http://www.sla.purdue.edu/medieval-studies/Corpus/corphome.htm
Corpus of Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript
Art
Contents
Introduction
In the field of Medieval Studies where scholars, teachers, and students
often study evidence drawn from collateral disciplines and media, there
is a pressing need for improved access to the visual dimensions of culture.
The need for pictorial or iconographic documentation is particularly evident
in Anglo-Saxon studies, a field in which, given the relative paucity of
surviving written documents, artistic and archaeological finds are important
reflections of the values, attitudes, and tastes of early English society.
The ravages of time, neglect, censorious zeal, and later restoration have
often reduced the monumental art forms---wall painting, sculpture, and
stained glass---to shadows of their former selves, if they survive at all.
Manuscripts, by contrast, often preserve in pristine condition miniatures
or illustrations, offering to researchers a vast visual encyclopedia of
Anglo-Saxon culture.
Accessing the decorative and iconographic contents of manuscripts produced
or owned in the British Isles, c. 675 to c. 1100, has been
complicated by the lack of a single finding aid. Now, however, thanks to
technological developments in hypertext and the World Wide Web, researchers
can quickly search and retrieve information about hundreds of manuscripts.
The current inventory of manuscripts, it should be noted, is under construction,
and new entries will be added once they are converted into HTML. Although
no images are yet available, it is our goal to provide scanned photographs
in the future.
The Corpus Project
CORPUS is an international, collaborative project that aims to document
verbally and pictorially the illumination and major decoration of manuscripts
produced or owned in the British Isles, from circa 675 to circa
1100 A.D.
CORPUS has five objectives:
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To maintain a database of information containing a catalogue entry for
each of the 257 manuscripts surveyed so far. Each entry contains codicological,
iconographic, and bibliographic information, together with an inventory
of the illumination or illustration and the major decoration within the
manuscript. Many entries have been checked against the manuscripts themselves,
and continue to be revised as new research refines knowledge of the sources
and their contexts. The electronic form of the database makes it possible
easily to revise and to expand its information. It forms an indispensable
reference tool for many disciplines.
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To document the corpus photographically. Although the electronic database
contains no images, its photo-bibliography guides researchers to published
sources for most of the items. It is highly desirable that the corpus be
published in full on CD-ROM. Until this becomes feasible, we are encouraging
the traditional publication of photographs of manuscripts. The publication
of 454 photographs in Thomas H. Ohlgren s Anglo-Saxon Textual Illustration
(Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992) is the first of two
important steps in this direction. A second major publication is Mildred
Budny's two-volume Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript
Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, which will be issued soon
by Medieval Institute Publications at Western Michigan University. This
work presents 766 photographs: 747 in black-and-white and 19 in color.
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To fill the gaps in CORPUS we are encouraging scholars, particularly graduate
students, to undertake studies of neglected manuscripts or forms of decoration
and illustration. To this end two sessions on the CORPUS Project were held
at the 1993 meeting of the International Congress on Medieval Studies.
The sessions were designed as a systematic survey of research on manuscript
codicology and art. Each of the presenters --- Mildred Budny, M.J. Toswell,
Kathleen Openshaw, Jane Rosenthal, Herbert Broderick, Gernot Wieland, Marilyn
Deegan, and Richard Gameson --- was assigned a particular group of manuscripts:
mss. at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; psalters; liturgical mss.; gospel
books; Old Testament mss.; scientific mss.; and early Anglo-Norman mss.
The presentations shared three common goals: 1) to define the category
of manuscripts (location, genre, or period); 2) to survey published scholarship;
and 3) to assess what specific work needed to be done to complete the documentation
of each grouping or category. These papers were published in the Old
English Newsletter, vols. 28.1 and 28.3.
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To establish cooperation and exchanges of information with projects working
on the same or similar materials: the Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture;
Fontes Anglo-Saxonici, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile,
the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, the Seminar in the History of
the Book to 1500, the UCLA Index of Medieval Medical Images, and the Japan
Society for Medieval English Studies. Close contacts with some of these
groups have already been established.
