Antoninus Florentinus, Omnis mortalium cura, a confessional, in Italian, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy, c.1450-60]

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

114 leaves, 140mm. by 100mm., complete, collation: i-xii¹⁰, xiii⁴, catchwords, single column, 23 lines in dark brown ink in an angular Italian late gothic bookhand with pronounced wedges at the end of ascenders, one initial ‘O’ opening the text, in gold with green banding at four corners, pink infill containing a flowerbud, all on blue ground, spaces left for other initials, ink flaking from a few pages, large erasure in bas-de-pas of fol.1r, eighteenth- or nineteenth-century “227” on front endleaf, some small spots, else excellent condition, nineteenth-century binding of marbled boards with gilt-tooled red morocco corners and spine, paper label “921” at foot of spine

Provenance

provenance

(1) Written for practical use, most probably for an itinerant Dominican preacher, perhaps once named in the partially erased inscription on the last endleaf: “Istud confessionale pertinent ad …”.

(2) Liberia Cavalia of Bologna, their catalogue of April 1934, no.3: sale ticket pasted to front endleaf; most probably to the owner of the armorial bookplate inside the front pastedown.

Catalogue Note

text

St. Anthony (1389-1459) entered the Dominican order in 1405 at the age of sixteen at the new priory in Fiesole, and was given the habit by John Dominici, the founder of the community. Later he held responsibilities for houses of the order in Cortona, Naples, Rome and Florence, uniting these from 1433-46 as the new Dominican Congregation of Tuscany. He was closely involved in the establishment of the Priory of St Mark in Florence, who counted Cosimo de' Medici among their inmates, and who had frescos by Fra Angelico decorating the cells of the priory. He was consecrated Archbishop of Florence on 13 March 1446, and returned to producing practical guides for the clergy, finishing this confessional as well as its sister-works the Defecerunt and the Curam illius habe. All three were united later in Latin as the Summa confessionalis. These works were seminal in their field, and used by the clergy for centuries. He was proclaimed a saint in 1523.

The present manuscript stands among the earliest extant manuscripts, definitively preceded only by Rome, Vatican, BAV., Barberini MS.3928 (which is dated 1429 and seems to represent the earliest draft of the work), and contemporary with Florence, Riccardiana ms.1508; Rovigo, Academy of Concordi, Silvestriano ms.329; Verona, Municipal Library, mss.530 and 1225-1226; and Harvard, Houghton Library, MS. Ital.39, all of which date to within the author’s lifetime or the years immediately following. The Schoenberg database lists only one other as coming to the open market: that of the sale of the library of the comte Dimitri Boutourlin in 1840 (lot 162).