The Courtenay Compendium (now Copenhagen, Royal Danish Library, Acc. 2011/5) is a medieval English manuscript containing a miscellany of historical texts. It contains three blocks of texts. The first concerns British and English history. The second has an oriental focus and contains accounts of Europeans in China, the Crusades, Islam and the rise of the Mongols. The third contains prophecies.
The manuscript is of the late 14th century. [1] It was probably created at Breamore Priory in Hampshire. It was acquired by the Earls of Devon of the House of Courtenay, whence its name. [2] It was rediscovered in the archives of Powderham Castle in Devon during the time of the 18th earl, Hugh Courtenay. [1] On 3 December 2008, it was auctioned by Sotheby's to a private dealer, who sold it at auction to the Royal Danish Library in March 2010. [2]
The compendium consists of 230 parchment leaves bound as a codex and measuring 272 by 190 millimetres (10.7 in × 7.5 in). Its contents are written entirely in the same hand, in cursive Anglicana script. The main text is dark brown, but there are initials and paragraph markers in red ink by a different scribe. [1] The manuscript was paginated in the early modern period, by which time some pages were out of order. Catchwords allow the proper order to be established. In the 18th century, the compendium was rebound. The cover is decorated with the Courtenay arms and the spine labelled VARIÆ TRACTATI MSS. [3]
The contents of the manuscript are grouped into three sections, with three blank pages separating the first two and a single blank page between the second and third. The first section concerns the history of Troy and Britain, the second concerns the Orient and the third is prophecies. The contents are: [4]
The compendium contains the only extant copy of the recension of the Encomium Emmae Reginae prepared for Edward the Confessor. [5]
Emma of Normandy was a Norman-born noblewoman who became the English, Danish, and Norwegian queen through her marriages to the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred the Unready and the Danish king Cnut the Great. The daughter of the Norman ruler Richard the Fearless and Gunnor, she was Queen of the English during her marriage to King Æthelred from 1002 to 1016, except during a brief interruption in 1013–14 when the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard occupied the English throne. Æthelred died in 1016, and Emma married Sweyn's son Cnut. As Cnut's wife, she was Queen of England from their marriage in 1017, Queen of Denmark from 1018, and Queen of Norway from 1028 until Cnut died in 1035.
Harold I, also known as Harold Harefoot, was regent of England from 1035 to 1037 and King of the English from 1037 to 1040. Harold's nickname "Harefoot" is first recorded as "Harefoh" or "Harefah" in the twelfth century in the history of Ely Abbey, and according to some late medieval chroniclers it meant that he was "fleet of foot".
Sweyn Forkbeard was King of Denmark from 986 until his death, King of England for five weeks from December 1013 until his death, and King of Norway from 999/1000 until 1013/14. He was the father of King Harald II of Denmark, King Cnut the Great, and Queen Estrid Svendsdatter.
Ælfgifu of Northampton was the first wife of Cnut the Great, King of England and Denmark, and mother of Harold Harefoot, King of England. She was regent of Norway from 1030 to 1035.
Vincent of Beauvais was a Dominican friar at the Cistercian monastery of Royaumont Abbey, France. He is known mostly for his Speculum Maius, a major work of compilation that was widely read in the Middle Ages. Often retroactively described as an encyclopedia or as a florilegium, his text exists as a core example of brief compendiums produced in medieval Europe.
The Gelasian Decree is a Latin text traditionally thought to be a Decretal of the prolific Pope Gelasius I, bishop of Rome from 492–496. The work reached its final form in a five-chapter text written by an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553, the second chapter of which is a list of books of Scripture presented as having been made part of the biblical canon by a Council of Rome under Pope Damasus I, the bishop of Rome from 366–383. This list is known as the Damasine List. The fifth chapter of the work includes a list of distrusted and rejected works not encouraged for church use.
Deeds of King Stephen or Acts of Stephen or Gesta Regis Stephani is a mid-12th-century English history by an anonymous author about King Stephen of England and his struggles with his cousin, Empress Matilda, also known as the "Empress Maud". It is one of the main sources for this period in the history of England.
