London, British Library, Harley 2961
2961
General Information
236
431
According to Ker (1957, p. 308), this manuscript used to contain an Old English donation inscription, as suggested by the note by Samuel Knott on fol. 1: '...extant fragmenta subscripsionis Saxonicæ in laceris extremi folii reliquiis quibus opinor testatum (?) fuit Leofricum eundem donasse'. The section containing Old English is now missing. The inscription might have been on the verso of the final leaf of text, as it is in Auct. F. 1. 15 and CTC B. 11.2.
Digital Surrogate
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_2961_fs001r
Object Description
Form Codex
Hand Description
Additional Information
Description by Hollie Morgan and Takako Kato (August 2010).
Digital surrogate: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_2961_fs001r (accessed 18 July 2018)
The English inscription is now missing.
History
Origin: Written in Exeter.
Provenance: Given to Exeter Cathedral by Bishop Leofric, probably the Collectaneum in the list of his gifts (Exeter Book, p. 35). Knott passed the manuscript to Robert of Burscough, rector of Totnes, who passed it to Harley on 17th May, 1715.
Acquisition: Acquired by the British Museum along with the other Harley manuscripts in 1753.
Exeter
Förster, Max, R. W. Chambers, and Robin Flower, eds, The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry: Facsimile (London: for the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral by Humphries, 1933)
Bishop, Terence Alan Martyn, 'Notes on Cambridge Manuscripts, Part III: Mss. Connected with Exeter', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 2.2 (1955), 192-99
Dewick, E. S. , ed., The Leofric Collectar with an Appendix Containing a Litany and Prayers from Harl. MS. 863. (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1914), vol. 1
---, The Leofric Collectar Compared with the Collectar of St. Wulfstan, Together with Kindred Documents of Exeter and Worcester (London: Harrison, 1921), vol. 2
Drage, E., 'Bishop Leofric and the Exeter Cathedral Chapter, 1050-1072: A Reassessment of the Manuscript Evidence' (unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1978)
Förster, Max, 'The Donations of Leofric to Exeter', in The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry: Facsimile (London: for the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral by Humphries, 1933), pp. 10-32
Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; repr. 1990), item 236
Warren, F. E., The Leofric Missal as used in the Cathedral of Exeter during the episcopate of its first bishop, A.D. 1050-1072. Together with some account of the Red book of Derby, the Missal of Robert of Jumièges, and a few other early manuscript service books of the English church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1883)
Hollie Morgan and Takako Kato