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To adopt an administrative structure consisting of an Administrative Committee,
an Advisory Committee, and a group of Special Consultants.
CORPUS Committee Members
Administrative Committee
Thomas H. Ohlgren (Chair, Medieval Studies, Purdue University)
Mildred Budny (Independent Scholar, Princeton, NJ)
Advisory Committee
J.J.G. Alexander (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
Helmut Gneuss (Institut f?r Englische Philologie der Universit?t M?nchen)
Jane Rosenthal (Columbia University)
Special Consultants
Richard N. Bailey (University of Newcastle)
Carl T. Berkhout (University of Arizona)
Robert Boenig (Texas A&M University)
Linda Brownrigg (Oxford & Los Altos Hills, California)
Leonard E. Boyle (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
Herbert Broderick III (City University of New York)
Michelle P. Brown (British Library, London)
Brendan Cassidy (Index of Christian Art, Princeton)
John Contreni (Purdue University)
Marilyn Deegan (Oxford Computing Centre)
A. N. Doane (University of Winconsin at Madison)
Michael Evans (Warburg Institute, University of London)
Carol A. Farr (University of Alabama at Huntsville)
Richard Gameson (University of Kent, Canterbury)
Malcolm Godden (Pembroke College, Oxford)
Timothy Graham (Rawlinson Center, Western Michigan University)
George D.S. Henderson (Cambridge University)
John Higgitt (University of Edinburgh)
Constance Hill (Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)
Mark Infusino (University of California at Los Angeles)
Louis Jordan (University of Notre Dame)
Catherine Karkov (Miami University, Ohio)
Thomas E. Kelly (Paris, France)
Simon D. Keynes (Trinity College, Cambridge)
Henry Mayr-Harting (St. Peter's College, Oxford)
Lawrence Nees (University of Delaware)
Carol Neuman de Vegvar (Ohio Wesleyan University)
Jennifer L O'Reilly (University of Cork, Ireland)
Malcolm Parkes (Keble College, Oxford)
Andrew Prescott (British Library, London)
Michael Ryan (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin)
Thomas H. Seiler (Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University)
Patricia Stirnemann (Institut de Recherche d'Histoire des Textes, Paris)
William Stonemann (Shiede Library, Princeton University)
Paul Szarmach (Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University)
Elizabeth C. Teviotdale (Getty Museum)
M. Jane Toswell (University of Western Ontario)
William Voelkle (Pierpont Morgan Library)
Leslie E. Webster (British Museum, London)
Martin Werner (Temple University)
Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley (Georgetown University)
Gernot Wieland (University of British Columbia)
David M. Wilson (Isle of Man)
Patrick Wormald (Christ Church, Oxford)
Charles Wright (University of Illinois)
Sample Entries
For information about the history, scope, and format of the following descriptions,
see Thomas H. Ohlgren, Insular and Anglo-Saxon Illuminated Manuscripts:
An Iconographic Catalogue (New York and London, 1986). It is important
to note that the indexes to the manuscripts, authors and titles, places
of origin and provenance, dates, and iconographic contents are not available
in the WWW version. To obtain information about the fully-featured version
of CORPUS, contact Thomas H. Ohlgren at tohlgren@gte.net.
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Dublin,
Trinity College MS 55 (A.4.15)
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Milan,
Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS S.45. sup.
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Milan,
Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS D.23. sup.
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Dublin,
Royal Irish Academy MS S.n.
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Durham,
Cathedral Library MSS A.II.10 (fols. 2-5, 338 and 339), C.III.13 (fols.192-5),
C.III.20 (fols. 1 and 2)
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Dublin,
Trinity College MS 57 (A.4.5)
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Florence,
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MS Amiatino I
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Utrecht,
Universiteitsbibliotheek MS 32 (Script. eccl. 484), fols. 94-105
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London,
British Library Cotton MS Nero D.IV
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Durham,
Cathedral Library MS A.II.17, fols. 2-102, and Cambridge, Magdalene College
Pepys MS 2981 (19)
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Paris,
Biblioth?que Nationale MS lat. 9389
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Cambridge,
Corpus Christi College MS 197B (fols. 1-36); London, British Library Cotton
MS Otho C.V
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K?ln,
Dombibliothek Cod. 213
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Berlin,
Deutsche Staatsbibliothek MS Hamilton 553
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Leipzig,
Universit?tsbibliothek MSS Rep. I. 58a and Rep. II. 35a
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Durham,
Cathedral Library MS A.II.16 and Cambridge, Magdalene College Pepys MS
2981 (18)
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Durham,
Cathedral Library MS B.II.30
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Leiden,
Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit MS Voss. Lat. F. 4, fols. 4-33
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St.
