London, British Library, MS Harley 2253
Harley 2253 has two parts. The first, comprising folios 1r–48v,
was written in a professional, late thirteenth-century, textura and
is the work of a single scribe. Its contents comprise hagiographical texts
in Anglo-Norman French. It contains, for example, an extract about the
Passion of Jesus Christ from the versified history of the Bible by Hermann
of Valenciennes (folios 23r–32v). The second
part, comprising folios 49r–140v and 142rv, was written in a later medieval
bookhand known as Anglicana formata, a more formal version
of the business script current in the mid fourteenth century. Except
for folio 52v, it is also the work of a single scribe, one who has been
identified as a professional copyist active in or near Ludlow in
Southern Shropshire from 1314 to c. 1349. He produced many charters
and other datable documents, and Harley 2253 may be dated by reference
to the evolution of his technique in his final period—that is, to after c.
1330. Ker also placed it in the 1330s, since the scribe uses a version of this script which has ‘rid itself... thoroughly’ of features found in versions current in 1310s and 20s. It is chiefly the second part that concerns us.
Much discussed, the
second part comprises a much discussed miscellany made up of texts
in three languages: Middle English, Anglo-Norman, and Latin. The contents are remarkable for their diversity. Embracing both prose and verse and covering
all manner of subjects religious and secular, they range across many different genres. Religious texts such as ‘The
Harrowing of Hell’ (fols. 55va–56vb) and the ‘Debate
between the Body and the Soul’ (fols. 57r–58v) are to be found alongside secular lyrics such as ‘The
Lament for Simon de Montfort’ (fol. 59rv) and ‘The fair maid of Ribblesdale’ (fol.
66v). Even among the texts of the same generic type there is much diversity.
There are, for example, some great contrasts among the hagiographical contents.
Some are associated with the West Midlands, such as the otherwise unknown Legenda
de sancto etfrido presbitero de Leominstria, ‘That which must be read
about St Ecgfrith, the priest of Leominster’ (fols. 132r–133r). But
there are also items relating to cults far removed from the region, such
as a letter authenticating an arca, or ‘chest’, still preserved
at Oviedo (Spain). It lists the relics contained
within the arca, other relics at Oviedo, and the privileges granted
to the pilgrims by the bishops and clergy of the see (fols. 131v–132r).
Such diversity is difficult to explain. There would seem to be some kind
of hidden rationale to the selection and arrangement of the texts, but
that rationale has proved elusive.
With leaves measuring 280–290×190mm, Harley 2253 is a middle to
large format book. Though the layout varies between a single and double
columns, the texts are usually confined to an area which measures 215 × 145mm.
The dialect of the Middle English items in the second section, and the
incorporation into the binding of fragments of the Mortimer
family’s financial records, and also of extracts from the ordinal of Hereford Cathedral point to an
origin in the West Midlands. (The main seat of the Mortimer family was at Wigmore Castle in northern Herefordshire.) This provenance was confirmed in the 1970s when Carter
Revard identified the scribe of the second section as a professional
copyist based in or near Ludlow.
The book was later owned by John Batteley (1647–1708; archdeacon of Canterbury
from 1688–1708), a Church of England clergyman and an antiquary whose nephew
sold to it together with the rest of his collection to Edward Harley (5
November 1723). It thus became part of the great collection of manuscripts assembed
by Robert Harley, the first earl of Oxford (1661–1724), and his son Edward
Harley (1689–1741).
This library was later sold to the nation in 1753 by Edward’s
daughter and heir, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715–1785). By this route
the Harley manuscripts became one of the foundation collections of the
British Library.
Online Facsimile: The entire manuscript is now available online at the British Library's Collection of Digitised Manuscripts. If the link fails to work go to British Library Digitised Manuscripts and search for the item by putting the phrase ‘Harley MS 2253’ into the manuscripts box. The British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts also offers access to various images of doubtful quality: folios 55v, 59v, 73r, 76v, and 131r.
Printed Facsimile: Ker, N. R. (ed.), Facsimile
of British Museum MS. Harley 2253, Early English Text Society, o.s. 255
(Oxford, 1965). Shelved in Lower Ground Y6 (E/O) under ‘Early English Text Society’,
vol. 255. Ker reproduces the second section of the manuscript.
Full Description: Ker provides a detailed list of its contents (available via Moodle); a thorough list may also be accessed at Manuscripts
of the West Midlands: A Catalogue of Vernacular Manuscript Books of the English
West Midlands, c.1300–c.1475; the British
Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts includes a brief description, but it has a relatively full bibliography.
Cognate Manuscript: For a facsimile reproduction of a similar manuscript, largely written by the same hand, see London, British Library, Royal MS 12.C.XII, and for another which was assembled and augmented by the same scribe, see London, British Library, Harley MS 273. If the link fails to work go to British Library Digitised Manuscripts and search for these items using the manuscripts box.
Editions and Translations
- For a comprehensive edition and translation of the entire contents of the book which can accessed online, see The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, ed. and trs. S. G. Fein, D. B. Raybin and J. M. Ziolkowski, TEAMS Middle English Texts Series 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, MI, 2014–5). Volume 1 covers booklets 1–2, volume 2 covers booklets 3–5, and volume 3 covers booklets 5–7.
- Many of the Middle English Lyrics can also be read in the original and in translation
at Wessex Parallel WebTexts.
