Bod-Inc: L-010
Lactantius, Lucius Coelius Firmianus
Opera.
Analysis of Content
a2r [Table of contents.] ‘Rubricae.’
a9r Antonius Raudensis: [Errata Lactantii.] A list of errors in the works of Lactantius; see L‑002.
a10v [Montaltus] Genuensis, Adam: [Verse censuring Antonius Raudensis.] Incipit: ‘Hic male corripuit stolidis Antonius ausis'; 4 elegiac distichs. See L‑003.
b1r Lactantius, Lucius Coelius Firmianus: De divinis institutionibus. Lactantius, Divinae institutiones, ed. Brandt, CSEL 19, 1-672.
u5r Lactantius, Lucius Coelius Firmianus: De ira dei [addressed to] Donatus. Lactantius, De ira dei, ed. Brandt, CSEL 27, 67-132.
y4v Lactantius, Lucius Coelius Firmianus: De opificio dei vel de formatione hominis [addressed to] Demetrianus. Lactantius, De opificio dei, ed. Brandt, CSEL 27, 3-64.
&5v [Lactantius, Lucius Coelius Firmianus: De phoenice carmen.] Lactantius, Opera omnia: 2/1: Carmen de ave phoenice, ed. Brandt, CSEL 27, 135-47.
&8r Ovidius [Naso, Publius]: Metamorphoses [extract]. Ov. Met. 15. 391-402.
&8r Dante [Alighieri: La commedia: Inferno xxv, lines 106-11]. Incipit: ‘[C]ossi per li gran saui se confessa | Chella phoeenice(!) muore e poi renasce'; 6 lines of verse. Dante, La commedia. 2. Inferno, ed. Petrocchi, 411-12.
&8r [Fortunatus, Venantius: De resurrectione Christi. Also known as Carmen de pascha; addressed to Bishop Felix.] Incipit: ‘[S]alue festa dies toto uenerabilis euo | Qua deus infernum uicit et astra tenet'; 50 elegiac distichs. See L‑003.
ꝶ1v Lactantius, [Lucius Coelius] Firmianus: Epitome divinarum institutionum [chs 51-68]. ‘Nephythomon Lactantii Firmiani.’ Lactantius, Epitome, ed. Heck and Wlosok, 75-117.
ꝶ9r [Colophon.]
ꝶ9r [Verse.] Incipit: ‘Arguit hic hominum sectas Lactantius omnes | Septeno falsas codice uera docens'; 5 elegiac distichs. See L‑005.
Imprint
Imprint: Venice: Andreas de Paltasichis and Boninus de Boninis, 12 Mar. 1479. Folio.
Remarks: The date in the colophon is printed ‘1478'. As Mocenigo did not become Doge until 18 May 1478, BMC suggests that one ‘I' was missed out of the date.
Collation
Collation: a10 b–d8 e10 f–m M8 N6 n–r8 s t6 u x8 y6 z &8 ꝶ10.
References
ISTC: il00008000
Hain: HC *9813;
Goff: Goff L‑8;
BMC: BMC V 251;
Proctor: Pr 4425;
Others: BSB‑Ink L‑8; CIBN L‑9; Sheppard 3560-1.
LCN: 14450265
Copies
Copy number: L-010(1)
Wanting &4.5, in place of which is bound a duplicate of ꝶ5.6.
Sheet i1.8 is also in duplicate. Leaf ꝶ9r, colophon: ‘ . . . imprſſeerunt . . .', not as BMC.
Binding: Mid-sixteenth-century French gold-tooled brown morocco, with gauffered edges. Formerly chained: staple-marks of a hasp at the head of the upper cover. On both covers fillets form a frame, inside which is foliate decoration in gilt; the spine bears the same decoration. The upper cover is lettered in gilt ‘LACTANTII | FIRMIANI | DIVINARUM | INSTITV= | TIONUM. | LIBRI.' The lower cover bears the monogram ‘TDM' of Thomas Mahieu, for whom the book was bound (the monogram is what Hobson describes as the ‘first monogram': see Hobson, Cambridge Libraries, 84-5). The gold stamp of the Bodleian Library on leather is on the inside of the upper cover. The binding is reproduced in I. Philip, Gold-tooled Bookbindings, Bodleian Picture Books, 2 (Oxford, 1951), pl. 9; see also Fine bindings 1500-1700 from Oxford Libraries: Catalogue of an Exhibition (Oxford, 1968), 44 no. 77 with description, references, and notes of provenance; Hobson, Cambridge Libraries, 84, no. 6, and Frederick B. Adams, ‘Maioli's Mottoes and Monograms', Festschrift Otto Schäfer zum 75. Geburtstag am 29. Juni 1987, ed. Manfred von Arnim (Stuttgart, 1987), 451-9, at 458. For other books bound for Mahieu see Hobson, Cambridge Libraries, 84-5, G. D. Hobson, Maioli, Canevari and others (London, 1926), 37-111, and also Adams, passim.
Size: 304 × 205 × 45 mm.
Size of leaf: 294 × 196 mm.
Various prayers: ‘Adiuua me Domine et saluus ero' on a1r; ‘Deus in nomine tuo saluum me fac' on a2r, in the same fifteenth/sixteenth-century hand as the previous item; ‘Dirupisti Domine uincula mea' on a2r, in a second fifteenth/sixteenth-century hand. Early marginal annotations, including comments on the text, ‘nota' marks and pointing hands.
On b1r a five-line French initial ‘M' is supplied in blue with white decoration on a gold ground edged in black, with the body of the letter containing floral decoration in red, blue, and white, and with a quarter floral and foliate border in green, red, blue, gold, and black pen-work; other principal four- to six-line initials are supplied in gold on a red ground decorated in black or a blue ground decorated in white, and with the body of the letter decorated in blue and white or red and black; other one- to four-line initials and paragraph marks are supplied in red or blue.
Provenance: Thomas Mahieu (Maiolus) († after 1584); monogram on the lower cover. Edward Bernard (1638-1697); Wanley's list, p. 3, no. 223, with the date given as 1478. Among the books purchased in 1697 from Bernard's widow.
Former Bodleian shelfmarks: M 10. 7 Th.; O 3. 11 Th.
SHELFMARK: Auct. N 4.11.
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