MS. Ashmole 1431
Summary Catalogue no.: 7523
Herbal with Old English glosses; St Augustine’s, Canterbury, 1070s × 1090s
Contents
Language(s): Latin
Blank apart from added 15th-century inscription.
Ed. Howald and Sigerist, pp. 10–11.
Ed. Howald and Sigerist, pp. 4–10.
The last herb painted is ‘spueritis’ at fol. 36v; the last title is written in capitals (with ink, not in red): ‘Nomen herbe Aperina’.
Part of the final leaf is cut away.
eTK 0899M eTK 0915GAdded in the twelfth century.
Blank, with added pen trials and an unfinished diagram of concentric circles.
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
Ruled in drypoint, 32–41 long lines, ruled space 175 × 110 mm.
Hand(s)
English Caroline minuscule. Ker, English manuscripts in the century after the Norman Conquest (1960), p. 30, classifies this as an example of the ‘Christ Church script’ used at St Augustine’s. Dodwell, The Canterbury school of illumination, 1066–1200 (1954), p. 26, suggests that the hand can also be found in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. O.2.51, part 2 (Priscian). Gameson, ‘English manuscript art in the late eleventh century: Canterbury and its context’, pp. 114, 125 affirms this, suggesting also that the artist might be the same as Durham, Cathedral Library, MS B.II.16.
Decoration
Each section opens with coloured illustrations of plants. (Pächt and Alexander iii. 50, pl. VI)
Illustrations not executed from the middle of fol. 36v onwards, with only space left by the scribe.
Names of plants in red.
Binding
Brown tanned calf over laminated pulpboard. Rebacked 30 May 1959.
History
Appears in the St Augustine’s catalogues: B.C. Barker-Benfield, St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (London, 2008), 1:5n4, 1:6, 2:1204, 3:1747, 3:1801, 3:1820. Inscribed in a 15th-century hand, ‘Herboralium Apuleii Platonis. De librario sancti Augustini Cantuar. D 14 Gª 2º’ (fol. *1v). (Cf. MLGB3: evidence from an ex-libris inscription or note of gift to an institution.)
Provenance and Acquisition
Elias Ashmole (1617–1692): bequeathed by him to the Ashmolean Museum.
Transferred to the Bodleian Library in 1860.
MS. Ashmole 1431, fols. 1–2
Bifolium from a choir breviary; English, 14th century
Contents
From the temporale: portions of the offices of the Circumcision, the octave of St Stephen, and the vigil and feast of the Epiphany (1–6 January).
"O Lorde in the is all my trust | geve eare vnto my wofull"
"When shall my sorowfull sighinge slake when shall m"
Physical Description
Layout
Ruled in ink. 2 columns of 38 lines, ruled space 157 × 100 mm.
Hand(s)
Gothic textualis.
Decoration
Blue initials with red penwork.
Rubrics.
History
Bibliography
Printed descriptions:
Additional Information
Record Sources
Digital Images
Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Digital Bodleian (37 images from 35mm slides)
Surrogates
A. N. Doane, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile (Binghamton, NY: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), vol. 9: Deluxe and Illustrated Manuscripts Containing Technical and Literary Textss
Bibliography
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
Last Substantive Revision
2022-09-28: Andrew Dunning Revised with consultation of original.