- Aspin, I. S. T. (ed.), Anglo-Norman Political Songs, Anglo-Norman
Texts 11 (Oxford, 1953). Prints and translates four items: (i) the Lament
for Simon de Montfort found on fol. 59rv (pp. 24–35); (ii) a poem on
the Articles of Trailbaston (pp. 68–78); (iii) a complaint about royal
taxation (pp. 105–15); and (iv) ‘L’ordre de bel ayse’,
a satire on various religious orders (pp. 130–42). Note
also that Aspin thinks that the poem ‘Against the King’s Taxes’ refers
to events of the years 1336–38.
- Brooks, G. L. (ed.), The Harley Lyrics: The Middle-English
Lyrics of MS Harley 2253 (Manchester, 1948). YBRC. The standard edition
of the lyrics, but does not include the political lyrics.
- Brown, C., English Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1932),
pp. xxxv-xl, 131–63. YBRC. Edits some of the Middle English lyrics.
- Brown, C., Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century (Oxford, 1924),
pp. 3–14. YCB.
- Conlee, J. W. (ed.), Middle English Debate Poetry: A Critical Anthology (East
Lansing, 1991). YBRC.
- Hall, J. (ed.), King Horn (Oxford, 1901).
- Hellman, R., and R. O’Gorman (eds and trs.), Fabliaux: Ribald Tales
from the Old French (New York, 1965). For items such as ‘Du chevalier
qui fist les cons parler’ (fols. 122v–124v).
- Robbins, R. H. (ed.), Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New
York, 1959), pp. 7–29.
- Turville-Petre, T., Alliterative Poetry of the Later
Middle Ages: An Anthology (London, 1989), pp. 9–37. YBRB.
- Wright, T. (ed. and trs.), The Political Songs of England
from the Reign of John to that of Edward II, rev. E. Goldsmid, 4
vols. (Edinburgh, 1884). MVG.H. For the Middle English political poems of Harley 2253.
Commentary
- Corrie,
M., ‘Kings and Kingship in British Library MS Harley 2253’, Yearbook of English Studies, 33 (2003), 64–79. Journals
Y6; JSTOR.
- Dane, J. A., ‘Page Layout and Textual Autonomy in Harley MS 2253 “Lenten is come with loue to toune”’, Medium Aevum,
68 (1999), 32–41. JSTOR. Journals X6.
- Edwards, A. S. G., and D. Pearsall, ‘The Manuscripts of the Major English Poetic Texts’,
in J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (ed.), Book Production and Publishing in
Britain 1375–1475 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 257–78. ZC3ea.B.
- Fein, S., ‘Compilation and Purpose in MS Harley 2253’, in W. Scase (ed.), Essays in Manuscript
Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the
Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 95–112. YBRA.
- Fein, S., (ed.), Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents,
and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253 (Kalamazoo, MI,
2000).
- Legge, M. D., Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963). YBT.
- Lloyd-Morgan, C., ‘Women and their Poetry in Medieval Wales’, in
C. M. Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge,
1993; 2nd edn, 1996), pp. 183–201. YBRA.
- Moore, D. L., Medieval Anglo-Irish Troubles: A Cultural Study of B.L. MS Harley 913, Texts and Transitions 8 (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 255–9, for oblique commentary on 2253's Satire on the Consistory Courts. MYBG.
- Nelson, I., Lyric Tactics: Poetry, Genre, and Practice in Later Medieval England, The Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA, 2017), esp. chp. 1, ‘The Voices of Harley 2253’.
- Pearsall, D., Old English and Middle English Poetry, Routledge
History of English Poetry 1 (London, 1977), pp. 120–32, on the Middle English
Lyrics in Harley 2253. YBLB.
- Revard,
C., ‘From French “Fabliau Manuscripts” and
MS Harley 2253 to the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales’, Medium Aevum,
69 (2000), 261–78. JSTOR. Journals X6.
- Revard, C., ‘Oppositional Thematics and metanarrative in MS Harley
2253, Quires 1–6’, in W. Scase (ed.), Essays in Manuscript
Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the
Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 95–112. The compiler’s guiding concept was the necessity of juxtaposition, ‘that we know everything
by its contrary, so that to know anything we need to look also at its contrary’ (p. 107). YBRA.
- Revard, C., ‘Political Poems in MS Harley 2253 and the English National Crisis of 1339–41’, The Chaucer Review, 53.1 (2018), 60–81. Available at Project Muse.
- Revard,
C., ‘Richard Hurd and MS Harley 2253’, Notes
and Queries, 26 (1970), 199–202. Identifies Harley 2253 as the
work of a scribe working at Ludlow, Shropshire, in the 1340s. Journals Y6. Oxford Journals Online.
- Revard, C., ‘Scribe and Provenance’, in S. Fein (ed.), Studies
in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts
of British Library MS Harley 2253 (Kalamazoo, MI, 2000), pp. 21–109.
- Revard,
C., ‘Three more holographs in the hand of the scribe
of MS Harley 2253 in Shrewsbury’, Notes and Queries, 28 (1981),
199–200. Oxford Journals Online. Journals Y6.
- Schenck, M. J. S., The Fabliaux: Tales of Wit and Deception (Amsterdam
and Philadelphia, 1987). XTIL.
- Taylor, A., ‘Manual to Miscellany: Stages in the Commercial Copying of Vernacular Literature in England’, Yearbook of English Studies, 33 (2003), 1–17. Journals Y6; JSTOR.
- Wells, J. E., et al. (eds), A Manual of the Writings in Middle
English, 1050–1500, 11 vols. (New Haven, CN, 1967–2005). See vol. 11 for the Harley lyrics. YBR2.
- Wilshere,
A. D., ‘The Anglo-Norman Bible Stories in MS Harley 2253’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 24 (1988), 78–89. Oxford Journals Online.
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