Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures
ii (paper) + 109 + i (paper) folios on paper, watermark (a flower in the form of a tulip) a type found in Italy, similar to Briquet 6653 (Naples 1449 and 1443), and others, including Briquet 6644 (Rome 1443-1447 and Florence 1444-1446), modern foliation in pencil, top outer corner recto 1-110, numbering the second front flyleaf as f. 1, complete (collation i10 [beginning f. 2] iii-x10 xi10 [-10, final leaf, cancelled blank), no signatures, vertical catchwords, quires reinforced at beginning and middle with paper strips (justification 150-148 x 85-83 mm.), ruled mostly in blind, with a few folios ruled in lead (e.g. ff. 3v-4) with the top two and bottom two horizontal rules full across and with double full-length vertical bounding lines, written in a running humanistic script (approaching cursive) in 28 long lines, rubrics and marginal name references in red, initials in blue (4- to 2- lines, f. 30, 46v, 48, 66, 68, 850, ONE ILLUMINATED WHITE-VINE STEM INITIAL extending into border, some foxing and spotting, a few scattered wormholes, opening leaves darkened, some minor damp-staining top gutters, and damage to top gutter ff. 104-110v, but overall good condition with broad margins. Bound in eighteenth-century vellum over pasteboard, flat spine, red stain (from a title now missing?), marbled pastedowns, stained and rather dirty, partially split along back hinge with some of the spine missing, gaps at the joints. Dimensions 233 x 168 mm.
Humanist manuscripts from the Italian Renaissance have been treasured by scholars, readers, and collectors since the fifteenth century. This classical text by Cicero is a good example of why: composed for his own consolation in the wake of the death of his beloved daughter, it is copied in an attractive humanistic script, graced with a lovely white vine-stem initial, and survives with wide margins, original marginal side notes, and pointing hands and other notes added by subsequent readers. Signed and dated by the scribe, this manuscript has been owned by a long series of distinguished collectors, including the famous (or infamous) Guglielmo Libri and Sir Thomas Phillipps.
1. Copied by Pietro de Landini of Volterra (Petrus de Landino), who signed and dated the manuscript on f. 110, “M. T. Ciceronis Tusculanarum questionum liber quintus ex et ultimus explicit scriptus per me Petrum de Landinis Vulterranum Anno domini 14<6?>4” (Bénédictins de Bouveret, 1979, no 15,656). The third digit of the date has been changed to a “1,” but evidence of the script, style of the initial, and the watermark, allow us to conclude that the original reading was certainly not “1414,” and additionally suggest that this was copied in central Italy, most likely in Florence, for Petrus de Bargalglis (see below).
It is possible (perhaps very possible?), that our scribe was the brother of Cristoforo Landino (1424-1498), the celebrated commentator of Dante, humanist, and tutor of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother Giuliano, who studied at Volterra under Angiolo da Todi (this was previously suggested in the catalogue for the Libri sale in 1859; see below). Cristoforo’s brother Pietro died in 1474 fighting the Aragonese, a date which would provide a terminus ante quem for our manuscript (Pasetto, 1998, p. 186, noting that Cristoforo’s fourth child was named Pietro after his uncle).
The original owner of the manuscript was Petrus de Bargalglis; directly below the scribal colophon on f. 110, in the hand of the scribe (or possibly the rubricator, who also added side notes throughout the manuscript in the same pale red) is a contemporary ownership inscription, “Hic liber est Pauli de Bargalglis.” A previous description states that there is mention of a Paolo Bargagli in Siena in 1444 (citing Siena e il suo territorio nel Rinascimento, II, 1987, p. 38, a publication we were unable to consult), but certainly the Bargalgli family were a prominent one in Siena, recorded there since the early 13th century.
2. Original side notes in pale read, identifying names cited within the text, as well as maniculae (pointing hands) in red and black, and marginal scalloping marking noteworthy passages, proof of active readership by several people. There are several different types of pointing hands (cf. for example those on ff. 6, 8, and 17v) as well as different types of “nota” marks (cf. ff. 8v, 18, and 24v). Alternate readings are noted on ff. 2, 4, and 8; a longer, early marginal note on f. 66 is now partially erased. In addition to the side name notes, in book four, ff. 66v-67v, there are notes in black ink supplying the titles of works cited (i.e, alongside name of authors which are copied as before in red) and adding other notes.
3. 17th-century inscription on f.1v, evidence that the altered date in the colophon is not recent: “Continet Codex iste Ciceronis Questiones Tusculanas, scriptus fuit a Petro Landino anno 1414 - ut in fine habetur.”
