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Burney MS 243

Record Id:

040-002237124

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-002236305

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000001311.0x000123

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Burney MS 243

Title:

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Institutio Oratoria; Poggio Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino of Verona

Scope & Content:

Contents:

ff. 1r- 234v: Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory). The fifth gathering (ff. 35-42) is a later insertion to complement a lost gathering, written in a late 15th- or early 16th-century humanistic cursive hand.

ff. 235r-v: Table of contents of the Institutio Oratoria.

ff. 236r-237r: Poggio Bracciolini (b. 1380, d. 1459), Letter to Guarino of Verona (b. 1374, d. 1460), written at Constance, beginning: ‘Licet inter varias occupationes tuas’.

[ff. 42v, 237v are blank].

Decoration:

12 large initials in gold on a coloured ground with foliate decoration in colours (ff. 1r, 25r, 46v, 66r, 82v, 105v, 122r, 139r, 156v, 181v, 197v, 218r), one of which with a zoomorphic element (f. 46v).

Small initials alternately in blue with red pen-flourishing, or red with purple pen-flourishing, the infill usually foliate or geometric but sometimes in the form of fish (e.g. ff. 45r, 195v).

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Burney Manuscripts

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002236305
040-002237124

Is part of:

Burney MS : Burney Manuscripts

Burney MS 243 : Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Institutio Oratoria; Poggio Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino of Verona

Hierarchy:

032-002236305[0238]/040-002237124

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Burney MS

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

A parchment codex

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Greek, Ancient
Latin

Scripts:

Latin

Start Date:

1425

End Date:

1449

Date Range:

2nd quarter of 15th century

Era:

Access:

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User Conditions:

Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Parchment.

Dimensions: 300 x 210 mm (written area 195 x 135 mm).

Foliation: ff. v + 242; ff. i-iii, 240-242 are modern paper flyleaves; ff. iv-v, 238-239 are parchment flyleaves; Burney MS 276, ff. 43-46 were also formerly flyleaves; Burney index on f. 242r; Burney pagination in ink, now crossed out.

Collation: i-iii¹⁰ (ff. 1-30), iv^four (31-34); v8 (ff. 35-42); vi^five (ff. 43-47), viixxv¹⁰ (ff. 48-237).

Script: Semi-humanistic (humanistic cursive for ff. 35-42 and marginal annotations).

Binding: Post-1600. Askew binding of brown diced calf, with a 'palmette and fleur-de-lys' gold-tooling motif; marbled endpapers; the edges of the leaves are gilt; spine re-backed at British Museum.

Custodial History:

Origin: Milan, Northern Italy.

Provenance:

Unidentified centre in Milan: written by the same scribe as three other manuscripts, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS. B. 153 sup. (which contains the same exact version of the text), Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS. C. 55, and Oxford, Magdalen College MS. 83, which is dated 1428; according to unpublished notes of A. C. de la Mare at the Bodleian Library.

Giulio Pomponio Leto (also known as Julius Pomponius Laetus) (b. 1428, d. 1498), Italian humanist: annotated in Latin and Greek by (among several other contemporaries) his humanistic hand (e.g. f. 144v, top margin).

Mario Maffei (b. 1463, d. 1537), Bishop of Aquino and Bishop of Cavaillon: his standard inscription, ‘De figli et heredi di M. Mario Maffei’ (on former flyleaf, now Burney MS 276, f. 44v).

Anthony Askew (b. 1722, d. 1774), physician and book collector; bound for him: his sale, 7 March 1785, lot 516, bought by Monro for £3 10s.

John Monro (b. 1715, d. 1791), physician and specialist in insanity: his sale, 23 April 1792, lot 3406.

Unidentified book-seller(s), 18th-19th century: ‘No. 89’ (f. [i]verso, upper left), and ‘B. tr -’ (f. [ii]recto, upper left corner).

Charles Burney (b. 1757, d. 1817), D.D., classical scholar.

Acquired by the British Museum as part of Burney’s library from his son Charles Parr Burney in 1818.

Information About Copies:

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.

Publications:

Catalogue of Manuscripts in The British Museum, New Series, 1 vol. in 2 parts (London: British Museum, 1834-1840), I, part II: The Burney Manuscripts (1840), p. 63.

Alessandro Palma di Cesnola, Catalogo di manoscritti italiani esistenti nel Museo Britannico di Londra (Turin: Roux, 1890), no. 292 (p. 20).

Michael Winterbottom, ‘Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts of Quintilian’, The Classical Quarterly, 17 (1967), 339-369 (pp. 340, n. 3, 342-43).

Jean Cousin, Recherches sur Quintilien: manuscrits et éditions (Paris: Société d'Édition les belles lettres, 1975), p. 77.

Mirella Ferrari, ‘Fra i “Latini scriptores” di Pier Candido Decembrio e biblioteche umanistiche milanesi: codici di Vitruvio e Quintiliano’, in Vestigia: studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich, ed. by Rino Avesani and others, Storia e letteratura, 162-163 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1984), I, 247-96 (pp. 288-96 and pl. V).

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: A finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, 7 vols (London: The Warburg Institute, 1963; repr. 1977-1997) IV (Alia Itinera II): Great Britain to Spain (1989), p. 133.

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Askew, Anthony, physician and book collector, 1722-1774,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000061332085,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/60017882
Bracciolini, Poggio, scholar and humanist, 1380-1459,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/19722038
Burney, Charles, classical scholar, 1757-1817
Leto, Giulio Pomponio, Italian humanist, 1428-1498,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000121355239,
   see also http://viaf.org/viaf/61528159
Maffei, Mario, of Volterra; Bishop of Aquino; Bishop of Cavaillon, 1463-1537
Monro, John, MD; physician and specialist in insanity, 1715-1791
Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius, Roman educator and rhetorician, c 35-100,
   see also http://isni.org/isni/0000000121271967

Places:

Milan, Italy

Related Material:

Former flyleaves are now Burney MS 276, ff. 43-46.

Catalogue of Manuscripts in The British Museum, New Series, 1 vol. in 2 parts (London: British Museum, 1834-1840), I, part II: The Burney Manuscripts (1840), p. 63: ‘Membranaceus, in folio, pp. 473, sec. XV. ineuntis.

1. M. Fabii Quintiliani de Oratoria Institutione libri duodecim, cum Epistola ad Tryphonem. p. 1.

2. Poggii Bracciolini Florentini ad Guarinum Veronensem Epistola de inventione librorum praecedentium. Dat. Constantiae. p. 471.

Impress. in fine Poggianorum, ed. Jac. Lenfant, Amst. 1720, tom. ii. p. 309.’