MS. Bodl. 835

Provenance and Acquisition

Salisbury, Wiltshire, Cathedral church of St Mary the Virgin; see medieval manuscripts removed from Sherborne in 1078(?)

Teresa Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral c. 1075-c. 1125 (1992), argues that the Salisbury collection represents the earliest English attempt to adopt the recommendations of Cassiodorus in the Institutiones, and that the Ambose texts in MS. Bodl. 835 were copied at Salisbury as part of that initiative (p. 36 and fn. 19)', with 'Salisbury produced the earliest or one of the earliest extant English copies of [...] several opuscula of Ambrose (Oxford, Bodl. Libr., MSS Bodley 698, 768 and 835)'.

A Salisbury scribe (s. xii) wrote the letters 'D.M.' as a 'nota bene' sign in the margins of Aberdeen UL 216, MS. Bodl. 392, MS. Bodl. 444 (fols 1-27), MS. Bodl. 756, MS. Bodl. 765, MS. Bodl. 768, MS. Bodl. 835, MS. Fell 1, MS. Fell 4, MS. Rawl. C. 723, Salisbury Cathedral, MSS. 10, 24, 25, 37, 67, 78, 88, 106, 128, 129, 135, 140, 154, 159, 165 (MLGB3); see Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral c. 1075-c. 1125 (1992), pp. 132-139

'A' at head of fol. 1r

'Liber ambrosii de prophetis ...' (s. xv) on outside of back cover (MLGB3)

'Liber Bibliothecae Saresburiensis 7' (s. xvii): No. 7 in a set of 7 numbered manuscripts from Salisbury (no. 1 has not been identified). The other 6 manuscripts are: No. 2: MS. Bodl. 756, No. 3: MS. Bodl. 698, No. 4: MS. Bodl. 765 No. 5: MS. Bodl. 768, No. 6: MS. Bodl. 516,

Salisbury Cathedral library was raided in the English Civil War, and this manuscript was probably given (as part of the set of 7 manuscripts) to the Bodleian during or soon after the war, but it is not found in Bodleian lists until about 1655