Details

Form/Genre:

Codices.
Illuminations.
Statutes.
Manuscripts, French.
Manuscripts, Medieval.

Language:

Middle French.

Summary:

Statutes in 151 chapters of the Order of the Ship, founded in Naples in 1381 by King Carlo III 'di Durazzo'.

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title supplied by cataloger.
Incipit: Cy commence le prologo de l'ordre de la Nef.
Foliation: Parchment, 21 + i (paper); [1-21]; modern foliation in pencil, upper right recto.
Layout: Written in 40 long lines; ruled in ink.
Script: Written in a Gothic book script.
Decoration: 11-line initial depicting a ship without sails held up by two angels, in red, blues, lavender, brown, and gold. In a colored border at the bottom of the page is the coat of arms of a branch of the Malespina family, surrounded by two angels (f. 1r). Initials in alternating red and blue (f. 1r-9r), two with penwork ornamentation (f. 5r); initials are unfinished in the remainder of the text, but with guide letters visible.
Binding: 18th-century vellum.
Origin: Presumably copied sometime between the founding of the order on 1 December 1381 (date on f. 21 r) and the death of Carlo III in 1386.

Penn Provenance:

Formerly owned by Jacopo Soranzo and Matteo Luigi Canonici; sold from the collection of Matteo Luigi Canonici to Walter Sneyd in 1835.
Sold in the Sneyd collection at auction at Sotheby's, 16 Dec. 1903, lot 571.
Appears in Laurence Witten's catalog 5 (1962), no. 34.
Sold by Laurence Witten (New Haven, Conn.), 1962.

Cited in:

Described in Zacour, Norman P. and Hirsch, Rudolf. Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the University of Pennsylvania to 1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), p. 70 (Ms. French 83).

Publications about:

Critical edition by Boulton, D'Arcy Jonathan Dacre, "The Middle French Statutes of the Monarchical Order of the Ship (Naples, 1381): A Critical Edition, with Introduction and Notes," Mediaeval Studies 47 (1985), pp. 168-271. A copy is shelved with the manuscript.

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Codex 665

Contributor:

Charles III, King of Naples, 1345-1386.
Canonici, Matteo Luigi, 1727-1805, former owner.
Sneyd, Walter, 1809-1888, former owner.
Soranzo, Giacomo, 1686-1761, former owner.

OCLC:

155985355