Petrus de Crescentiis, Liber Ruralium Commodorum (on practical agriculture and estate management), in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy (almost certainly Rome), c.1465]

One of the finest surviving manuscripts of the most important medieval encyclopaedic treatise on practical agriculture, from the libraries of the Vatican, Robert Hoe, and Chester Beatty

provenance

1. Probably illuminated for a member of the Mazza family, with their arms, azure, a lion rampant d'or, impaled with gyronny d'or and gules as used by the Abrami family and perhaps others. The manuscript was copied from a volume once owned by Angelotto Fusco, bishop of Cava and chamberlain to Martin V, pope 1417-31, possibly by then already in the newly-formed Vatican Library (where it is now Vat. lat. 1530, dated 1427; see below). The scribe is probably Petrus de Traiecto, a Dutchman from Utrecht, who worked both in Florence for Vespasiano da Bisticci and in Rome and elsewhere for Federico da Montefeltro and other major patrons (cf. A. C. de la Mare in A. Garzelli, ed., Miniatura Fiorentina, I, 1985, pp.462-3 and 532-3, no. 63; Bénédictins du Bouveret, Colophons, V, 1979, pp.140-41). The illumination is attributable to Andrea di Paolo di Giovanni da Firenze, fl. 1443-64, documented as working for the papal court in the 1460s (J. Ruysschaert, 'Miniaturistes "Romains" sous Pie II' in Enea Silvio Piccolomini – Papa Pio II, 1968, pp.252-6, pl. 8; F. Pasut in Bollati, Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani, 2004, pp.23-5).

2. Pius VI, pope 1775-1799; re-bound for him in the Vatican bindery, with his arms profusely gilt, by the same binder as Vat. lat. 9209 (L. M. Tocci, ed., Legature papali da Eugenio IV a Paolo VI, 1977, pl.CXCI). The manuscript is likely to have been already in the Vatican Library. Most probably given by Pius VI (perhaps as it was a duplicate of Vat. lat. 1530) to a member of the Trissino family of Verona: their early eighteenth-century armorial stamp on fol.1r. Other manuscripts given away by Pius VI include the Livy of Leonello d'Este (owned by Eugène de Beauharnais (1781-24, viceroy of Italy; sale in these rooms, 13 July 1977, lot 56) and the Great Hours of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (owned by the marquises of Tocca, Naples, and the marquis d'Adda, who sold it, c.1885; Astor sale in these rooms, 21 June 1988, lot 58).

3. Robert Hoe (1839-1909), of New York, with his gilt bookplate; his sale, Anderson, IV, 19 November 1912, lot 2333.

4. Hermann Marx (d.1947), of Cobham, Surrey; his sale in these rooms, 19 April 1948, lot 32.

5. Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968), his W. MS. 174; his sale in these rooms, 3 December 1968, lot 26.

6. Lawrence J. Schoenberg, LJS 265 (C. Black, ed., Transformation of Knowledge, 2006, pp.127-8, no.3); sold now for the benefit of the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Charitable Trust.

text

This text is the seminal work on practical agriculture from the Middle Ages. Its author, Petrus de Crescentiis, was born in Bologna in 1233. As he records in the opening of his work, he initially studied logic, medicine and natural sciences there, and held office for 30 years as a provincial judge, eventually retiring to a rural estate outside the city. There he drew on a lifetime of study to produce this work, interweaving numerous readings from Classical authors on the subject with his own practical experience. His sources include commonly read authorities such as Virgil's Georgics and Pliny's Naturalis Historia, but his knowledge of his subject goes deeper than just those, and he frequently cites Varro (116-27 BC.), and Palladius (fourth-century AD.), and through textual intermediaries his reading extends to Greek writers such as Dioscorides (first century AD.), Hippocrates (fifth century BC.) and Galen (second century AD.), and even to the Arabic scholarship of Avicenna and Al-Rasi. However, what sets the present work apart is the author's unwillingness to accept the teachings of these without testing them against his own experiences, or those of his contemporaries.

The work begins with a copy of a letter written by the author to Aymeric of Piacenza, Master of the Dominican Order (fol.1r), who had evidently urged the author to compose the work. The text itself opens on fol.7r with a dedication to King Charles II of Anjou (1254-1309), King of Naples and Sicily, titular King of Jerusalem, and Prince of Salerno, and includes chapters on (1) the needs of a successful estate, including the correct officers and personnel (7v), (2) the nature of plants and their growth (15v), (3) the planting of fields and crops (38v), (4) the care of vineyards and the making of wine (46v), (5) the care of trees (66r and 86r), (6) the care of herbs and their medicinal uses (91r), (7) the care of meadows and forests (115r), (8) the cultivation of pleasure-gardens (117r), (9) the rearing and keeping of livestock and other animals, with comments on what to look for in good animals and notes on the diseases and ailments which afflict them (120v), (10) on falconry, hunting and fishing (150r), as well as (11) a summary of the above (158v), and (12) a calendar of tasks on the estate arranged month-by-month (168v). The text aims to be a comprehensive and easy to use reference tool, and the chapters on plants, crops, animals, birds-of-prey and medicinal herbs include lengthy lists and descriptions of species, arranged alphabetically.

The text was recognised as an indispensable tool for the aristocratic landowner almost immediately, and it quickly became the most popular medieval work on the subject. Charles V commissioned a French translation in 1373 (of which 15 manuscript copies survive), and the personal copies of Jean, duke de Berry (BnF. ms.lat.9328), Philip the Bold (Brussels, Bib.Roy. MS.10227) and King Edward IV of England (British Library, MS.Royal.14.E.VI) survive.

Of the original Latin text (as in the present manuscript) some 85 manuscripts are recorded (79 listed in Pier de'Crescenzi: Studi e Documenti, Bologna, 1933, pp.265-93, and a further six in R.G.Calkins in The Medieval Garden, 1986, p.159; neither including the present manuscript). Of those only one was then in private hands (the Walton copy, since acquired by the Huntington Library). De Ricci records a single copy, in the collection of Daniel B. Fearing of Newport, which was given in 1915 to Harvard (now F.5.82; Census I, p.994). A handful of other manuscripts have appeared on the market in the last 50 years, but none since 1988, and that a fragment of only 36 leaves (that sold in our rooms, 11 December 1961, lot 193; another sold by Parke-Bernet, 13 May 1969, lot 147; two others, from the collection of the wine critic André Simon, sold in our rooms, 18 May 1981, lots 247-8; and a "distinguished fragment", again in our rooms, 21 June 1988, lot 78).