Juvenal; Horace, Ars poetica

Title

Juvenal; Horace, Ars poetica

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 192

Place of origin

Italy

Date

s. xv med.

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (FSOS/FHHF).

Physical extent

Fols. i + 90+ i (numbered fol. ii).

Hands

Written in Italian humanistic bookhand(probably a single hand becoming more cursive as the book progresses). Punctuation by pointat line ends and the caesura; occasional double point , virgula, and punctus elevatus at the cesura.

Decoration

Rather crude painted initials at divisions: a 7-line gold one on blue, red, and green ground at the head of item 1.

Individual satires introduced by 2-line gold capitals on similar grounds, the overwhelming number unfilled blanks.

Lines in decorative capitals to introduce texts.

Headings in red between the two texts, and frequently (with fading) between Juvenal’s individual satires, the last example on fol. 48.

See AT, no. 974 (101).

Binding

Dark brown leather, with a plain fillet, s. xvi/xvii, remounted over millboards. Sewn on three thongs. Holes in both boards from two pairs of ties to close the book. At the head of the spine gold ‘192’, in black ink along the leading edges. Pastedowns marbled paper, a College bookplate on the front pastedown.

At both front and rear, a single modern paper flyleaf (the rear fol. ii).

Provenance

An erased mark of ownership ‘Ivvenalis ipse Io ’ (fol. 90vat mid page, s. xv ex.).

‘Sum Ben Jonsonij ex dono D Jo Radcliffe equ Aurati’ (fol. 1, upper margin). Listed among Jonson’s five MSS by C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, Ben Jonson I (Oxford, 1925), 262–3, along with our MS 87.