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Add MS 8785
- Record Id:
- 032-002029680
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002029680
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000045.0x000104
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 8785
- Title:
- Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus rerum (in Mantuan)
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains an early vernacular version of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's (d. 1272) De Proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things), translated into the Mantuan dialect by Vivaldo del Belcalzer (d. after 1308), a notary and councillor of Mantua. It was given by Belcalzer to Guido dei Bonacolsi (d. 1309), signore of Mantua from 1299-1309, to whom it is dedicated. The manuscript contains all nineteen books found in the Latin original, plus the red rubric titles of authorities Bartholomaeus cites in the margins, but Belcalzer makes no mention of his source.
Contents:
f. 1r: Note in Italian, written in the eighteenth century after 1746 (perhaps by a member of the Niccolini family) summarising the manuscript's provenance, as recorded in printed notes by Professor Giovanni Lami.
ff. 2r-3v: Giovanni Lami, Novelle Letterarie di Firenze, vi, cols. 595-596, and vii, cols. 285-288 (Florence, 1745 and 1746), with sections relevant to this manuscript and its provenance.
f. 4r: Later paper (19th century?), with short cursive transcription of the capitol del cala.
ff. 5r-12v: List of contents of the De Proprietatibus rerum in Latin.
f. 13r: Preface to the translation by Belcalzer ('Ding de los e d'onor al segnor so nobel e magnifich meser Gui dey bonacols Capitaniy e perpetual segnor de mantoa ...').
ff. 14r-323r: De Proprietatibus rerum translated into Mantuan by Belcalzer.
ff. 14r-15r: Book 1: On God.
ff. 15r-21v: Book 2: On the angels.
ff. 21v-32r: Book 3: On the soul and the senses.
ff. 32r-39r: Book 4: On the elements and humours.
ff. 39r-57r: Book 5: On the parts of the body.
ff. 57r-59v: Book 6: On the 'simple members' of the body (e.g. bones, veins and hair).
ff. 59v-100v: Book 7: Categories of men and women, 'non-natural' things, and diseases of the body and their cures.
ff. 100v-121r: Book 8: On the world and the heavens.
ff. 121r-127v: Book 9: On the reckonings of time.
ff. 127v-129v: Book 10: On fire.
ff. 129v-136v: Book 11: On air.
ff. 137r-148v: Book 12: On birds.
ff. 148v-160v: Book 13: On water.
ff. 160v-169: Book 14: On mountains.
ff. 169r-202v: Book 15: On geography.
ff. 202v-216v: Book 16: On stones and metals.
ff. 217r-260r: Book 17: On herbs and plants.
ff. 260r-302r: Book 18: On animals.
ff. 302v-323r: Book 19a: On colours, odours, tastes, liquids, measurements, etc.; Book 19b is replaced by a section entitled 'mapa del mond' (ff. 315r-323r), which is a translation of the first book of De imagine mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis.
Decoration:
1 full-page miniature in colours, featuring two male figures seated in a rocky landscape among flowering trees containing birds, separated by a well whose water is parted into four streams in the foreground, framed by fiery walls with flames reaching upwards, above which are two angels on each side, one with a sword and the other with a club (f. 191v). 1 half-page miniature in colours depicting three figures at a vineyard, one of whom has fallen to the ground, presumably in drunkenness (f. 257r). 1 one third-page miniature in colours depicting a man being chased by a beast with a red man's head, with three rows of teeth, a lion's body and a scorpion's tail (f. 262r). 14 column-width miniatures in colours on blue backgrounds illustrating Book 18 (On Animals). 1 very large historiated initial 'I' depicting a kneeling monk (Bartholomaeus?) in prayer before Christ in colour on a blue background. Numerous large initials, some with figures, at the start of most of the nineteen books and a number of lesser divisions, in colours on blue backgrounds (including depiction of the presentation of the volume to Guido Bonacolsi by Belcalzer (f. 13r)). Numerous small initials decorated with people, body parts and organs, stones, foliage, animals, etc., related to the accompanying texts, in colours on blue backgrounds. Smaller blue and red initials with pen flourishing throughout. Rubrics and marginal references to authors cited in red.
The decoration is notable as one of the few fully-illustrated copies of the De Proprietatibus rerum, normally only decorated in Book 18 in the manner typical to popular medieval bestiaries. The consistent decorative programme throughout the volume is especially unique for its inclusion of disembodied organs within the section initials in Books 5 and 6, similar examples of which are only found rarely in a few surgical and anatomical texts.
The subjects of the 14 column-width miniatures are as follows:
f. 269v: Bird standing on the horns of a serpent called 'Cerastes', which has another bird in its mouth.
f. 274v: Basilisk with a small quadruped on its hind legs.
f. 278v: A man spearing a beaver beside water in which another beaver swims.
f. 284v: Monstrous races: two figures, one with a hound's head and the other a Cyclops, standing on either side of a flowering tree.
f. 285r: Fauns and satyrs: two figures with cloven hooves and long noses standing on either side of a flowering tree. Monstrous races: three standing figures, one headless with his face in his chest (known as a blemmyae). Monstrous races: three figures, one with enormous ears standing on the left, one walking on all fours in the centre, and one with a single enormous foot standing on the right.
f. 285v: Monstrous races: two standing figures, one with feet turned backwards on the left and one with the feet of a horse on the right.
f. 289r: Hyena eating a partially-buried dead man.
f. 292r: Beast with a red man's head, with three rows of teeth, a lion's body and a scorpion's tail, standing in front of a flowering tree.
f. 294r: Onocentaur: a beast with the upper half of a man, with a shield and sword, and the body of an ass.
f. 296v: Unicorn approaching a woman and, below, a man in armour, with a shield, spearing the unicorn as it sleeps with its head in the lap of the woman.
f. 297v: Two apes, one on the left carrying two young, and one on the right seated in a tree.
f. 298r: Two sirens with the torsos of women and fish tails in water, one holding a man dressed in red to her side.
f. 315r: Map of the world with continents depicted as different buildings, Jerusalem at the centre, divided by the seas; the globe is held by Christ, whose head is at the top, hands at each side, and feet at the bottom.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002029680", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 8785: Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus rerum (in Mantuan)" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002029680
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002029680
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_8785 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Italian
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1295
- End Date:
- 1309
- Date Range:
- c 1300-1309
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment codex.
