It may be a while since our Harry Potter: A History of Magic exhibition closed its doors, but there are still plenty of opportunities for you to get your fix of Harry Potter, medieval style. Our friends at Pottermore have just announced the publication of a new audiobook to accompany the exhibition and there are other ventures in the pipeline. Here is a run-down of the many ways you can still learn about the traditions, myths and folklore that lie behind J.K. Rowling's stories.

The audiobook of the exhibition will be published by Pottermore on 4 October. It is narrated by Natalie Dormer, and features contributions by Stephen Fry, Jim Dale, Jim Kay and Olivia Lomenech Gill, as well as the curatorial team.

The two exhibition books, dear reader, were published in the UK by Bloomsbury, where they were no. 1 and no. 5 in last year's non-fiction charts. Worldwide, they have also been translated into languages including French, German, Hungarian, Thai and Vietnamese. One book was aimed at a family audience — Harry Potter: A Journey Through a History of Magic — and the other at an adult readership, with essays by contributors such as Tim Peake and Steve Kloves, alongside descriptions by the British Library's curators.

Towards the end of the exhibition's run, a virtual tour was released by Google Arts and Culture. This enables you to see views of each room of the show in London, highlights of some of the exhibits, and commentaries by Jim Kay and the curators. We even made it to the Google homepage. (Don't mention this to anyone, but Harry Potter is the most successful collaboration, in terms of visits, ever undertaken by Google Arts and Culture.)

To accompany the exhibition, the British Library contributed to a major BBC documentary, filming some of the exhibits alongside J.K. Rowling and Jim Kay. The DVD of the documentary is now available and clips can be viewed on the BBC website, such as the time we showed the author the incredible Ripley Scroll.

Finally, our readers in North America may be interested to know that Harry Potter: A History of Magic is due to open this autumn at the New-York Historical Society, where it will run from 5 October until 27 January 2019. We hope that as many of you as possible get the opportunity to see the show: as Ron Weasley said, "When in doubt, go to the library".

 

Julian Harrison

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Take a summer holiday to 11th/12th century Spain with our two manuscripts from the abbey of Silos. You can stop by the British Library to see these manuscripts in person in the Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery, or you can follow the links below to admire them online.

The Silos Apocalypse: Add MS 11695, f. 21r.

In 1041 the Abbey of San Sebastián de Silos in northern Spain, near Burgos, gained a charismatic new abbot. St Domingo of Silos, as he would later become, transformed the abbey into one of Spain’s principal centres for learning and monastic reform. Among his achievements was the establishment of a library and scriptorium at the abbey. In the decades following his death, on 20 December 1073, the newly renamed Abbey of Santo Domingo produced an impressive number of manuscripts, many of which still survive.

The Silos Apocalypse: Add MS 11695, ff. 145v–146r.

The most spectacular of these books is undoubtedly the Silos Apocalypse (Add MS 11695). With its vivid colours and striking designs, this manuscript belongs to a distinctive Spanish tradition of illuminated copies of Beatus of Liébana’s commentary on the Book of Revelation — the final book of the Christian Bible, foretelling the end of the world.

In this opening currently on display in our Treasures Gallery, the seventh angel sounds a trumpet on the left-hand page, which causes the Temple of God in heaven to open on the right-hand page, revealing the Ark of the Covenant inside (interpreted by Beatus as a symbol of Christ). Meanwhile, the beast (interpreted as the Antichrist) has risen from the abyss to persecute the saints. The interaction of the images across the two pages, along with the incorporation of marginal images and the use of different scripts and inks to articulate the text, demonstrates the manuscript’s sophisticated graphic design.

The Silos Antiphonary: Add MS 30850, ff. 92v–93r.

Alongside the Silos Apocalypse you can see another manuscript made at the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos in the 11th/12th century (Add MS 30850). This manuscript is an Antiphonary, containing the music that was sung as part of the daily devotions at the Abbey. The page displayed includes the song for the evening office on Palm Sunday, with a Spanish form of musical notation written above the words.

The manuscript’s decorated initial letters share some of the bold linear style and vibrant colour palette of the Apocalypse manuscript beside it. Here, the opening monogram ‘VPR’ for Vespertinum (the chant for the evening office) is so highly abstracted that the letter forms are barely decipherable. It functions more as a finding aid and decoration for the text than as a word to be read.

A decorated initial in the Silos Antiphonary: Add MS 30850, f. 101r.

