Album Amicorum Alchemy Anthologies & Miscellanies Astronomy Bibles & Bible Commentaries Biographies Books of Hours Breviaries Calligraphy & Writing Manuals Carthusians Chivalric Orders Chronicles Church Fathers Cistercians Devotio Moderna Dictionaries Documents & Charters Dominicans Drama & Theatre Fables & Bestiaries Franciscans Games Gastronomy Grammar & Rhetoric Heraldry & Genealogy Herbals Horses & Veterinary Sciences Humanism Hybrid Liturgy Magic Mathematics Miniature Books Missals Pharmacology Poetry Prints Psalters Reformation Religious Orders Romances Saint Lives Scholasticism Sermons Travel & Voyages Women Studies     22 manuscripts   [Register of Toll Charges for Tarascon, Lo registre del peage de Tarascon] In Provençal with some Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment Southern France, Provence (Tarascon-sur-Rhône), c. 1385-1400     Earliest known copy of the toll registers for Tarascon in southern France in an original binding and written in Provençal, which in itself renders the manuscript extremely scarce.  Of immeasurable importance for the history of local taxation and commerce and for philological and linguistic studies, the present manuscript - a working copy for daily use - differs, sometimes substantially, from the edited, and later, record of the text.       Vegetius, De re militari or Epitoma rei militaris In Latin, decorated manuscript on paper Germany, ca. 1400-1440     This treatise on warfare written in the late fourth century by Vegetius was widely copied in the Middle Ages and translated into French, Italian, English, German, and Spanish. From Antiquity to modern times, it enjoyed great popularity. The present fifteenth-century copy is noteworthy not only for its excellent condition, but also for the careful contemporary corrections to the text; it is besides one of the very few not studied by the modern editor, M. Reeve. Although numerous medieval copies of the text survive, only four are recorded in American libraries, and worldwide very few copies are in private collections.       GONÇALES DE VEGA, Gonçalo [Notario de Avila] In Spanish and Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment [Spain, Avila, dated August 1415]     An interesting historical document, intact, in its original attractive green-dyed binding, and of relatively luxurious composition, with gold leaf illumination. Recording in extensive detail a land dispute and penned by a royal secretary, the codex has considerable linguistic interest (the language is Castilian Spanish) and legal import for the region of Avila under the reign of King Ferdinand I.       PSEUDO-JOACHIM, ANSELM OF MARISCO, et al., Vaticinia de summis pontificibus In Latin, illuminated manuscript on paper [Italy, Tuscany, c. 1440]     Previously unknown copy of the mystical series of prophecies, derived from the Leo Oracles, that commingle fantasy, the occult, and history in a chronology of the popes. Executed in Florence, during the exile there of the Roman Curia, our manuscript can be specifically connected to the stormy pontificate of Pope Eugene IV through unusual textual and pictorial elements. Only four copies of this rare work are in North American collections, and the last copy to appear at auction was in 1989.       [Statuti della Compagnia dei Brentatori di Bologna] [Statutes regulating the Wine Trade and Transportation in Bologna] In Italian, manuscript on parchment Italy, Bologna, after 1416, c. 1450     Apparently unpublished and possibly unique copy of the Statutes and recommendations regulating the wine trade and transportion in 15th century Bologna, this handsome manuscript contributes to the history of guilds in Emilia Romagna, as well as to the history of everyday commerce, taxation, municipal supplies, and victuals. Likely based on a still-unidentified Latin source, the manuscript merits further study in comparison to the holdings in Italian archives. It offers fascinating information and interesting anecdotes on the sale and use of wine in medieval Italy.       TWINGER VON KÖNIGSHOFEN, JAKOB, Chronik In German, manuscript on paper Eastern France (Alsace), c. 1455 (additions, 1542-1566)     Called the “first German prose history of the world in Upper Germany,” this engaging work fuses the world chronicle with the local history of Strasbourg and Alsace. It was written expressly for the cultivated laity and achieved great success in the later Middle Ages. There is no modern critical edition, taking into account the c. 82 manuscripts, and the present copy combining features of all three versions of the text and original, perhaps unique, additions merits further study. Copies are exceptionally rare on the market.       Frederick III of Hapsburg, Letters Patent for Hans Zscheggenbürlin In German, manuscript on parchment Austria, [Wiener] Neustadt, May 28, 1456     This is an excellent example of a type of document that originates in the fourteenth century and became more common in later centuries, a letters patent, granting nobility or heraldry (in this case heraldry) to an individual favored by the imperial court. Not all such documents are as skillfully illuminated as the present example. The recipient of this document was an important and colorful personage at a critical moment in the history of Basel.       