4. Belonged to Aloisio (Luigi) Baroni (1726-1809), Servite monk; his ownership inscription on f. 2, lower margin, “Volumen 22 Bibliothecae F Aloysii de Baronis 1749.” Numerous books survive from this library (name variants, Aloysio Baroni; Luigi Baroni; Baroni Aloisio (Luigi) OSM) including New York, Morgan Library and Museum MS M.82, Lucretius, De rerum natura, also an illuminated humanist manuscript; Oxford, Bodleian, Inc-495, Priscian, printed in Venice, 1495, with an ex libris on f. 6: “Ex libris Bernardini (overwritten: Frat Aloysij) Baroni Lucensis, Ord: Serv.”; and Cambridge, Gonville and Caius, MS 770 (813). A previous cataloguer noted the sale of a Justinus from his library, Quaritch, 1864, no 28, reoffered in Cat. 231, 1866, no 46 (unverified). Mirabile records twelve manuscripts from his library, ten in Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, one in Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana, and one in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (Online Resources). Many of his books were previously owned by Baroni Bernardino (a. 1694-1781).
5. Belonged to Guglielmo Libri (1803-1869), celebrated polymath, bibliographer, and thief; his sale at Sotheby’s, Catalogue of the Extraordinary Collection of Splendid Manuscripts [...] formed by Guglielmo Libri, March 29, 1859, lot 260 to Sir Thomas Phillipps (described as 1414).
6. Belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of medieval manuscript material in the 19th century; his MS 16302 (recorded in ink, f. 1v); sold at the Phillipps sale at Sotheby’s, June 10, 1896, lot 292.
7. Quaritch, No. 164. A Catalogue of Illuminated and Historical Manuscripts and Choice and Valuable Books, October, 1896, no 50 (described as 1464).
8. Belonged to Gustav Ritter von Emich (1843-1911), Austrian zoologist and entomologist; his sale Vienna, Gilhofer and Ranschburg, Katalog der Sammlung Hoffrat Gustav R.v. Emich, 17 March 1906, lot 16 (described as 1414).
9. Unidentified 19th-century heraldic bookplate with motto, “Ut arundo,” inside front cover.
10.Maggs Bros., No. 687, Manuscripts of Asia, Africa, and Europe, in thirty different languages, 1940, no. 243 (Schoenberg Data Base no. 37525; unverified by us, although the clipping with a sale description in English, with “243” altered in pen to “131,” inside front cover, may be from this sale). Colophons no. 15656 cites this sale (incorrectly) as no. 242.
11.F. 1, top margin, in pencil, “109Bu”; front flyleaf, f. I, note in pencil about the watermark, and earlier annotation in ink; back flyleaf, f. ii, note in pencil recording number of folios, and another note in pencil (price code?).
12.Belonged to Marvin L. Colker (1927-2020), Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia, world-renowned paleographer, classicist, author of the first comprehensive catalogue of the manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin, and collector of manuscripts. Colker MS 5 (Bond and Faye, 1962, p. 516); acquired in 1944 from Maggs Bros. (small white stickers with “5,” front cover, and spine; “MLC/5” in pencil, front flyleaf, f. i. Professor Colker assembled a large personal collection spanning more than 1,500 years of written history and subject matters ranging from astrology to music, literature, medicine, Church history, humanism, liturgy, Hebraica, law, and theology.
[f. 1, blank]; f. 1v [Unidentified verses added late fifteenth-early sixteenth century], incipit, “Pauciorum improbitas multorum calamitas/ …/ Quicquid conaris quo perveniat cogites”; and “Tenebrosa est anima quam lumen scientie non illustrant.”;
ff. 2-110, M. T. Ciceronis Tusculanarum disputationum Liber primus foeliciter incipit. Ad Brutum, incipit, “Cum defensionum laboribus senatoriisque muneribus …”.; [f. 30], De Tollerando Dolore, incipit, “Neoptholomus quidem apud Ennium ….”; [f. 46v], incipit, “Quidnam esse Brute cause putem …”; f. 66, incipit, “Cum multis locis nostrorum hominum ingenia ….”; [f. 85], incipt, “Quintus hic dies Brute finem facit … alia nulla potuit inveniri levatio,” M. T. Ciceronis Tusculanorum questionum liber quintus ex et ultimus explicit. Scriptus per me Petrum de Landinis vulterranum. [added?] Anno domini 14<?>4. [in red capitals], Hic Liber est Pauli De Bargalgis; [f. 110v, blank].
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, complete, books 1-5. Edited Pohlenz, 1918 (reprinted often, and available online, Online Resources), and Giusta, 1985. See also the editions and translations by Douglas (1985 and 1990).
The Tusculan Disputations, named after Cicero’s villa, was written in 45 BCE at a supremely difficult time in Cicero’s life, when he was mourning the untimely death of his daughter in childbirth. 
The Disputations are written as dialogues between friends, examining the teachings of Stoic philosophers and others on death, grief, and suffering, and how the study of philosophy and virtue can provide some consolation and even happiness. In the words of one author, “he writes here with a passionate intensity and lyric beauty” (Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1996, p. 1563). Books 1 and 2 discuss death and bodily pain, respectively, and book 2 also considers whether the account of value by the Stoics includes all genuine good and evil. Books 3 and 4 consider the emotion, distress, and then the emotions as a group, in the most important general discussion of the emotions to survive from antiquity (Garver, 2002). The Tusculan Disputations are certainly an important text for historians studying the history of emotions, a relatively new field of academic inquiry. The text is also a valuable one for modern scholars interested in Post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy (quoted often in the text by Cicero), and in Cicero himself as a philosopher.
