Virgil, Eclogues and Georgics; Italy (Ferrara), 1456?

Title

Virgil, Eclogues and Georgics; Italy (Ferrara), 1456?

Shelfmark

Christ Church MS. 114

Place of origin

Italy (Ferrara)

Date

1456?

Language

Latin

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Parchment (FSOS).

Physical extent

Fols: v (numbered fols i-iii, 1–2) + 48 (numbered fols 3–50) + iii (numbered fols 51–53). All flyleaves paper added with added with binding (the very first and very last marbled), except last two at front which are medieval parchment (fols 1, 2). (to the bounds, not the line ends)

Hands

Written in the same littera antiqua as our MS 113, ie by Matteo Contugi.

Punctuated much more lightly than the preceding manuscript, by occasional point, double point, punctus elevatus, and punctus interrogativus.

Decoration

Headings in small capitals, and introductions to texts in combinations of small capitals and text style. At the openings of the two texts, ten- and eight-line a bianchi girari initial (fol. 3, 10 line; fol. 16, 8 line), the capital in gold leaf on blue, red, and green, with a dense pattern of three white dots; that at fol. 3 extended into a corner border in the same flower and vine design. These are in the same style as MS 113, fol. 2, and thus are by the artist who also illuminated Oxford: Corpus Christi College, MS 79. At the openings of the individual eclogues and the verses at the heads of books of the Georgics (along with a few internal divisions in the books), two-line alternate red and blue Roman square capitals.

Binding

The companion to our MS 113, differing in that there are geometrical designs on the spine. Sewn on five thongs. On the spine ‘M.S. Virgilii Bucolic. Georgic. Liber 1456’.

Provenance

Although undated and unsigned, this manuscript is certainly the companion volume to MS 113 and, indeed, they were once bound as one, as is shown by a couple of factors. First, there is the shape of the opening flyleaf of this manuscript and the closing flyleaf of MS 113 – smaller than the other folios, with shared dimensions (255 × 160mm) – and the placing of the annotations – on the recto of the opening flyleaf here and mainly on the verso of the closing flyleaf in MS 113. This suggests that these flyleaves were originally conjoint and wrapped around all the quires of what are now two codices. Second, there is an overlap in annotations: the script at MS 113, fol. 158 adds text here at fol. 12v-13 and one of the notes at the front flyleaf (reading: ‘Dum tempus habemus operimur bonum | Sola virtus’). The implication of this evidence, however, is that they were bound not in the order that we would expect: rather, it would appear that this manuscript preceded MS 113, so that the order of works was Eclogae, Georgica, Æneid, with the coat-of-arms opening the third item. This may not have been what Contugi himself expected: as is made clear in the two descriptions, each manuscript has leaf signatures beginning with a quire ‘a’. That the two manuscripts, then, were produced as separate fascicules means there can be a scintilla of doubt about the year in which this one was produced, though it should be noted that, for both sections, the parchment is ruled identically, and that the same illuminator was employed. With such similarities, it was unsurprising that the two fascicules were made into one codex. Presumably an eighteenth-century owner (John Moore?) who found the works thus joined together was offended by the order the texts had taken and so had them divided at the point of re-binding. The fact that the title on the spine of this manuscript gives a year of production, when one is not included on its folios, strongly suggests that the parts were still together at the point they received their present bindings and that the date of the colophon in MS 113 was taken to refer to the whole.

There are some other Latin verses and pentrials at fol. 1 (eg a partially erased note ‘ vadunt ad septimam…’, rubricated, s. xv2, and ‘Sepius at me si me licida [sic] formosae revisas...’, s. xvex), but no further hint to early provenance.

This manuscript was donated to ChCh at the same time as MS 113; the inscription provided there is repeated here in the same hand (that is, by Edward Smallwell), with the succeeding shelfmark: ‘C.2. | D.D. Joannes Moore S.T.P. hujusce Ædis Canonicus, & Sub-Decanus. An. 1766.’; on Moore, see our MS 113, and for the shelfmark, see Appendix IV.