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Harley MS 3270

Record Id:

040-002049101

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

040-002049101

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000761.0x00028a

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Harley MS 3270

Title:

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni

Scope & Content:

A humanist copy of selected works by Aristotle, all translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni (b. 1370, d. 1444).

Contents:

ff. 3r-111r: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in the Latin translation by Leonardo Bruni, preceded by two prefaces (ff. 3r-6v).

ff. 111r-112v: Leonardo Bruni, Letter to Ugo (Bencius) medicus,begins 'Frequenter dubitavi…'.

ff. 114r-120v: Pseudo-Aristotle, Oeconomica, in the Latin translation by Leonardo Bruni, preceded by his preface (ff. 113r-113v).

ff. 121r-132v: Leonardo Bruni, Commentary on Aristotle's Oeconomica.

Decoration:

White vine initials in gold on blue grounds (ff. 3r, 4r, 7r, 17v, 25v, 38r, 49r, 60v, 68r, 80r, 90v, 99v, 113r, 114r, 117r, 121r, 131r). Catchwords written horizontally with some penwork decoration. The white vine initials are painted in an early Florentine style and the manuscript dates to c. 1410-1420 according to unpublished notes of A. C. de la Mare at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Harley Collection

Hierarchy Tree:

[{ "id" : "040-002049101", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 3270: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002045828
040-002049101

Is part of:

Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

Harley MS 3270 : Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni

Hierarchy:

032-002045828[3271]/040-002049101

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

1 volume

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1410

End Date:

1420

Date Range:

1410-1420

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript

Physical Characteristics:

Material: Parchment.

Dimensions: 265 x 180 mm (165 x 110 mm).

Foliation: ff. 132 (+ 1 unfoliated paper flyleaf at the beginning and 2 at the end). f. 1 is a former pastedown. ff. 1-2 are originally blank parchment leaves.

Script: Humanistic.

Binding: Post-1600. Brown leather with blind tooling; edges speckled with red ink.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Florence, Central Italy.

Provenance:

Cancelled 15th-century ownership inscription ending with the date 'die xxii mensis marcii anno domini millesimo cccc^mo nonagesimo' (f. 1v).

Numerous marginal and interlinear annotations in Italian hands, 15th century.

Added title, post-medieval (f. 2r).

Added musical notation accompanied by French words, 16th or 17th century (f. 60v).Inscribed 'Pierre Charpantier', ?17th century (f. 132v).

Partly erased ownership inscription 'ff. Mino...Catal Bibliot. ascriptus', 17th or 18th century (f. 3r).

The Loménie de Brienne family: sold by the son of Louis-Henri de Loménie (b. 1635, d. 1698) through the London bookseller James Woodman on 18 May 1724 to Edward Harley, sale dated 28 April 1724, lot 2403 (see Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972)).

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘18 die Maij, A.D. 1724’ (f. ir).

Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.

Information About Copies:

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=4215&CollID=8&NStart=3270.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 3270.

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726, ed. by Cyril Ernest Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), II: 1723-1726, p. 313 n. 12.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), pp. 225, 358.

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: Accedunt Alia Itinera: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other Libraries 7 vols (London: Warburg Institute; Leiden: Brill, 1963-1997), IV (1989), p. 168.

Censimento dei codici dell’epistolario di Leonardo Bruni, ed. by Lucia Gualdo Rosa, 2 vols (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1993), I, pp. 147-48.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Aristotle, philosopher, 384 BC-322 BC
Bruni, Leonardo, Italian humanist, 1370-1444,
see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000121442279