The Decretum Gratiani, also known as the Concordia discordantium canonum or Concordantia discordantium canonum or simply as the Decretum, is a collection of canon law compiled and written in the 12th century as a legal textbook by the jurist known as Gratian. It forms the first part of the collection of six legal texts, which together became known as the Corpus Juris Canonici. It was used as the main source of law by canonists of the Roman Catholic Church until the Decretals, promulgated by Pope Gregory IX in 1234, obtained legal force, after which it was the cornerstone of the Corpus Juris Canonici, in force until 1917.
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in the 11th century.
The Paris Psalter is a Byzantine illuminated manuscript, 38 x 26.5 cm in size, containing 449 folios and 14 full-page miniatures. The Paris Psalter is considered a key monument of the so-called Macedonian Renaissance, a 10th-century renewal of interest in classical art closely identified with the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (909-959) and his immediate successors.
Encomium Emmae Reginae or Gesta Cnutonis Regis is an 11th-century Latin encomium in honour of the English queen Emma of Normandy. It was written in 1041 or 1042, probably by a monk of Saint-Omer, Normandy.
Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, usually printed together with the minor tractates of the Talmud, is a Jewish aggadic work probably compiled in the geonic era. Although Avot de-Rabbi Nathan is the first and longest of the "minor tractates", it probably does not belong in that collection chronologically, having more the character of a late midrash. In the form now extant it contains a mixture of Mishnah and Midrash, and may be technically designated as a homiletical exposition of the Mishnaic tractate Pirkei Avot, having for its foundation an older recension (version) of that tractate. It may be considered as a kind of "tosefta" or "gemarah" to the Mishna Avot, which does not possess a traditional gemarah. Avot de-Rabbi Nathan contains many teachings, proverbs, and incidents that are not found anywhere else in the early rabbinical literature. Other rabbinical sayings appear in a more informal style than what is found in Pirkei Avot.
Jean Garnier was a French Jesuit church historian, patristic scholar, and moral theologian.
Codex Campianus is designated as "M" or "021" in the Gregory-Aland cataloging system and as "ε 72" in the Von Soden system. It is a Greek uncial manuscript of the New Testament, dated palaeographically to the 9th century. The manuscript has complex contents. It has marginalia and was prepared for liturgical (religious) use.
Theatrum Chemicum is a compendium of early alchemical writings published in six volumes over the course of six decades. The first three volumes were published in 1602, while the final sixth volume was published in its entirety in 1661. Theatrum Chemicum remains the most comprehensive collective work on the subject of alchemy ever published in the Western world.
The Vita Ædwardi Regis qui apud Westmonasterium Requiescit or simply Vita Ædwardi Regis is a Latin biography of King Edward the Confessor completed by an anonymous author c. 1067 and suspected of having been commissioned by Queen Edith, Edward's wife. Due to insecure dating and authorship, the reference to a "queen" in the prologue, however, may just as well refer to Queen Matilda. It survives in one manuscript, dated c. 1100, now in the British Library. The author is unknown, but was a servant of the queen and probably a Fleming. The most likely candidates are Goscelin and Folcard, monks of St Bertin Abbey in St Omer.
The Tartar Relation is an ethnographic report on the Mongol Empire composed by a certain C. de Bridia in Latin in 1247. It is one of the most detailed accounts of the history and customs of the Mongols to appear in Europe around that time.
The Storia de Mahometh is a short anonymous polemical Latin biography of Muḥammad written from a Christian perspective, probably in al-Andalus between about 750 and 850. It contains the earliest known translation into Latin of any portion of the Qurʾān.
De Machometo is a brief anonymous Latin tract on the life of Muḥammad from a Christian point of view. It begins in the reign of Pope Boniface IV (608–615). Its account is cobbled together from a variety of sources, including the fifth dialogue of Petrus Alphonsi's Dialogi in quibus impiae Judaeorum confutantur, the Corozan legend and possibly the Libellus in partibus transmarinis de Machometi fallaciis from Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum historiale. The composite account is very similar to the account of Muḥammad found in the Golden Legend.
The Tractatus de ortu Tartarorum is a Latin treatise on the Mongols (Tartars), consisting of answers given by a Russian bishop named Peter to questions posed by Pope Innocent IV and the College of Cardinals in late 1244. The Tractatus originally circulated among the clergy assembled for the First Council of Lyon in 1245. It had a profound effect on the pope, convincing him to send embassies to the Mongols to negotiate peace.