More Leaves from ‘Otto Ege Manuscript 51’
August 10, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition
Detached Leaves from Otto Ege’s
Erfurt Manuscript of
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
in Latin Translation on Paper
Continuing our series on Manuscript Studies, Mildred Budny newly identifies 2 detached leaves, in separate collections, from a paper manuscript dispersed by Otto F. Ege (1888–1951). Containing parts of the text of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics in medieval Latin translation, the leaves formerly belonged to a copy prepared at Erfurt in Thuringia in Germany, and dated by colophon to 1365 C.E.
Detached leaves from this book were distributed, in part, through one or another of Ege’s series of Portfolio editions of individual specimen leaves extracted from manuscripts and printed books. Earlier blogposts have examined cases from Ege’s Portfolios of Fifty Original Leaves (1930–1950) and Famous Bibles (1938 and 1949). They report the discoveries of a New Leaf respectively from Ege Manuscript 41, from Ege Manuscript 8, from Ege Manuscript 61, and from Ege Manuscript 14. Now it is the turn of “Ege Manuscript 51” and the Portfolios of Original Leaves from Famous Books (1923 and 1949), in which its Aristotelian specimens normally appeared as their Leaf Number 2.