Cicero, Ps.-Quintilian, Aulus Gellius — c. 1120–1130; England, Malmesbury

Title

Cicero, Ps.-Quintilian, Aulus Gellius — c. 1120–1130; England, Malmesbury

Shelfmark

MS. Rawl. G. 139

Place of origin

England, Malmesbury

Date

c. 1120–1130

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

ii + 156leaves. At each end are two flyleaves of eighteenth-century paper After trimming by the binder

Hands

Written by seven hands: (1) fols 1-10 column a (the whole of the Partitiones); (2) fol. 6v column a, lines 1-15; (3) fol. 1v, lines 25-39; fol. 4r column b, lines 8-12; fol. 4r line 25-fol. 4v column a, line 12; fol. 4v column a, line 36-fol. 6r line 4; fol. 5r column b, lines 5-39; fol. 6v column a, lines 1-15; fol. 7r column a, line 21-fol. 7r column b, line 16; fol. 7v column b, lines 9-39; fol. 8v column a, line 21-fol.9r column a, line 3; fol. 9v column b, lines 11-39; fol. 10r column a-fol. 20r column a, line 13; fol. 31r column a-fol. 71v column b; (4) fol. 20r column a, line 14-fol. 30v column b; (5) fol. 53v, column a, lines 7-39; fol. 54v column b, lines 25-39; fol. 55v column b; fol. 57r column a, lines 13-fol. 57r column b, line 17; fol. 66r column a, lines 1-14; fol. 71v column b, lines 1-22; fols 72r-152r; (6) fol. 86r column a, line 28-fol. 86r column a, line 6; (7) fol. 152v and fols 153v-154v (the extracts from Gellius) (Thomson [1981], p. 49)

There are further hands that add annotations: (a) a very distinctive, late fourteenth-century hand, writing marginal notes in the early leaves; (b) William of Malmesbury, writing marginal and interlinear corrections, comments and nota-marks as far as fol. 137v (Thomson [1981], pp. 49-50)

The presence of William of Malmesbury's hand suggests that the main contents of the manuscript (that is, all except the Gellius extracts) were copied at his direction (Thomson [1981], p. 50). Thomson notes, p. 51, that none of these scribes wrote 'particularly well', with scribe 3 easing into his main stint after a series of brief trial runs, and scribe 5's writing changing its character slowly but markedly through its main stint, before deteriorating – presumably due to fatigue – towards the end. Thomson, p. 51, identifies hand 1 as a scribe found also in Lincoln College MS. Lat. 100, and London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS. 224; scribe 2 as responsible for MS. Auct. F. 3. 14, fol. 148v line 18-fol. 150r line 10 and probably Merton College MS. 181fol. 90v column a, line 22-fol. 94r column b line 23; 100v column b-fol. 111v column a; fol. 120v column a, line 19-fol. 120v column b, line 6. The distinctive arrow through the lower loop of gon the bottom line of a page that is used by scribe 5 is seen by N. R. Ker to be a feature of style found in the writing of twelftfh-century scribes from the south-west of England, and possibly Gloucester (Ker, English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest [Oxford, 1960], p. 7)

Thomson, William of Malmesbury (Boydell, 2003), p. 84, argues tentatively that MS. Rawl. G. 139 may have been written between MS. Auct. F. 3. 14 and Lincoln College MS. Lat. 100

Decoration

The first part of the manuscript has plain red and green initials

Binding

Still in Thomas Hearne's binding (see below for Hearne's note) of brown, blind-tooled calf, though rebacked since Hearne's time (English, late 18th century)

Acquisition

Bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1755

Provenance

Malmesbury, Wiltshire, Benedictine Abbey of St Mary the Virgin and St Aldhelm(MLGB3: evidence from the style of script or illumination and from marginalia, sometimes distinctive of a particular house or known scribe)

A note has been erased from the top outermost corner of fol. 1. This was the normal position for the early fifteenth-century Malmesbury press-mark (Thomson [1981], p. 49)

'J. D.' on fol. 1 (late 16th century)

Fol. ii: 'Suum cuique. Tho: Hearne 1723. Memorandum that I paid two guineas for this MS. and half a crown for binding it.'

Richard Rawlinson, 1690–1755