Copy number: J-167(1)

Binding: Eighteenth-century basil, with azure-edged leaves.

Size: 419 × 288 × 45 mm.

Size of leaf: 410 × 282 mm.

Marginal notes, mainly extracting key words, ‘nota' marks, and pointing hands in a sixteenth-century Italian hand, the same as the one that added the ownership note on a2r. Unidentified shelfmarks on the front pastedown: ‘J. J. 3.', crossed out, and ‘X. 5.’

In the inner margin of a1r is the offset from a strip from a fourteenth-century manuscript, part of an earlier binding.

On a2r a nine-line Italian (Venetian) initial ‘A' is supplied in pink on a gold ground, with the area defined by the letter in blue edged in yellow, decorated with green, pink, and blue foliate decoration extending into the margins and ending with a gold dot; see Pächt and Alexander II, 112 no. pr. 107. Other initials are supplied in red or blue with reserved white decoration.

Provenance: Praglia (Padua), Veneto, Benedictines; inscription on a2r: ‘Est mon[aster]ij de Pratalea [ ] no. xxiiii'. Coats of arms: (1) gules a lion rampant argent holding a branch(?) in the dexter paw overall a fess argent; (2) gules a bar gemel argent in chief two lions passant affronted or in base six besants argent placed 3, 2, 1. Samuel Butler (1774-1839); sale, pt II, lot 1160. Purchased for £0. 18. 8; see annotated sale catalogue; listed without the price in Books Purchased (1840), 34.

SHELFMARK: Auct. 3Q inf. 2.18.