Cambridge, University Library, MS Mm.2.3(2)
Dante Alighieri, Divina commedia and Credo
Contents
Language(s): Italian and Latin
Text alternates with accompanying commentary (see below).
Rubrics in Italian for Inferno and Paradiso, in Latin for Purgatorio.
Physical Description
19th-century foliation:
[i] + 1-89 ; 91-170 ; 171-270 + [ii]
Written in pencil in the upper right-hand corner of the recto of each leaf, by Henry Bradshaw (1831-1886) , University Librarian 1867-1886.
Folio number 90 assigned to a leaf no longer present in the volume (as per historic foliation practice at Cambridge University Library).
Earlier 19th-century foliation:
Written in pencil in the lower right-hand corner of the recto of the first leaf of each quire, continuing the sequence begun in Cambridge, University Library, MS Mm.2.3(1) , with which this was formerly bound.
Collation
Apparently formed of three codicological units, each containing a discrete section of the Divina commedia, evidently copied and decorated as part of a single campaign and intended to be bound together from the outset.
- Quires 1-7 10 (ff. 1-80)
- Quire 810-1 (ff. 81-89: 10th leaf, f. '90', excised) ;
- Quires 9-1610 (ff. 91-170) ;
- Quires 17-2610 (ff. 171-260
1-7 10 810-1 (10th excised) ; 9-1610 ; 17-2610
Catchwords, written by the scribe in simple ornamental boxes.Layout
240-245 × 175-180 mm. Ruled in leadpoint, frame and line. Two columns, 65 lines to the page, written below top line. (The scribe accidentally strayed across the central margin for the first fourteen lines on f. 3v and had to indent the corresponding section of the right-hand column to compensate for this).
Hand(s)
Main text written in textura semi-quadrata by a single hand, in a larger module of script than the commentary, on every other line. The scribe uses the same script on each line for the Credo, which is followed by an anonymous colophon: 'Manus scriptoris . benedicantur omnibus horis' (f. 270r). The form of the signature 'La pe ra' at the ends of Inferno (f. 87v) and the Credo suggests that the scribe may have been a notary.
Commentary written in Italian hybrid script by a single hand, presumably the same responsible for the main text, on every ruled line.
Decoration
Twenty-line historiated initial, containing Dante writing in his study, at the beginning of Inferno (f. 1r).
Twenty-four line historiated initial, containing Dante in a boat with two men, at the beginning of Purgatorio (f. 91r).
Seventeen-line historiated initial, containing God above and angels and blessed souls in Paradise, at the beginning of Paradiso (f. 171r).
Initials in rose, blue, green or orange, with foliage infill and terminals, on burnished gold ground and / or blue ground, to each canto (five- and six-line) and commentary (three and four-line).
Cadel-like fancy ascenders on the top line of text (commentary only).
Littera notabiliores highlighted in red, and red and blue paraph marks.
Four-sided borders with rose, blue, green and orange foliage on burnished gold ground, inhabited by birds, animals, human busts, a jester in red tights and pointed hood, an angel, and shields with the coat of arms of the Bini family (see Provenance).
Diagrams in black, red and yellow (ff. 61v, 68r, 87r, 99r (seemingly a later addition), 99v, 124v, 177r).
Eight- to fifteen-line spaces left unfilled, presumably intended for further diagrams (ff. 27v, 40v, 72v, 203v, 213v, 216v, 250v, 251r, 254r, 262r).
Additions
Scribbles in ink, perhaps by the same hand responsible for additions to MS Mm.2.3(1), f. 92v (f. 270v).
Leaf signatures and '+' signs (thoughout), and notes on collation (f. 89v), added in pencil by Henry Bradshaw (1831-1886) . Some sequences of leaf signatures have been filled in by a later, unidentified hand of the 20th century, also in pencil.
Binding
Full brown leather cover over wooden boards; classmark tooled in gold on the spine; rebound 1984 at Cambridge University Library (note by Arthur Owen , rear pastedown).
Formerly bound in one volume with Cambridge, University Library, MS Mm.2.3(1) (see note, above). Described in an unpublished description by M.R. James as 'paper boards, repaired' (see Source).
History
'The dialectic peculiarities are much more strongly marked than in O, and leave no doubt of the Venetian or at any rate Lombardo-Venetian origin of the MS' (Moore). 'Jacopo della Lana (di Cione) lived in Bologna and Venice, and wrote his commentary between 1324 and 1328' (Binski and Zutshi).
Provenance and Acquisition
Made for the Bini family of Florence , whose coat of arms is incorporated into the decorative borders at the beginning of each section (ff. 1r, 91r, 171r).
Jean-Baptiste Hautin (approximately 1580-1640) .
'Brodeau' (see f. 1v of MS Mm.2.3(1), with which this manuscript was formerly bound),
i.e.
Julian Brodeau (d. 1653)
, whose library was dispersed in 1698 or 1699.
John Moore (1646-1714) , bishop of Ely: no. 1011 in the handwritten supplementary list of Moore's manuscripts, now MS Oo.7.50(2), compiled by Thomas Tanner (1674-1735) after the publication of Bernard, Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ (c. 1697).
Presented to the University Library in 1715 by George I (1660-1727) : donation bookplate engraved by John Pine (1690-1756) in 1736 on the front pastedown of MS Mm.2.3(1).
Additional Information
Record Sources
Availability
Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card. For information on eligibility and admissions procedures, see Joining the Library). For further enquiries, and to confirm the availability of the manuscript, please contact the Special Collections Reading Room.
Custodial History
Bibliography
-
Critical, historical, and philosophical contributions to the study of the <hi
rend="italics">Divina commedia</hi>, Barlow, Henry Clark (London, Williams and Norgate, 1864)
Contributions to the textual criticism of the <hi rend="italics">Divina
commedia</hi>: including the complete collation throughout the Inferno of all the
mss. at Oxford and
Cambridge, Moore, Edward (Cambridge, University Press, 1889)
Le opere di Dante Alighieri Società dantesca italiana, (Milan, Mondadori, 1966)
Dante Alighieri, <hi rend="italics">Die göttliche Komödie</hi>: vergleichende
Bestandsaufnahme der Commedia-Handschriften Hiersemanns bibliographische Handbücher, Roddewig, Marcella (Stuttgart, Hiersemann, 1984)
Cambridge University Library: a history, McKitterick, David (Cambridge, 2: The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Cambridge
University Press, 1986)
Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University
Library, Binski, PaulZutshi, PatrickPanayotova, Stella (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
2011, https://doi-org.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/10.1017/CBO9780511780479)
Digital Images
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