To find out more about the Silos Apocalypse, we'd highly recommend our blogpost It's the end of the world as we know it, and Scot McKendrick & Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture (London: The British Library, 2007), pp. 72–73. 

Eleanor Jackson

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The 870s were probably not King Alfred’s favourite decade. His brother, King Æthelred I had died after Easter 871, and Alfred became king in the middle of fierce fighting with viking forces. According to entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, compiled later in Alfred’s reign, West Saxon forces fought no fewer than nine battles that year alone. Alfred himself may have narrowly avoided capture. The rest of the decade did not go much better. His kingdom remained under attack as two ‘great armies’ advanced across the island, while neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kings were killed or disappeared.

Entries for the years 872-876 in the second-oldest manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Cotton MS Tiberius A VI, f. 19r

Remarkably, a document survives on a single sheet of parchment from these turbulent early years of Alfred’s reign. It is one of only three documents in Alfred’s name that survive in copies made during his lifetime: the others are British Library Cotton MS Augustus II 28 and Canterbury, DCc/ChAnt/F/150 (formerly D. & C., Red Book no. 11). This particular document records how, in 873, the archbishop of Canterbury sold land at Ileden in Kent to a man called Liaba for 25 gold coins, apparently with King Alfred’s permission:

‘In the name of the nourishing, three-part divinity, I, King Alfred, with the consent and permission and advice of my wise counsellors, in hope of eternal reward. I, Æthelheard, archbishop, and all my household from Christ Church give to Liaba, Birgwine’s son, [the land that] we call Gilding … for 25 coins of good gold ...’

Grant of King Alfred of the West Saxons (r. 871–899) and Archbishop Æthelred of Canterbury (d. 888) to Liaba, 873: Stowe Charter 19

This charter gives an important insight to events besides warfare that were taking place in Alfred’s domains, events which were often omitted from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s panicked narrative for the 870s. Land was still being bought and sold. The church at Canterbury may even have been motivated to sell off their property to pay for extra defences, as has been suggested by Susan Kelly and Nicholas Brooks.

This charter also suggests that Latin learning had somewhat declined at Canterbury, or at least that documents were being written by people whose grammar and syntax left something to be desired. Charters produced at Canterbury had shown a decline in the quality of Latin and handwriting since the reign of Æthelwulf, Alfred's father; but this particular charter-writer made some spectacular errors. The first sentence is missing a verb. It starts out as though it were a charter issued by King Alfred, then switches suddenly to record a sale by the archbishop of Canterbury. Did the writer start writing one document and then change his mind? The writer routinely swapped ‘b’ for ‘u’, writing ‘obserbe’ instead of ‘observe’ (obserbare for observare). He also used ð, a symbol used to represent the ‘th’ sound, for ‘d’, even though the ‘th’ sound did not really exist in Latin. Most jarringly, the scribe occasionally replaced words in common phrases with something that sounded similar but does not quite make sense. For example, he tried to warn that anyone who contravened the terms of this sale would have to ‘give his account before the Lord’ (coram Deo … rationem reddere). However, he instead wrote ‘sciad se rectum redditurum coram a Deo’, which could be uncharitably interpreted as ‘render his bottom/intestine before God’. The charter-writer also copied the witness-list from older sources, so it includes several people who were long dead by 873.

Detail of Stowe Ch 19, including the Old English addition in a darker ink

That said, while the script of the charter may not have been the finest and the Latin not the most grammatical, it was still valued. Soon after it was made, a different hand added in English, ‘Leafa [another spelling of Liaba?] bought this charter and this land from Archbishop Æthelred and from the community at Christ Church, with the freedom as that given to Christ Church, in perpetual possession’. On the back of the document, a contemporary scribe wrote, ‘This is the charter for Gilding’, so that it could be easily identified.

The dorse of the charter: Stowe Ch 19

After the rocky start to his reign, Alfred’s fortunes improved. He won major battles and secured his territories. There was such a revival of learning in the 890s that Alfred’s name became associated with one of the first major flowerings of English literature.

The British Library's Anglo-Saxon charters have now been added to our Digitised Manuscripts site. To learn more about Alfred and the later part of his reign, please come to our major exhibition, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, which opens at the British Library on 19 October 2018.

 

Alison Hudson

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The British Library is pleased to be able to offer an internship for a postgraduate or recent post-doctoral student in history, art history or another relevant subject, to support work on the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition. The internship is a six-month position based in the Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts section of the Western Heritage Collections department in London.

