Adam is naming a group of animals, including the rabbit, showing that man was considered lord over beasts.
Useful to humans
The British Library has a number of highly decorated books containing scenes from rural life in the Middle Ages. Such scenes often contain images of rabbits, showing how important these creatures were in the rural economy: they were farmed for their fur and meat and hunted with hounds or ferrets.
The Taymouth Hours contains a series of images of a lady hunting rabbits; here she sends a hound or ferret into a warren to flush out the rabbits inside.
A lordly rabbit
This Jewish liturgical book, the Barcelona Haggadah, contains the Haggadah, as well as liturgical poems and biblical readings for Passover. A colourful miniature shows the Israelites building a tower, supervised by an Egyptian master, at the beginning of the passage, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh’. Above is a rabbit seated on a throne, being served wine in a golden goblet by a dog.
Rabbits in exile
Rabbits are not always in the margins – sometimes they take part in the action, as in this illuminated Book of Revelations. At the beginning, the Angel appears to St John while he is exiled on the Island of Patmos, with rabbits and a deer watching, in a lush, green landscape
Rabbits and the saint
John Lydgate’s Life of St Edmund tells the story of his martyrdom and how his severed head was looked after by a friendly wolf until it was found in a thicket by monks with hunting dogs. This miniature shows St Edmund's head being found and reunited with his body, still pierced with arrows. The dogs have now begun hunting rabbits, who scamper to their burrows.
Rabbits in a romance
This manuscript of Roman de la Rose opens with a scene of the lover dreaming of the rose and the walled garden of delights. In the lower margin are rabbits being chased by hounds (again). But, not to worry - they will have their revenge – see below!
Bunnies' revenge
The Smithfield Decretals is a large volume of canon law with narrative scenes added in the margins by a London artist. Rabbit hunting is depicted several times, but finally the rabbits take their revenge! There are several images of rabbits with bows and arrows shooting their persecutors, and a three-page series of a hound being brought to justice. First, he is bound, then he is tried by rabbits in an outdoor courtroom, and on the next pages, he is executed.
Trouble in a trumpet
We kept some of the weirdest rabbit images we found to last. This copy of the Holy Grail legend begins with a splendid illumination of Arthur’s court of Camelot and of Lancelot on his quest. Around the edges are scenes of jousting, a man shooting a butterfly, hybrid creatures, and in the upper margin, a naked man blowing a long trumpet out of which emerges…a rabbit!
Jousting rabbit
This scene of a tournament with magnificent pavilions and finely-dressed knights is in a copy Froissart’s Chronicle. Look carefully, and in the decorative border are a rabbit and a snail jousting, both mounted on the shoulders of apes, in a parody of chivalric culture.
Sadly, we could not include all the great images we found, but why not try a search of your own? Go to the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts and search ‘Rabbit’ or ‘Rabbits’ in the 'image description' field. Be careful, though – despite their cute and cuddly appearance, some can be dangerous!
Chantry Westwell
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11 April 2020
Exultet rolls: celebrating the return of the light
The medieval churches of Southern Italy maintained a very special Easter tradition. They celebrated the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday from a scroll made to be used once a year for this specific ritual. Known as Exultet rolls, these manuscripts combine words, music and pictures to create an enthralling multimedia experience centred on the joyful theme of light returning to the world.
The British Library's Exultet roll (Add MS 30337) was made at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino around 1075-1080. This ancient abbey was founded by St Benedict, father of the Benedictine order, in around 529. The use of Exultet rolls was a tradition that went back to the early Beneventan practices of the area, while the style of the paintings in Add MS 30337 was influenced by near-contemporary Byzantine works.
Exultet rolls were made for performance. They were designed to be read by a deacon standing in the church's ambo (a raised platform used for readings). As he was reading, he would turn the top of the roll over so that it draped in front of the ambo, displaying the images to the congregation. For this reason, the pictures are generally arranged upside-down in relation to the text so they would appear the right way up to the viewers. The people would look up and see the beautiful images unfurling before their eyes like a moving picture show.
The use of the Exultet roll is illustrated in the roll itself:
The Exultet is a lyrical prayer, named after its opening words 'Exultet iam angelica turba caelorum' (Rejoice now, angelic choir of the heavens), which is chanted during the ceremonial lighting of the Paschal candle during the Easter Vigil. The Exultet roll provides the text for the ritual along with neumes, a type of medieval musical notation, which guide the melody.