The earliest surviving manuscripts of the text are from the ninth century, when the text was cited by Einhard in his Life of Charlemagne (for a brief overview of its early transmission, see Richard Rouse in Reynolds and Marshall, 1983, pp. 132-135). Although never the most popular of Cicero’s texts, it was read throughout the Middle Ages and particularly well-loved by the humanists of the Italian Renaissance, surviving in numerous fifteenth-century copies (to our knowledge, there is no complete census of surviving manuscripts). It was one of Petrarch’s favorite texts (McGlaughlin, 2015, p. 36), cited by him frequently, and an inspiration for his philosophical dialogue, the Secretum. Cristoforo Landino (perhaps our scribe’s brother) chose it as the topic of his inaugural lecture as chair of Poetry and Oratory in Florence in 1458 (McNair, 2019, pp. 28-29).
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) is perhaps the most renowned name in Roman literature. He was a skilled dialectician, rhetorician, and orator, who enjoyed a long career as a politician in the Roman Senate. He practiced law in Rome and studied philosophy in Greece before becoming Consul in 64 B.C. Cicero went into political retirement during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar (c. 48 B.C.). His opposition to the second triumvirate of Marcus Anthony, Octavian, and Marcus Lepidus after the assassination of Caesar in 44 B.C., led to his own execution in 43 B.C. The most important orator that Rome produced, Cicero was of lasting greatness due to his exceptional mastery of the Latin language which appealed to Renaissance Humanists. His prose became a model for later writers in Latin.
The fifteenth century was a creative and important period in the history of the manuscript book in Italy. The humanist book was new in terms of its script, decoration, layout, and often, contents, and the manuscript described here is a perfect example. Cicero and his works were beloved by the Italian humanists. The text is copied in an elegant humanistic script and begins with a beautiful white vine-stem initial, consisting of curling white branches that begin within the initial, and then extend above and below it, terminating in graceful buds, all outlined and infilled in color (in this case, blue, pink, and green). In addition to its characteristic script and decoration, the manuscript exemplifies the careful and expansive layout of the humanist book. It is copied in one column, with ample space between the lines of script that makes for easy reading, and with wide margins, here equipped (as in many humanist manuscripts), with “side notes,” that is marginal indications of the authors discussed in the text, copied in pale red.
Ascheri, Mario and Donatella Ciampoli. Siena E Il Suo Territorio nel Rinascimento, v. 2, Documenti di storia 5, Siena, 1987.
Bénédictins de Bouveret. Colophons de manuscrits occidentaux des origines au XVIe siècle, vol. 5, Fribourg, 1979, no. 15,656.
Bond, W. H. and C. U. Faye. Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United State and Canada, New York, 1962.
Derolez, Albert. Archaeology of the Manuscript Book of the Italian Renaissance, Rome, 2018.
Douglas, A. E., ed. and trans. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, Chicago, Illinois and Warminster, Wiltshire, 1985.
Douglas, A. E., ed. and trans. Marcus Tullius Cicero. Tusculan disputations II & V: with a summary of III & IV, Warminster, 1990.
King, J. E. Marcus Tullius Cicero. Tusculan Disputations, Loeb Classical Library 141. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1927.
Foà, di Simona. “Landino, Cristoforo,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani 63 (2004), pp. 428–433.
Garver, Margaret. Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan disputations 3 and 4, Chicago, 2002.
Giusta, Michelangelo, ed. Ciceronis Tusculanae disputationes, Corpus scriptorium latinorum paravisanum, Turin, 1984.
McLaughlin, Martin. “Petrarch and Cicero,” in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Cicero, ed. William Altman, Leiden and Boston, 2015, pp. 19-38.
McNair, Bruce. Cristoforo Landino : His Works and Thought, Leiden and Boston, 2019.
Oxford Classical Dictionary, Third Edition, eds. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, Oxford, 1996, “Cicero, Marcus Tullius,” pp. 1558-1564.
Pasetto, Francesco. I Landino, una famiglia di artisti : vissuti fra Pratovecchio e Firenze nei secoli d'oro della storia Toscana, Cortona, 1988.
Pohlenz, M., ed. Marcus Tullius Cicero. Tusculanae disputationes, Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, Stuttgart, 1918 (reprint 1965).
Reynolds, L. D., and Peter K. Marshall. Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, Oxford, 1983.
Mirabile, “Aloisio (Luigi) Baroni”
https://www.mirabileweb.it/search-person/baroni-aloisio-(luigi)-osm-person/1044/16550
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, M. Pohlenz, ed.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0044%3Abook%3Dpraef
TM 1299