The foundation charter of the New Minster, Winchester, c. 966: Cotton MS Vespasian A VIII, f. 2v

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms is a landmark exhibition on the history, art, literature and culture of Anglo-Saxon England (19 October 2018–19 February 2019. It will feature outstanding manuscripts from the Library’s own collections alongside a number of exceptional loans from other institutions.

The intern will use their specialist knowledge of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, history and culture to carry out a variety of duties, including: supporting delivery of the ‘Manuscripts in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms’ international conference and early career symposium linked to the exhibition, scheduled for 13–15 December 2018; blogging about the exhibition; supporting the promotion of the exhibition by the Library’s Press team; responding to visitor enquiries; giving talks and leading tours of the exhibition; and enhancing catalogue entries records. The successful candidate will enjoy privileged access to manuscripts at the British Library and will work alongside specialists with varied research interests.

This internship will provide an opportunity to develop writing and presentation skills, to engage with a variety of audiences, and to gain experience of curatorial duties. Previous interns have given feedback that they felt a valued member of the team, gained professional confidence and developed their career.

This position is only open to students who are engaged actively in research towards, or have recently completed, a PhD in a subject area relevant to the study of medieval manuscripts and who have a right to work in the UK full time.

The term of internship is full time (36 hours per week over 5 days) for 6 months. The salary is £10.20 per hour, which is the current London Living Wage. The internship will start on 1 October 2018 or as soon as relevant security checks have been completed.

To apply, please visit www.bl.uk/careers. 

Closing Date: 14 August 2018

Interviews will be held on 29 August 2018.

It’s August and time for the harvest. Don’t know what to do? Never fear! This 1000-year-old calendar provides step-by-step instructions for cutting and collecting grain in the form of an illustration at the bottom of the page for August. This calendar is one of only two surviving calendars from pre-Norman England to be illustrated with agricultural scenes. To learn more about it, please see our earlier blogpost.

Page for August, from a calendar made in southern England in the 1st half of the 11th century: Cotton MS Julius A VI, f. 6v

Step 1: Cut the stalks with your sickle. We recommend an iron sickle, available in any good medieval emporium.

Step 2: Pass the loose stalks to a friend who has rope to tie them together.

Step 3: Carry the stalks to a nearby cart.

Step 4: Toss the stalks to the man with a pitchfork next to the cart.

Step 5: The man with the pitchfork will collect the harvest in the cart.

In this image, the harvesting is being overseen by a figure with a spear and a dramatically billowing cape who blows a horn. The horn was written over by some of the Greek letters used in calendrical calculations that are listed in columns in this calendar. 

The original users of this calendar would have appreciated this image for more than its literal depiction of the harvest. This calendar was probably made for a monastic community, and many of the agricultural tasks coincided with metaphors used in the Bible. There were many Biblical stories about harvesting grain with sickles, particularly in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation. The first users of this calendar may have seen a deeper meaning in this illustration, as well as a reflection of daily life.

Detail of harvesting: Cotton MS Julius A VI, f. 6v

The month of August was not all work and no fun. The users of this calendar marked out four feast days with gold crosses. These were probably not the only feast days celebrated in August, as the verses next to each day in the calendar were composed at least a century before this calendar was made, and new feasts had been popularised by the time the calendar was being made in the 11th century. On 10 August, a gold cross singles out the day 'St Laurence caught fire'. Laurence was said to have been roasted on a gridiron by his tormentors. 

The martyrdom of St Laurence, from the Caligula Troper, western England, 11th century: Cotton MS Caligula A XIV, f. 25r

The Assumption of the Virgin, when Mary was taken into Heaven, was commemorated on 15 August and marked in gold. 25 August is also marked out, but this may be a mistake for 24 August, the feast of St Bartholomew. St Bartholomew's feast is marked in other 11th-century English calendars, including the Tiberius Work Calendar (Cotton MS Tiberius B V/1), which includes the same poem as and similar illustrations to the Julius Work Calendar. St Bartholomew was martyred by being flayed, but the calendar says merely 'on 24 August, Bartholomew migrated to eternity'. The last feast singled out on this page was the beheading of St John the Baptist, commemorated on 29 August. The text notes that John's head was cut off 'with a sharp sword'. 

The whole calendar has been digitised thanks to the The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project. Happy harvesting! 

Alison Hudson

Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval

 

Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project

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