The roll begins with an image of Christ enthroned and adored by angels, with a banner that reads, 'Lumen xpisti lumen xpi lumen xpi' (light of Christ, light of Christ, light of Christ), emphasising the central message of the ritual—that the Resurrection of Christ at Easter is the return of light to the world.
The text celebrates the renewal of life at springtime, illustrated by a personification of Mother Earth (Tellus Mater). She is depicted in the illumination as a naked woman with her arms outspread in a loving gesture, surrounded by plants and nurturing a cow and a serpent at her breasts. Based on classical imagery, this represents the natural abundance and goodness of Earth.
Following Mother Earth is an image of Mother Church (Mater Ecclesia), where the juxtaposition of the two allegorical mothers suggests worldly and spiritual nurture. As the text announces, Mother Church is celebrating and adorned with brightness. She is shown richly dressed like an empress, holding up a church and surrounded by the faithful.
The text goes on to recall all the events that make the eve of Easter so gloriously bright, declaring: 'This is the night which purged the shadows of sin with a column of light' (Hec igitur nox est que peccatorum tenebras columne illuminatione purgauit).
As it explains, on the Paschal feast, God delivered the Israelites from captivity in Egypt through the parting the Red Sea. On the eve of Easter, Christ descended to the underworld and redeemed the righteous through the Harrowing of Hell, cancelling the sin of Adam and Eve. On this night, Christ's Resurrection took place. Each of these events is illustrated in the roll.
After this, the deacon asks God to accept the offering of the Paschal candle, then gives lengthy praise to the bees who produced its wax. The text announces that 'the bee surpasses all the other living things that are subject to man' (Apis ceteris que subiecta sunt homini animantibus antecellit).
Drawing on the Georgics of Virgil, the text describes how the bee emerges in the springtime and immediately gets to work, gathering flowers, building a hive, making honey, forming wax and caring for the young. In this way, the bees are a fitting symbol of Spring and of the community working together for the common good.
Bees are also praised for their chastity, which the text links to the Virgin Mary whose chaste motherhood made the events of Easter possible.
The Exultet ends with a prayer for the end of the dark night and for the rise of the morning star that will never set. It asks God to grant peace and joy to the clergy, the pope, the bishop, all the congregation and the emperor.
In the church, we can imagine the deacon coming to the end of the prayer with the light of the newly lit Paschal candle glinting on the gold of the Exultet roll. The bright images descending from the ambo brought the themes of the text to life. For the people gathered in the church and sharing the experience, the roll reinforced the joyful messages of hope, renewal and brightness of the Easter celebration.
Happy Easter to all from BL Medieval!
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Translations are from Thomas Forrest Kelly, The exultet in southern Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
09 April 2020
Illuminating the Worms Bible
Some of the finest examples of medieval book art are Bibles. Medieval scribes and artists illustrated biblical manuscripts in order to adorn and elaborate the sacred text, as you can discover in our Biblical Illumination article on the Discovering Sacred Texts webspace. A particularly impressive example is the Worms Bible (Harley MS 2803). With pages measuring 540 x 355 mm, this is one of a number of giant multi-volume Bibles that were produced throughout Western Europe in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The Worms Bible includes a seventeenth-century inscription recording that it belonged to the Augustinian abbey of St Mary Magdalene in Frankenthal, about ten kilometres (six miles) south of Worms. Frankenthal was an important scriptorium, and this Bible may have been made at the Abbey. There is a very small inscription on the first folio before the text proper, right on the edge of the lower margin, recording the date of 1148 (anno MCXLVIII), which was probably when the work was either begun or completed.
Like most Vulgate Bibles, the two volumes of the Worms Bible include several letters by St Jerome arranged as prefatory material. The first text is St Jerome’s letter to bishop Paulinus of Nola (d. 431), in which St Jerome urged Paulinus to study the Scriptures diligently, to live in and meditate on them (inter haec vivere, ista meditari). It begins with a large illustration of St Jerome seated as a scribe writing (f. 1v). Here St Jerome holds a quill pen and a knife with which to make corrections. A small tonsured figure, perhaps the commissioning abbot, holds up an ink horn to St Jerome to supply him with ink for his task.
On the pages of his open book, we can see that St Jerome is writing the first words of the letter: ‘Frater ambrosi/us tua m[ih]i mu/nuscula’ (Brother Ambrosius [has delivered your] your little gifts to me). Immediately next to the scene is a large letter ‘F’(rater) that begins the text itself. The letter is embellished with bright stylized acanthus leaf decoration interwoven around the gold bars of the letter. Characteristically Germanic gold bands with small round dots are cinched around the foliate forms.
