A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges

OR BROWSE BY

MANUSCRIPTS
WORKS
PEOPLE
PLACES

MS. Rawl. G. 139

Summary Catalogue no.: 15568

Contents

1. (fols 1–10)
Cicero, Partitiones oratoriae
Rubric: M. T. Ciceronis ad filium suum Ciceronem De Partitionibus Rhetorice libri

The text of the Partitiones Oratoriae descends in two families of manuscripts, A and J. The J family, of which this manuscript is the earliest surviving member, circulated in France after the early twelfth century (Thomson [1981], p. 50)

Language(s): Latin
2. (fols 10–46v)
Cicero, De officiis
Rubric: ... Incipit eiusdem ad eundem de Officiis liber primus
(Secundus, tertius)
Language(s): Latin
3. (fol. 46v–152)
Ps.-Quintilian, Declamationes maiores
Rubric: Marci Fabii Quintiliani Prima actio

The 19 longer declamations, with the arguments

Language(s): Latin
4. (fols 152v, 153v–154v)
Aulus Gellius, Noctes atticae

Extracts from Books 2-5

Thomson (1981), p. 51, comments that 'the copy was made by an illiterate scribe, and is full of nonsensical readings'

Language(s): Latin

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment
Extent: ii + 156 leaves. At each end are two flyleaves of eighteenth-century paper
Dimensions (binding): 11.375 × 8 in.
Dimensions (leaf): 270 × 190 mm.
After trimming by the binder

Collation

110, 2-48, 510, 6-188, 194, 204 (wants 2)

Layout

2 cols, 39 lines with written space of 200 × 145 mm.

Hand(s)

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. 181 fol. 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 g on 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)

History

Origin: c. 1120–1130 ; England, Malmesbury

Provenance and Acquisition

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

Bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1755

Record Sources

Description adapted (July 2024) by Stewart J. Brookes from the Summary Catalogue (1895), with additional reference to published literature as cited
Summary Catalogue, Vol. 3, p. 438

Bibliography

    Online resources:

    MLGB3: Medieval Libraries of Great Britain

    Printed descriptions:

    Albinia C. De la Mare and B. C. Barker-Benfield, Manuscripts at Oxford, R. W. Hunt Memorial Exhibition (Oxford, 1980), pp. 26 and 28, shows fols 73r and part of 34v
    R. M. Thomson, 'More Manuscripts from the 'Scriptorium' of William of Malmesbury', Scriptorium 35 (1981), pp. 49–52 and Pl. 4 (showing fol. 30v)

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Last Substantive Revision

2024-07-22: Description revised to incorporate all the information in the Summary Catalogue (1895)