De officiis.
[Italy], c. 1385-1400.
Folio (290 x 217 mm.). MANUSCRIPT. [102] leaves. In a single Gothic hand (textualis libraria), 30 lines per page, writing frame 180 x 105 mm., ruled in plummet, Lombardic initials in red and black ink (some penwork flourishes), the larger opening initial space left blank, manicules, doodles and extensive annotations in at least four hands..
CONTEMPORARY WOODEN BOARDS anciently rebacked with sheepskin (wormed, scuffed, book block detached), evidence of a single clasp and catch, manuscript title Tullii de officiis on the rear board, no. 8 painted on the spine in red gouache. Vellum strips from a contemporary manuscript document mounted to each quire’s outer and inner bifolia as sewing guards.
With: Martinus of Braga. fl. c. 510/20-580. Ad I-II: THIS PREDATES BY THIRTY YEARS THE EARLIEST IDENTIFIED SCHOOL MANUSCRIPT IN USE IN RENAISSANCE DALMATIA. In 1434, Humanist Filippo Diversi (fl. 1421-61) brought this codex from Venice to Dubrovnik, where he taught Latin grammar and rhetoric at a prestigious school for local aristocracy. On the final page of Cicero’s text, the young noble Nicolaus de Restis (Nikola Restić) recorded his acquisition of the manuscript from Diversi, his teacher, likely when the latter left the city in the summer of 1440 or 1441. A different hand continues the inscription and records Nicolaus’ gift of the codex to his friend Stephanus (?Stjepan Gučetić) in 1443.
De quattuor virtutum. [Italy] c. 1430. manuscript. [6], [4 blank] leaves. In a single Gothic hand with distinctive Humanistic traits (semitextualis libraria), 32-4 lines per page, writing frame 180 x 105 mm., ruled in plummet, initial spaces left blank.
Ad I: “Cicero was a strong favorite among the Dalmatian elites...he promoted republican values and the preservation of the established order” (Špoljarič). Nicolaus divided the text of On Duties into numbered sections and added interlinear paraphrases and marginal summaries. Occasionally, he supplied passages from another manuscript copy. A PASSAGE QUOTED BY DIVERSI IN HIS 1440 DESCRIPTION OF DUBROVNIK is marked with a manicule (f. [11]r).
Stephanus annotated the text with an introduction to its different parts and definitions of philosophical concepts and schools. His interlinear notes with synonyms and variant constructs may reflect vocabulary exercises. Two slightly later sets of annotations correct the text and insert some missing passages from two other manuscripts.
¶Špoljarič, “The First Dalmatian Humanists and the Classics. A Manuscript Perspective” in A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe edd. Martirosova Torlone et al. 46-56; Janeković Römer, “Filip Diversi iz Lucce u Dubrovniku: od rektora škole do autora glasovite pohvale grada” in Anali Zavoda za povijesne znanosti Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti u Dubrovniku 62 (2024) 33-44; Malinar, “Tideo Acciarini, un magister scholarum d’Oltreadriatico nella Dalmazia umanistica” in Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia 58 (2013) 65 & 69-73.
Ad II: On the Four Virtues explores morality and is commonly misattributed to Seneca. Our text was written on a single quire of different paper from the Cicero’s in the years immediately preceding Diversi’s move to Dalmatia. The quire was attached to the bound book block with three cotton threads (two loose, one gone). The same scribe that copied the treatise also penned three verses of a popular Venetian canzonetta by Leonardo Giustinian (1388-1446) at the end.
Lower outer corner of the first leaf gone with the loss of eleven lines of Stephanus’ commentary on the recto, inner marginal tear to the same leaf (no loss). Marginal water stains in the first and last two quires, minor worming. Two later annotations on the front and rear pastedowns identify the volume as once in the Franciscan monastery at Daksa, an island off Dubrovnik.
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