Thomas Aquinas De Principiis naturae, on the principles of nature, and other works, and Albertus Magnus, De Anima and De intellectu et intelligibili, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Italy, late fifteenth century]

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

155 leaves (including an original endleaf at each end), 194mm. by 135mm., apparently complete, first few gatherings restored along gutter disturbing original gathering structures, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century foliation, single column, c.36 lines in dark brown ink in a small semi-secretarial semi-humanistic hand, texts opening and closing with lines of ornamental capitals (some touched in red and blue), rubrics and paragraph marks in red, spaces left for initials (many filled in nineteenth-century, and other initials added to with gilding and foliate borders at same time, small gilt marginal drawings also a later addition), some ink flaking from a few badly prepared pages, a few leaves purple spotted with mould, first endleaf and much of volume from fol.100 to end on palimpsest vellum recovered from fifteenth-century liturgical manuscripts, small repaired hole in fol.152, marks and holes on endleaves from four iron bosses on earlier binding, else fine condition, nineteenth-century carved leather over wooden boards, with a Cross and Crown of Thorns surrounded by foliage within a central panel on both boards, some creases at spine, two plaited leather clasps, fitted leather covered case (cracking at corners)

Provenance

provenance

(1) Written in the late fifteenth century, perhaps by an Italian Dominican friar for his own use.

(2) Richard Caton (1842-1926), Professor of Physiology, University College Liverpool 1882-1891, and Lord Mayor of Liverpool 1907-08: his bookplate dated 1914 inside front board.

(3) Professor H. A. Ormerod (1884-1964) of Newberry; perhaps bought for £30: handwritten bookseller’s ticket in case; and by descent.

Catalogue Note

text

This is a large collection of the works of two fundamentally important medieval theologians and philosophers, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) and Albertus Magnus (1193/1206-80), both Dominican priests and doctors of the Church. It opens with Aquinas’ greatest work, De Principiis naturae (fol.1r), composed c.1255, and many of his shorter compositions follow, including the Tractatus de Universalibus (fol.16r), the De natura accidentis (fol.19r), the De Motu Cordis (fol.23r), the De aeternitate mundi (fol.28v), the De Quatuor Oppositis (fol.31r) and the De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (fol.54v). These are followed by the complementary De Anima (fol.125r) of Albertus Magnus, and his tractates De intellectu et intelligibili (fol.134r).