SANCTUS CYPRIANUS CARTHAGINENSIS, Epistulae et varia opera In Latin, manuscript on parchment [Italy, northern? c. 1460-1475]     Attractive unrecorded humanist copy of Cyprianus's Correspondence accompanied by at least fourteen other works, unsigned but written by an individualistic and accomplished scribe and handsomely decorated, with many variations from the editio princeps of 1471 and with marginal notes and annotations that merit further study.       PLUTARCH, Pompei viri illustris vita [Life of Pompey] , Latin translation by Antonius Tudertinus Pacinus [or Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia] In Latin, decorated manuscript on paper Northern Italy, Lombardy, perhaps Ferrara or Mantova?, c. 1470-80     Containing Plutarch’s life of Pompey the Great, the Roman republican hero often hailed as an antagonist of tyranny, this is one of about 50 recorded Renaissance manuscripts of the Latin translation from the Greek original completed by either Antonius Tudertinus Pacinus or Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia. The present manuscript provides testimony that the lives continued to circulate independently in manuscript form, even after their assembly into one common collection.       MARTINUS POLONUS [MARTIN OF TROPPAU or OPPAVIENSIS], Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum [Italian translation: Cronica degli pontifici e degli imperatori In Italian, decorated manuscript on paper Italy, Veneto [Vicenza], dated 1472     Dated copy of Martin of Troppau’s tremendously popular Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatorum in an Italian translation written by an unrecorded scribe, Dom Lodovigo da Cha da Fan, who was perhaps also its translator. There is no modern critical edition, and the relationship between the vernacular and the Latin copies remains to be fully studied (among the hundreds of extant Latin manuscripts only 5 copies are recorded in North American collections).       MICHAEL PACIS, Epistola responsiva [Letter on the Turkish Threat to Christendom] In Latin, manuscript on paper Northern Italy (Veneto?), letter dated Padua 1 May 1472     Unpublished and unrecorded bellicose letter against the threat posed by the Ottoman Empire to the Italian peninsula, composed by a monk from Trieste and addressed to a jurist-rector at Padua. Belonging to a genre of letters for and against war with the Turks, this letter deserves further study within its greater historical and cultural context not only on the renewed Crusade but also for European attitudes toward the Turks (Muslims) in the centuries following Marco Polo.       CARAFA, Diomede (1406?-1487), De boni principis officiis [De regentis et boni principis officiis], translation from the Italian by Battista Guarini In Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment Italy, Ferrara (or perhaps Naples?), after 1473, c. 1480-1500     Handsomely illuminated and elegantly written, this previously unknown humanist manuscript contains a copy of a text on governing by the Neapolitan Diomede Carafa in its second Latin translation signed by the humanist scholar Battista Guarini. Four other recorded manuscripts are in public institutions in Italy. This copy was most likely made in Ferrara where the dedicatee and commissioner of the translation, Eleonora de Aragon, held court and helped govern the Duchy--hence her interest in political treatises on the art of governing.       Terrier [Land-Holdings] of the Town of Karben (Hesse, Germany) In German, manuscript on parchment Germany, Karben, 1483     This is an excellent example of a “terrier” or land record for the town of Karben, which was an important center near the Rhine in medieval Germany. The important Order of the Teutonic Knights, cited frequently in the manuscript, were based in Kloppenheim (modern-day Karben). In addition to facilitating the study of diplomatics, paleography, and seigniorial administration, the document is rich in local history, full of references to the geography and toponymy of the area and to the citizens living there.       JACOBUS DE CESSOLIS, Le jeu des eschaz moralizé [French translation from the Latin by Jean Ferron of the Liber super ludo scaccorum] In French, decorated manuscript on paper Northern France or Belgium, Hainaut? Namur?, c. 1485-1500     This is one of only 10 manuscripts of a group A’ of the Jean Ferron translation into French of the Latin Cessolis. Although there are around 80 copies total of the various French versions (divided into 3 groups), manuscripts are nevertheless surprisingly rare on the market, the Schoenberg database recording only two in the last three decades and no other copies from this group. The initial alluding to the dedicatee of the Ferron text, Bertrand Aubert de Tarascon, appears to be unique in the illustrated tradition.       BARTOLOMEUS BOLOGNINUS, Commentary on the Imperial Constitution “Authentica Habita” (1154-1155) [Repetita commentatio super Autentica Constitutione Habita] In Latin, decorated manuscript on paper Italy, Bologna, dated 12 January 1492     This the only known manuscript of a legal commentary on the Imperial Constitution promulgated in 1155 by Frederick Barbarossa in a dedication copy to Giovanni II Bentivoglio dated 1492. Considered a landmark for the development of medieval universities, the Constitution ensured juridical privileges, rights, and protection to students and masters of Bologna. Unedited and written in the hand of a little-studied author Bartolomeo Bolognini, the commentary merits fuller study in the light of the debates that animated the school of law in fifteenth-century Bologna.       [Commonplace Book of Romain Lenon] In Latin, manuscript on paper Castres, France; 1499 or later [early 16th century]     A fascinating “ledger-format” pocket-sized Commonplace Book, signed numerous times by the scribe and owner Romain Lenon of Péronne, a monk of the Celestine monastery of St. Peter’s, Castres, whose two main texts are surprising bedfellows (one legal, the Decretals, the other theological, Gregory’s commentary on Ezekiel), and whose numerous additional texts reveal Romain’s interest in recent French history, romance, and elephants, among other subjects.       Statutes and Membership Lists of the Kalands Brethren (the Kalendenbroederschap) of Groningen In Dutch, manuscript on parchment The Netherlands, Groningen, 1501-1506, with additions to 1590     This manuscript is an exceptional record of the religious and civic life of a prosperous Dutch town during a century of tumultuous political and religious change. It includes the rules of the confraternity, a record of their property, and notes on the food served at their annual feasts, as well as the names of both the living and the dead brethren. Memorial lists of this type for confraternities are uncommon. Although an earlier manuscript of the Brotherhood has been published, this later book includes unpublished material not found in the earlier book.       [Notarial Records of Pietro Gori Michelangelo] In Latin, manuscript on parchment [Italy, Siena, 1510-1521]     This manuscript contains a rich collection of the land-holdings, sales, and dowry records of the Sienese citizen Pietro Gori Michelangelo and his family.  Composed by five different notaries, the documents provide extensive details on the history of the family’s holdings and how these holdings fared through sales and transfers during the early sixteenth century.  Family history, legal history, women’s history, and notarial practices all merit further study through these entirely unpublished documents.       RICHERIUS SENONIENSIS [RICHER DE SENONES], Gesta Senoniensis Ecclesiae [Chronicle of the Abbey of Senones (Vosges)]; JEAN HERQUEL or HERCULANUS, Anthonii illustrissimi Lotharingie ducis vita [History of Antoine le Bon, Duke of Lorraine] In Latin, decorated manuscript on paper France, Lorraine [Vosges, Abbey of Moyenmoutier], dated 1539-1545 and 1599     Sixteenth-century copy of two rare Chronicles of local importance to the Benedictine Abbeys of Senones and Moyenmoutier in the Vosges, copied by a recorded scribe, and owned by a sequence of prominent canons of Saint-Dié. These abbeys were renowned for their important intellectual and scholarly activities, where the practice of copying and commentating local chronicles was maintained throughout the sixteenth and into the seventeenth centuries as a means of affirming and defending their identity.       [MARTIN DU BELLAY (1570-1637)], Aveu à Louis XIII pour la châtellenie d’Avrillé [Declaration of feudal holdings made to Louis XIII, king of France for the land of Avrillé] In French, illuminated manuscript on parchment France, Touraine [Château de Gizeux], 25-27 October 1610     Unpublished and unedited, the present manuscript of local and family history is an example of a “deluxe” copy of a common type of archival document, an “aveu,” a statement made by a vassal (or feudatory) to his lord of feudal holdings. Illuminated copies such as this one are rare, because the transcription normally served a simple and practical purpose, but here the feudatory chose the lavish format no doubt because of the very special nature of his lord, none other than the king of France.       MULIGIN, IGNATIO FRANCESCO, Il Trionfo d’applausi, e di glorie figurato di purissime lettere di sua altezza reale Maria Anna Christina Vittoria di Baviera Delfina di Francia, nel quale si contengono li seguenti versi, da leggersi nella figura con il microscopion In Italian, manuscript on paper, accompanied by a microscopic drawing (by Pierre Mignard?) [France, c. 1683-84]     Unpublished autograph of an unedited microscopic poem in the form of a drawing (by Pierre Mignard?) and accompanied by a book-length transcription, written by a previously unidentified figure in the papal circle for the Dauphine of France as a diplomatic act intended to influence the King. This extremely rare work (very few such microscopic compositions are extant) preserved in its original binding witnesses the early scientific impact of the microscope on visual and textual transmissions, in this case exploited in the service of state politics at the highest level and presenting a unique program of royal iconography hitherto unanalyzed.       Vaticinium Severi et Leonis Imperatorum [Oracles of Leo the Wise] In Latin and Spanish (title page only), illustrated manuscript on paper [Spain or Italy, dated 1701]     Although a copy of a printed book, the present manuscript contains a series of 16 finely executed drawings and testifies besides to the persistent interest in the sibylline prophecies concerning Byzantium, reinterpreted here in the context of the fall of the Ottoman Empire to show that the reign of Muslim domination has effectively passed.