Description
32 leaves (including parts of 3 bifolia), comprising: (a) Cicero, De Divinatione I:11-12, part of the top of a leaf, 172mm. by 75mm., remains of 8 lines in black ink in a humanist cursive, with several contemporary corrections of clumsy scribal mistakes, somewhat wormed at base, Italy, c.1450; (b) fragment from the opening leaf of a monumental Atlantic Bible, 276mm. by 162mm., with remains of 36 lines in brown ink in a fine rounded early gothic hand, small initials in red, remains of first lines "[In princi]pio [creavi]t Deus [caelum et terra]m", in large ornamental capitals (12mm. high), Italy, twelfth century; (c) leaf from a noted Breviary, 176mm. by 153mm., with 9 lines of music on a 4-line red stave (a notably early example of the use of the Guidonian stave in England), rubrics, simple red initials, England, c.1200; (d) fragment of a Bible (I Chronicles, 20:3-5), 320mm. by 200mm., Italy, thirteenth century; (e) leaf from Justinian, Institutes, II, 20:32, 345mm. by 209mm., with one blue initial with trailing red penwork, Italy, thirteenth century, and another fragment from a Glossed Canon Law text, 219mm. by 315mm., Italy, fourteenth century; (f) a leaf from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, 299mm. by 200mm., 60 lines in rounded script, Italy, c.1300, and two halves of leaves from a near-contemporary Summa contra gentiles by the same author, each 195mm. by 150mm.; (g) fragment of a bifolium from the Golden Legend, 340mm. by 168mm., Italy, thirteenth century; (h) a small fragment of a Parisian Bible (opening Tobit), 225mm. by 77mm., France, thirteenth century; (i) bifolium perhaps from a private devotional book, with calculation tables in red and blue, southern Netherlands, fifteenth century; (j) 14 pieces of seven liturgical volumes, predominantly Italian, twelfth- to fifteenth-century; and leaves from three medieval Hebrew manuscripts containing Rashi's commentary on Daniel and readings for Yom Kippur, Ashkenaz, fourteenth to fifteenth century; all recovered from bindings and somewhat defective
Catalogue Note
Cicero's De Divinatione (concerning divination) was composed as a dialogue between the author and his brother, Quintus, and was most probably finished in 45 BC. The lines here are part of a lengthy quotation of one of Cicero's own poems, composed during his consulship of 30 BC., which survives only as this fragment within De Divinatione and in three other excerpts of only a line or two. It begins with the variant reading "Nec non excessum ..." (instead of the more correct "Ni prius excelsum ...") and this points towards a north European exemplar (see Teubner edition by Plasberg and Ax, 1938, recording the similar "nepos excesum ..." and "ni post excessum ..."), rather than Florence, Laurentius S. Marco, MS.257, from which almost all Italian copies originate.