In the large initial beginning the book of Genesis a few pages later, tight scrolls join the foliate decoration, and the illustrations move into the initial ‘I’(n) itself (f. 6v). The second word of the text, ‘principio’ ([in] the beginning), is also displayed in the panel of decoration. Two scenes from Genesis are included: at the top of the letter, God orders ‘FIAT LUX’ (let there be light), while below, God creates Eve from Adam's side while the speech scroll contains his observation that ‘Non est bonu[m] homine[m] esse solum fa/cimus ei adiutoriu[m] simile sui’ (It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself, Genesis 2:18). Skin tones are shaded in green and pink, and the painting contains fine details, such as the incision on the sleeping Adam’s side from which Eve, who stands behind him, has just emerged.
These features of the stylized acanthus, clasps, colours, and modelling of tones are found in the other large initials that begin each biblical book. Most depict the book’s author, often writing or holding a scroll with a quotation from his text. For example, Job reclines in the initial letter of his book, covered with sores with a devil tormenting him (f. 288v). He laments: ‘pereat dies in qua nat[us] su[m] et nox in qu[a] dictu[m] e[st] c[on]cept[us] e[st] homo’ (Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said: A man child is conceived, Job 3:3).
The Worms Bible was exhibited in Mannheim in 2013, and was featured in blog about the exhibition at that time. You can view both volumes on the Digitised Manuscripts website, and discover more about the production of medieval manuscripts in our article, How to make a medieval manuscript. For more about this Bible, see Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, The Art of the Bible: Illuminated Manuscripts from the Medieval World (London: Thames & Hudson, 2015), no. 21.
Kathleen Doyle
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28 March 2020
The caption competition is back!
Hold on to your hats. Our funtastic caption competition is back.
This is your opportunity to shine, by coming up with an appropriate description for the image below. What on Earth is going on?
The page is found in a 14th-century Book of Hours of the Use of Saint-Omer (Add MS 36684, f. 26v), which you can explore in full on our Digitised Manuscripts site.
We'll publish or retweet the best suggestions. You can either submit them using the comment field below or send them by Twitter to @BLMedieval. May the best pun win! (There is no prize, of course, just eternal glory.)
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26 March 2020
Humfrey Wanley, Library-Keeper of the Harleian Library
One of the many gems of the British Library is the Harleian collection, founded by Robert Harley, Lord High Treasurer and 1st Earl of Oxford, and his son, Edward (1689–1741), 2nd Earl of Oxford. It's the largest intact 18th-century manuscript collection in the world, containing more than 7,000 manuscripts, 14,000 charters and 500 rolls. While we are re-cataloguing the manuscripts, we thought we'd take the opportunity to pay tribute to the collection's early Library-Keeper, Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726).
Wanley was appointed as Library-Keeper for the Harleian Library in 1705 after he successfully negotiated the acquisition for Robert Harley of the 660 manuscripts of the late antiquary Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–1650). Wanley — who had previously been employed as Assistant at the Bodleian Library, cataloguer of the library of Hans Sloane (his catalogue survives in Sloane MS 3972 B), and inspector of the library of Robert Cotton (1586–1631) — continued to expand the Harleian Library with thousands of manuscripts.
Thomas Hill, portrait of Humfrey Wanley in the Harleian Library holding his notebook open at his own facsimile copy of the 10th-century Greek Covel Gospels, and with the so-called Guthlac Roll of about the year 1200 on his desk (1711): courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Among Wanley’s most significant acquisitions for the Harleian Library are the more than 300 manuscripts of Edward Stillingfleet (d. 1699), late Bishop of Worcester; over 200 heraldic manuscripts from the Randle Holme arms-painters of Chester; and about 125 manuscripts of the clergyman Robert Burscough (1650/51–1709). Simultaneously, he used Continental agents to purchase manuscripts from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and monasteries in the Levant. He also sold his own collection of manuscripts to the Library. A 14th-century French Psalter in the Harleian collection (Harley MS 3978), for example, bears his ownership inscription: ‘Liber Humfredi Wanley’.
