Specimens of Ege Manuscript 40 in the Ege Family Portfolio
March 19, 2021 in Manuscript Studies, Uncategorized
Specimens of the Aquinas Manuscript in Humanist Script
(Ege Manuscript 40)
in the ‘Ege Family Portfolio’
— Part III of III in the series on this manuscript —
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, FOL Set 3, MS 40, Specimen 1: folio ‘1’r, Bottom Center. Photography Mildred Budny.
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Book I of Peter Lombard’s Sentences
Written in Latin on vellum
Italy, probably late 15th Century (circa 1475)
Circa 288 × 210 mm <Written area circa 178 × 130 mm>
Double columns of 37 lines
in Humanist Script (with Gothic Features)
*****
Folios ‘1’ and 216
[1] Super Sententiis, Prooemium (to Ipse dedit quosdam)
and
[2331] Super Sent., Liber 1, Distinctio 32, Quaestio 2, Articulo 2 (qc. 1 co), to [2341] Distinctio 33, Quaestio 1, Articulo 1 (arg. 2)
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, FOL Set 3, MS 40, Specimen 2 = Folio 216v, Top Left. Photography Mildred Budny.
Previously, in exploring the Portfolio of Famous Books assembled by Otto F. Ege, we examined the 15th-century Aquinas Manuscript whose dismembered specimens appear in 2 of his Portfolios. See
- Part I: Otto Ege’s “Aquinas Manuscript in Humanist Script” (Ege Manuscript 40).
- Otto Ege Manuscript 40, Part II: Before and After Ege
Now we reach Part III of III.
Known as Ege Manuscript 40 from its assigned number in the Portfolio of Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Western Manuscripts (“FOL”), its leaves also joined Ege’s Portfolio of Famous Books in Nine Centuries (“FBNC”) as the 6th Manuscript Specimen (of 6). By virtue of its FOL position, it appears in the Handlist of Otto Ege’s Manuscripts (2016), as no. 40 (pp. 131–132 etc.).
Humanist Script and Book-Production
Its case pertains to the notable genre of Humanist Manuscripts, which emerged in Italy from the early 15th century onwards. Illustrated descriptions of the origins and development of Humanist(ic) Script include:
- Humanistic Script, via Digitized Medieval Manuscripts, and
- Humanist Minuscule, via Wikipedia.
Displays of such books include:
- The Humanistic Book at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Otto Ege Collection, FOL Set 3, MS 40, Specimen 1: folio ‘1’r, Top Left. Photography Mildred Budny.
There, we find a concise description of the phenonemon (I emphasize several elements in red).
In Italy in the early fifteenth century a revolution took place in the script and decoration of the manuscript book, first in Florence, and very soon after in the rest of the peninsula. It involved the rediscovery of classical texts, the revival of ancient literature as a central element of the curriculum, the reform of Latin spelling, and a new style of writing, called by its contemporaries littera antica and known to us today as ‘humanistic script’.
The new type of book received a new style of decoration. At first, it was limited to the white-vine scrolls meandering around birds, butterflies, and chubby little boys, the ubiquitous putti. But by the mid-fifteenth century, illuminators were experimenting with three-dimensional images corresponding to the antiquarian passions of Humanist scholars and collectors. Ancient inscriptions, jewels, and archaeological finds inspired the illusionistic monumental frontispieces and architectural title pages, one of the most lasting contributions of the Humanistic manuscript to book design.
As they come into view, more leaves from the fragmented Ege Manuscript 40 allow its case to assume its proper place within the robust tradition of Humanist script and book-production. Now we focus upon the special contributions which its leaves in the ‘Ege Family Portfolio’ can make to a fuller understanding of its origin and history.
A Leaf from Gregory’s Dialogues Reused for Euthymius
December 24, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition, Uncategorized
A Leaf from Gregory’s Dialogues
Reused for Binding
A Copy of
Euthymius Zigabenus’s On the Psalms
Budny Handlist 3
In our blog on Manuscript Studies (see its Contents List), Mildred Budny (see Her Page) continues to report the results of research for her Illustrated Handlist.
Here, we focus upon a leaf plucked from its 12th-century manuscript and pressed into service, with trimmed edges and mitered folds, as the vellum covering for a binding for a different text of small format. Both texts, primary and secondary in the life of the leaf, concern religious subjects, but they emanate from authors of different dates, locations, and languages in the Latin West and the Orthodox East respectively. The primary text represents a remnant of a text and an author familiar in some other blogposts, which consider the Dialogues, the Sermons or Homilies, and other texts by Pope Gregory the Great (pope from 590 to 694 CE).
Handlist 3, Recto
Handlist 3, Verso
Part of Gregory’s Dialogues, Book III, Chapter 7
(on Andreas, Bishop of Fondi/Fundi):
Sections 2 (Hic namque uenerabilis uir) –
8 (uel quae in conuentu)
Present measurements:
Circa 357 × 237 mm
< written area circa 266 × 133 mm >
Single column of 28 lines
in revived Caroline minuscule
without embellishments
Germany, circa 1175
Reused for some time as the vellum cover for the binding of a copy of
Euthymius Zigabenus‘s Commentary on the Psalms
in Greek or in Latin translation?
(now lost or preserved elsewhere in a location unknown)
For this secondary use, the remnants of a set of titles on the outside of the spine of the cover (the original verso of the reused leaf) remain in place, albeit abraded and fragmented, as both a pasted, inscribed paper label (orientated along the ‘horizontal’ across the spine) and an ink inscription on the reused leaf itself in Capitals (‘vertical’, with the tops of those letters turned toward the ‘front cover’). Another, smaller and fragmentary pasted label with a broad rectangular border stands near the bottom of the broad spine of the cover and partly overlies the ‘vertical’ spine inscription.
Acquired, probably by purchase (according to the Owner’s recollections), in France in the past 15 years or so, but before 2007 when I first saw and began to photograph the leaf. This item and others in the Illustrated Handlist acquired in France at various times and by various means (purchase, gift, or exchange), came from a single source in the Département of Saône-et-Loire, from about 1999 onward. Because the leaf does not carry indications of its original place and time of production, apart from its materials, layout, design, script, orthography, and punctuation, those unknowns must depend upon evaluations of the style of the script, lacking any forms of embellishment, such as decorated initials, which might have provided possibly more closely datable symptoms than the letters “alone”.
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Tags: 'Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts', Binding History, Bishop Andrew of Fundi, Budny's Illustrated Catalogue, Ege Manuscript 41, Euthymius Zigabenos, Fondi, Gregory the Great, Gregory's Dialogues, manuscript fragments, Manuscript Fragments Reused in Bindings, Manuscript studies, Psalter Commentary, Saki, Temple of Apollo
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