Verses on the Passion of Christ, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum

12 leaves (3 blank), 225mm. by 160mm., wanting a leaf or two at the beginning, collation: i-iii^{4, written space 146mm. by 80mm., 27 lines in a fine humanistic hand, sections of text marked by headings in red in margin, paragraph marks in either burnished gold with blue penwork tracery or plain red ink, occasional small corrections throughout, repairs to upper right hand corners of leaves throughout, some discolouration to first two leaves and small central area of leaves 4-6, else in excellent condition and on fine vellum with wide and clean margins, in eighteenth-century binding of brown leather, profusely gilt-tooled}

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing where appropriate.
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The verses here cover the narrative of the Passion, beginning with Christ before Pontius Pilate. The seven-line colophon, while not recorded elsewhere, is of some interest as it addresses a king: "Accipe Rex triumphantissime munusculum meum ex animo ..." comparing his majesty to Caesar, and expounding on his numerous virtues. It is conceivable that this is the sole surviving copy of an otherwise unrecorded humanistic work for a monarch such as the king of Aragon (either John II, 1458-79, or more probably Ferdinand II, 1479-1516, who was also king of Sicily and Naples, and was the patron of Christopher Columbus). The library of those monarchs passed to Ferdinand, duke of Calabria, in the late fifteenth century, and a library catalogue of c.1550 records a volume entitled 'Thesoro de la Pasion de Christo' among the volumes there (T. de Marinis, La Biblioteca Napoletana dei Re D'Aragona, 1947, ii: p.222).