TREATISE ON GRAMMAR, IN LATIN WITH ITALIAN SIDE-NOTES [ITALY, 15TH CENTURY, THIRD(?) QUARTER]

c.150x100mm, vellum, 129 leaves, collation: i10-1, ii-xiii10, the first leaf already missing by the time of the 16th-century inscriptions on f.1r, ink foliation 1-73, with leaf signatures a-n, 24 lines, c.95x50mm, written in a fine humanistic hand with rubrics, small initials, side-notes, and Italian translations in pale red, larger initials in blue, some rodent damage to margins not affecting text, the last two quires becoming detached, UNRESTORED CONTEMPORARY BINDING, sewn on three wide bands onto beech(?) boards covered with blind-tooled leather (worn and scuffed), metal fittings for two (missing) clasps, paper spine label inscribed ‘I / 260’

PROVENANCE (1) Probably written in Florence in October 1474: the copies at Yale (MS Marston 111) and Columbia University (Plimpton MS 136) are both attributed to Florence; a copy in Brussels (BR, II.1485) has a colophon dated November 1472 at Florence; the Columbia copy includes the date 21 August 1467 within the text, but 'septimo' is written over an erasure, and 'Mcccclxv' is written in the margin, suggesting that the scribe updated a 1465 exemplar; BL, Burney MS 316 also has the date 21 August 1467, while in the equivalent place (f.62v), the present copy has the date 20 October 1474. (2) Inscribed by a series of 16th- and 17th-century owners: ‘Ad usu[m] Io. Bat. Fernis(?)’ (f.1r); ‘Io forese foresi [ … ] maggio 1585’ (f.1r; also f.119r-v); ‘A di 12 di maggio io Pauolo Pertichelli ... 1630’ (f.90r; also f.119v). (3) Owned by a family from Tuscany for several generations.

TEXT

The text is an anonymous treatise which begins ‘Litera est uox que scribi potest individua …’, of which Bursill-Hall (Census of Medieval Latin Grammatical Manuscripts, 1981), records ten examples, all in institutions, including one annotated by the scholar and poet Politian (BL, Burney MS 316). The present volume starts at ‘Hic passer et hec aquila. incertum hic vel hec dies …’, and is divided into various sections such as ‘De verbo. Verbum est pars orationis …’, etc, ending ‘Praeter Noceo. Valeo. Placeo. Careo. Pateo. Liceo. Oleo. Taceo. Pareo. [D]oleo. etc.’; followed by a series of extracts (f.115r), from Cicero, Terence, Pliny, Jesus, Solomon, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory; Terence, Plautus, Cicero, Sallust, Lucan, Valerius Maximus, Virgil, and others, ending with Ovid, ‘ … Pectoris exceptis ingeniique bonis. DEO GRATIAS’ (f.129r).