Dimensions: 270 x 210mm (text space 205 x 150mm), in two columns.
Foliation: ff. 328 (+3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and at the end); f. [i] is an unfoliated parchment flyleaf inserted between the unfoliated paper leaf after ff. 1-4 and f. 5 (which begins the fourteenth-century text); ff. 1-4 are paper, containing mid-eighteenth century writing and a page lifted from a catalogue, and are followed by one unfoliated piece of paper of the same era; there are several foliation mistakes: there is no f. 286, and two of ff. 35 and 257).
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Red leather with gold tooling.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Italy, North (Mantua).
Provenance:
Guido Bonacolsi, signore of Mantua (d. 1309): dedicated and presented to him (f. 13r), presumably by the translator Vivaldo del Belcalzer, before 1309; Giovanni Lami noted in 1745 and 1746 (Novelle Letterarie di Firenze, vi, cols. 595-596, and vii, cols. 285-288; ff. 3v, 2-2v of this manuscript) that he had seen this volume in the library of Signor Marchese Niccolini, and that, according to an ex libris inscription dated 1320 (formerly on the inside cover, now lost presumably during rebinding), Bonacolsi gave the manuscript to Ugoccione de Lismanini of Padua.
Uguccione de Lismanini of Padua: owned this manuscript (see Guido Bonacolsi above).
Added text, 1379-81: list of goods and prices (ff. 324v-325v).
Niccolini family, Florence (17th-18th centuries): stamped P.N. in a circle (f. 5r), possibly specifically referring to Pietro Niccolini, archbishop of Florence from 1632 (d. 1651).
Frederick North, 5th Earl of Guilford (b. 1766, d. 1827), politician and colonial administrator: his bookplate, with shelfmark L/19/A (f. [i] r).
Robert Harding Evans, bookseller: his sale, 8 December 1830, lot 65; bought by the British Museum.
- Information About Copies:
- Complete digital coverage available for this manuscript; see Digital Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of Additions to the British Museum, vol. 6 (London: British Museum, 1831-1835), p. 22.
Vittorio Cian, Vivaldo Belcalzer e l'enciclopedismo italiano delle origini, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana Supplemento no. 5 (Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1902).
Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, Catalogue of Astrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages in Manuscripts in English Libraries, 1, ed. by Harry Bober (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1953), p. 3.
Dennis E. Rhodes, 'Vivaldo Belcazar and the Mantuan Dialect in the Early 14th Century: A Study of BM Ms Add. 8785 with the edition of Bks I, II and XV', unpublished PhD thesis, University College London, 1956.
Heinz Meyer, ‘Die illustrierten lateinischen Handschriften im Rahmen der Gesamtüberlieferung der Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 30 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996), 368-395 (pp. 372-3).
Heinz Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus: Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungs und Rezeptionsgeschichte von 'De proprietatibus rerum' (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2000) pp. 387-89, figs. 55, 59, 60.
Rosa Casapullo and Miriam R. Policardo, ‘Tecniche della divulgazione scientifica nel volgarizzamento mantovano del “De proprietatibus rerum” di Bartolomeo Anglico’, Lingua e Stile, 38, 2 (2003), 139-76.
Rosa Casapullo, ‘Le malattie della mente nel volgarizzamento mantovano del De proprietatibus rerum di Bartolomeo Anglico (Libri I-IV, V, VII)’, Quaderns d’Italià, 11 (2006), pp. 29-53.
Ghino Ghinassi, Dal Belcalzer al Castiglione : studi sull'antico volgare di Mantova e sul ‘Cortegiano’ (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2006), pp. 3-128.
Elizabeth Keen, Journey of a Book: Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things (Canberra: Australian National University E-Press, 2007), pp. 5, 88, 100 n. 60.
Vivaldo Belcalzer, Trattato di Scienza Universal, Vol. I. Libri I-IV, ed. by Rosa Casapullo (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2010).
'British Library, Additional MS 8785', The Medieval Bestiary, ed. by David Badke, 15 January 2011, http://bestiary.ca/manuscripts/manu4869.htm. Accessed 11 November 2016.
Rosa Casapullo, ‘Le Trattato di scienza universal de Vivaldo Belcalzer et la tradition du De Proprietatibus rerum’, in Encyclopédie médiévale et langues européennes : réception et diffusion du De proprietatibus rerum de Barthélemy l'Anglais dans les langues vernaculaires, ed. by Joëlle Ducos (Paris: Honoré Champion éditeur, 2014), pp. 235-257.
Taylor McCall, 'Disembodied: Additional MS. 8785 and the Tradition of Human Organ Depictions in Medieval Art and Medicine’, Electronic British Library Journal, 2018, Article 8. DOI: http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2018articles/pdf/ebljarticle82018.pdf
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)