Lot 52

Nicolaus de Osimo, Supplementum Summae Pisanellae, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [northern Italy (Ferrara), dated 29 October 1449]

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Vellum

364 leaves (plus one original vellum and 4 modern paper flyleaves at each end, a nineteenth-century leaf with bookplate loosein volume), inscribed on original flyleaf at back ‘carte 370’ (presumably including lost flyleaves), 197mm. by 135mm., complete, catchwords and occasionally quire-signatures in lower margins, collation: i-xxxvi¹⁰, xxxvii⁴, double column, 48 lines, written space 139mm. by 94mm., written in a small gothic hand, capitals highlighted in yellow, rubrics in red, one- and 2-line initials and paragraph marks in red or blue, large initials in red with purple pen-flourishing or in blue with red pen-flourishing, small annotations by a contemporary hand in the margins and small one-column-wide leaf inserted after fol. 300, nineteenth-century addition of decoration in coloured inks and green washes to first page, catchwords, and some letters, opening page slightly rubbed, vellum occasionally slightly stained, otherwise in very good condition with wide and clean margins, nineteenth-century brown marbled leather binding, spine rebacked, blue marbled edges

Provenance

(1) Charles Robert des Ruffières: his nineteenth-century armorial book-plate with mottos, originally inside upper cover but now detached and loose; his sale in our rooms, 27 February 1899, lot 1773.

(2) Richard Caton (1842-1926), Professor of Physiology, University College Liverpool in 1882-91, and Lord Mayor of Liverpool in 1907-08: his armorial book-plate with motto, dated 1914, on detached paper flyleaf.

Catalogue Note

text

The Supplementum Summae Pisanellae of Nicolaus de Osimo (d.1453) was composed in 1444 as an enlargement of Bartholomaeus de Sancto Concordio's (or Pisanus') Summa de Casibus Conscientiae. The work is an alphabetically arranged digest of moral guidance and canon law, and its purpose was to present confessors with a detailed and informed exposition of the law of God and of the basic requirements of Christian belief and practice: the commandments, sacraments, virtues and vices, all within a pocket-sized practical handbook. The manuscript starts with the prologue “Quoniam summa que magistrucia seu Pisanella vulgariter nuncupatur propter eius compendiositatem apud confessores communius inolevit […]”, and its explicit records that it was written in Ferrara and completed on 29 October 1449: “Completa est hujus operis praesens ex senplatio apud nostrum locum sancti spiritus prope ferrariam M.CCCC.XL.IX octobris 29” (fol.353r). Thus, this manuscript was copied during the life-time of the author, and only five years after he had completed the text.