Details

Notes

• Written in an Italian Bastarda script, the text has been dated by the registry of births from 1434 to 1467, apparently made by the first owner, on leaves 36v to 39r, which provide a terminus ad quem. The manuscript is decorated with red and blue Lombard initials, red emphases, underlining and rubrics, and with the headings marked with three large initials in red and blue.
• The text is divided into three parts. Incipit "Libellus de decem Praeceptis. Ista brevis doctrina ordinata est specialiter pro quatuor generibus personarum ..." (leaf 3r,v). Headings: "Qui vult se ponere de statu peccati ad statum gracie" (leaves 4r - 11v), "Tractatus de scientia bene moriendi. Si amici veri alicuius infirmi faciunt magnam diiligencim erga eum..." (12r - 16v) and "Gloria sit des in cuius nomine pro salute animarum simplicis ..." (16v - 35v).
• This anonymous work is divided in three parts thematically: The first is a mirror for confessions (leaves 4r to 11v) in which the seven cardinal sins are treated, followed by an Ars Moriendi (leaves 12r to 16v) structured as four warnings. The third and most comprehensive section is a treatise on the Ten Commndments embedded in a short, concise christian teaching on health.
• The different themes are treated by one and the same author and brought together as a unity. This may be seen from the foreword, in which the author described the audience for which he writes. He will not speak to learned and elevated persons, but to simple men, cleerical and lay, the young and children, also those who are occupied with caring for the sick. In this sense, he wishes his book to stand as a handbook to the right christian life, to be circulated as widely as possible. (This expectation appears not to have been fulfilled".
• The cut on the flap is very much simplified and depicts the virgin and child under the Tree of Life, with a typographical border enclosed by rules reading "Ave Maria gratia plena ...".
• Cotsen copy old worming, binding rubbed and worn w/ small losses. damping with some cockling at end.

Binding note

Contemporary limp leather binding ruled in blind with overflap stamped in blind in later brown morocco-backed drop-back box.

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