Details

Standardized Title:

De natura rerum. Selections.

Subjects:

Natural history -- Pre-Linnean works.
Natural history.

Form/Genre:

Codices.
Manuscripts, Latin.
Manuscripts, Medieval.

Language:

Latin.

Biography/History:

Augustinian canon at Cantimpré in Flanders; later a Dominican in Louvain; writer on natural history and saints' lives.

Summary:

Gatherings from Books VII-XX of Thomas's general introduction to science, including parts of his sections on fish, insects and invertebrates, trees, cosmology and astronomy, herbs, springs, gems, wind and clouds, the four elements, stars, and eclipses. One of the earliest known copies of this text. Notes in a modern German hand on front flyleaves and occasionally in margins.

Contents:

1. p.1-16: De piscibus.
2. p.17-24: De vermibus.
3. p.25-32: De arboribus communibus.
4. p.33-39: De septem regionibus aeris.
5. p.39-52: De septem planetis.
6. p.53-56: De herbis aromaticis.
7. p.56-59: De fontibus.
8. p.59-70: De lapidibus preciosis.
9. p.71-80: De passionibus aeris.
10. p.80-95: De quatuor elementis.
11. p.95-110: De ornatu celi et eclipsibus solis et lune.

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Collation: Parchment, iii (modern paper) + 56 + iii (modern paper) leaves; 1-2⁸ 3¹⁰ 4¹⁰(-1) 5¹² 6¹⁰(-9); [1-112] ; modern pagination in pencil, upper outer corners. A few catchwords are visible (p. 16, 70); most have been cropped. Link to collation model at end of record.
Layout: Written in 2 columns of 31 lines; ruled in faint ink; prickings visible on many leaves.
Script: Written in Gothic book and Gothic cursive script, by several hands.
Decoration: 8-line inhabited initial with dragon and marginal extensions (p. 95); 8-line and 9-line inhabited initial with dragons (p. 56, 80); 8-line and 9-line initial in red, brown, pink, green, and blue (p. 39, 60); 3- and 4-line initials alternating between red and blue with contrasting penwork; rubrication and running headings in red; capitals touched with red in most of the manuscript (p. 1-75, 95).
Binding: Modern paper.
Origin: Written in Northern France or Flanders, ca. 1250-1275.
Transcription, in same modern German hand as notes on front flyleaves and bound in same modern paper binding, boxed with manuscript.

Local notes:

Lawrence J. Schoenberg & Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative.

Penn Provenance:

Formerly in a private collection in Iceland; formerly owned by Pierre Patrick Gorman and sold in 1994.
Sold by Sam Fogg, cat. 16 (1995), no. 57, to Lawrence J. Schoenberg.
Deposit by Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle, 2010.
Gift of Barbara Brizdle Schoenberg, 2021.

Cited in:

Described in Transformation of knowledge: early manuscripts from the collection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg (London: Paul Holberton, 2006), p. 133 (LJS 23).

Cited as:

LJS 23

Contributor:

Gorman, Pierre Patrick, 1924- former owner.
Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

OCLC:

733057038

Web link:

The Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative Fund Home Page

Collation model