The Adoration of the Magi in a Psalter (above) and the ownership inscription of Humfrey Wanley (below), North-Eastern France, 2nd half of the 14th century: Harley MS 3978, f. 15v and f. 1*recto
The Harleian Library also acquired manuscripts composed and copied by Wanley himself. It features a parchment volume with facsimile copies of medieval charters (Harley MS 7505) that a young Wanley made around 1689–1691 from local archives in Warwickshire. These reveal his skills as both a palaeographer and calligrapher.
Humfrey Wanley’s copy of a mid-14th-century charter of Richard Fitzalan (c. 1313–1376), 3rd Earl of Arundel: Harley MS 7505, f. 2r
Wanley meticulously recorded his acquisition activities in his diary (Lansdowne MSS 1716-1718), but also kept a notebook (Lansdowne MS 677) with a ‘wish-list’ of manuscripts owned by other collectors he hoped to acquire for the Harleian Library (‘Things proper for the Library in the Hands of Particular Persons’). It includes both the Warwickshire charters and the manuscripts of Hans Sloane with which he had previously worked.
Humfrey Wanley offering a reward for returning his notebook to him: ‘Whoever brings this Book to Mr Humfrey Wanley at the Right Honourable the Earl of Oxford’s [Lord Harley’s House] in Dover-street, Westminster; shall receive one Guinea Reward’: Lansdowne MS 677, f. 1v
In acquiring manuscripts, Wanley showed a level of integrity that was unusual for his time. When a bookseller of a 9th-century manuscript containing the four Gospels written in gold ink (Harley MS 2797) insisted that Wanley should erase a 17th-century ownership inscription of the abbey of Sainte Geneviève in Paris because it was bought through a ‘private seller’, Wanley refused to do so, stating that ‘I do not love to putt a pen-knife upon an old Book in order to erase’ (The Diary of Humfrey Wanley (1996), vol. 2, pp. 359–60).
The un-erased ownership inscription of the abbey of Sainte Geneviève in Paris: ‘Ex Libris S. Genovefae Parisiensis’ (Northern France, 3rd quarter of the 9th century): Harley MS 2797, f. 1r
Wanley considered ownership inscriptions as one of the most important features that should be mentioned in manuscript catalogues. He gave much thought to manuscript cataloguing, since he considered it to be one of his principal tasks at the Harleian Library. In a letter he wrote following his inspection of the Cottonian library in 1703, he recommended that the textual and artistic contents of manuscripts be catalogued to a high level of detail:
‘That every Book & Tract be particularly described [...] whether it [be] written upon Parchment or Paper; whether the Language be English, Saxon, Latin, French etcaetera. Particular Notice also might be taken of such books as are remarkable for their Beauty, for being written Correctly, or in very Good or very Bad Hands; [or] remarkable for their Antiquity. And when the Age of the Book or Tract or Name of the Scribe that wrote it, of any Eminent Person that owned it; or old Library to which it did formerly belong does appear; it should be carefully noted, because by these Marks Posterity will be sure that these are the individual Books now described; and no Original or Antient Copie can be changed for a New one, but the Cheat may be discovered’ (Harley MS 7055, f. 19r).
Wanley first demonstrated his meticulousness in cataloguing Hans Sloane’s manuscripts and in producing a monumental catalogue of Old English manuscripts in 1705. Subsequently, he wrote catalogue entries for over 2,400 Harleian manuscripts in a ‘Catalogus Brevior’ (Additional MSS 45701–45707) — completed and published by the British Museum almost a hundred years later — and hundreds of records for a ‘Catalogus Maior’ (Additional MSS 45699–45700). In addition, he began a subject catalogue for the entire collection (Lansdowne MS 815), wrote an index to the Harleian charters (Add MS 45711), and a catalogue of heraldic manuscripts in the Harleian Library (Add MS 6052).
The frontispiece of Humfrey Wanley’s catalogue of Old English manuscripts, printed at Oxford at the Sheldonian Theatre in 1705
Wanley is an example to modern cataloguers. We certainly hope to follow in his footsteps as we re-catalogue the Harleian collection to modern standards and make records of the Harley manuscripts accessible in our online manuscripts catalogue.
You can read more about Humfrey Wanley here:
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966).
Deirdre Jackson, 'Humfrey Wanley and the Harley Collection', Electronic British Library Journal (2011), article 2 [pp. 1–20].
Michael Murphy, 'Humfrey Wanley on How to Run a Scholarly Library', The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 52:2 (1982), 145–55.
Cyril Ernest Wright, ‘Humfrey Wanley: Saxonist and Library-Keeper’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 46 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 99–129.
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