Bede, Historia ecclesiastica

Title

Bede, Historia ecclesiastica

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 99

Associated place

Yorkshire

Place of origin

England

Date

s. xii med. and xii 3/4

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (HSOS/HFFH).

Physical extent

Fols. iv + 121+ iii (numbered fols. v–vii).

Hands

Written in caroline, each booklet perhaps by a different scribe. Punctuation by point and punctus elevatus .

Decoration

Headings in red, a good many unfilled.

Bede’s prologue and the opening of the text have 8- and 10-line vine-tendril initials respectively, in ink with red and green highlights, the first including a dragon, the second a human head.

Elsewhere alternating red and green (occasionally gold) 2- to 4-line arabesque initials.

See AT, no. 48 (9).

Binding

A modern replacement. Sewn on five thongs. At the front, a modern marbled paper flyleaf, two modern paper flyleaves, and a medieval vellum leaf; at the rear, two modern paper flyleaves and another marbled leaf (v–vii).

Acquisition

‘Liber Collegii Sanctj Iohannis Baptistae Oxon’ ex dono Venerabilis virj Guilielmj Laud Sacrae Theologiae Doctoris ejusdem Collegii Praesidis et Ecclesiae Cathedralis Gloucest Decanj 1620’ (fol. iv v). Exhibited Laud Exhib, no. 8 (9).

Provenance

‘liber sancte Marie de Ioreualle[followed by an erasure, and the name of the house also over an erasure] Quicumque librum istum alienaverit Anathema sit’ ( fol. ivv; the original s. xii/xiii, the curse added s. xv) (Ker, MLGB 105). Gullick suggests (239)that if the MS originally belonged to another house dedicated to the Virgin, it was probably Bridlington (OSA) .

Further notes suggesting a Yorkshire provenance (a) fol. iv: a listing ‘Nomina Archiepiscoporum Ebor”, to Thomas de Corbrigg’ (1299–1304), with Willielmus de Grenefeld (1304–15) and Willielmus de Meltun (1316–40) added in different later hands; (b) on a vellum tab pasted to fol. ivv: ‘Anno gracie dolxxx iij. sanctus Ioh’ Beuerl’ consecratur episcopus Ebor’ (s. xii med.). There is also erased writing, illegible, s. xiii, following the explicit ( fol. 95vb).

Examined while still at Jervaulx by John Leland; for discussion, see Caroline Brett, ‘John Leland, Wales and Early British History’, Welsh History Review15 (1990), 169–82 at 172–3.