Petersburg, Public Library Cod. Q.v.I.18
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London,
British Library Royal MS 1.B.VII
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Lichfield,
Cathedral Library
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Maaseik,
Church of St. Catherine, Kerkshat, s.n., fols. 1-5
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Maaseik,
Church of St. Catherine, Kerkshat, s.n., fols. 6-132
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Harburg
?ber Donauw?rth, Schloss Harburg, F?rstlich ?ttingen-Wallerstein'sche Bibliothek
Cod. I.2.4¡Æ.2
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Freiburg-im-Breisgau,
Universit?tsbibliothek Cod. 702
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Trier,
Domschatz Codex 61 (Bibliotheksnummer 134)
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Gotha,
Forschungsbibliothek Cod. Memb. I. 18
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Stuttgart,
W?rttembergische Landesbibliothek Cod. Bibl. 2¡Æ. 12
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London,
British Library Cotton MS Vespasian A.I
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Stockholm,
Kunglinga Biblioteket MS A. 135
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New
York, Pierpont Morgan Library M. 776
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London,
British Library Royal MS 1.E.VI, Canterbury, Cathedral Library Additional
MS 16, and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lat. bib. b. 2(P)
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London,
B.L. Cotton MS Tiberius C.II
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Paris,
Biblioth?que Nationale MS lat. 281, 298
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London,
British Library Royal MS 2.A.XX
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Vatican
City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Barberini Lat. 570
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Vienna,
Nationalbibliothek Cod. 1224
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Hereford,
Cathedral Library MS P.I.2
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St.
Petersburg, Public Library Cod. F.v.I.8
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Oxford,
Bodleian Library MS Bodley 426 (S.C. 2327), fols. 1-118
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London,
British Library Harley MS 2965
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St.
Petersburg, Public Library Cod. Q.v.XIV.I.
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Oxford,
Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson G.167 (S.C. 14890)
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St.
Gall, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 51
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Dublin,
Trinity College MS A.I.15 (60)
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London,
British Library Additional MS 40618
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Dublin,
Royal Irish Academy MS D.II.3, fols. 1-11
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Dublin,
Trinity College MS 59 (A. 4. 23)
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Fulda,
Landesbibliothek Codex Bonifatianus 3
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St.
Gall, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 1395, pp. 426-27
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Dublin,
Royal Irish Academy MS D.II.3, fols. 12-67
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Dublin,
Trinity College MS A.I.6 (58)
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Dublin,
Trinity College MS 52
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Oxford,
Bodleian Library MS Auct. D.2.19 (S.C. 3946)
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W?rzburg,
Universit?tsbibliothek Cod. M. p. th. f. 69.
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Paris,
Biblioth?que Nationale MS nouv. acq. lat. 1587.
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St.
Gall, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 1395, pp. 418-19
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St.
Gall, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 1395, pp. 422-23
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Dublin,
Trinity College MS A.4.6 (56)
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St.
Gall, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 60.
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Turin,
Biblioteca Nazionale Cod. O.IV.20.
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Milan,
Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS C. 301. inf.
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Leiden,
Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit MS B. P. L. 67
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Valenciennes,
Biblioth?que Municipale MS 99
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Antwerp,
Museum Plantin-Moretus MS M.17.4.
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Cambridge,
University Library MS Ll.I.10
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Paris,
Biblioth?que Nationale MS lat. 10861
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St.
Gall, Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 904
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Karlsruhe,
Landesbibliothek Cod. CLXVII.
Last Updated on August 11, 1996 by Thomas H Ohlgren and William I. Bormann