2019-03-09

Wire Diagram

Three dimensional diagrams provided one of the greatest challenges for medieval scriptoria. We all know how hard it sometimes can be to "get" a wire diagram which lacks context and perspective. Are we looking at the front or back? Isidore of Seville passed on a diagram of the Platonic theory of the four elements which seems not to be correctly reproduced in any medieval manuscript.

John Murdoch's Album of Science, section 247, explains that the diagram in De natura rerum was meant to show a cube (cybus) with the note: haec figura solida est secundum geometricam rationem. But in Ross.247, a Vatican manuscript just updated online to full color, it becomes quite weird.

The scribes decided the best way to present a diagram of elements was to present it as the whole of matter, hence the diagonal which a label tells us is the north-south axis of the universe. Go figure. This codex, believed to be the work of monks of the Benedictine abbey of Monastier-Saint-Chaffre in central France in around 1020, is packed with fine colored diagrams.

It is one of 30 items new online in the past week at the Vatican Library digital portal. My full list:
  1. Ross.98 (Upgraded to HQ),
  2. Ross.99 (Upgraded to HQ),
  3. Ross.110,
  4. Ross.247 (Upgraded to HQ), (above)
  5. Ross.287,
  6. Urb.lat.178, containing the compilatio prima of canon law by Bernard of Pavia and the compilatio secunda of John of Wales: McManus List: Comp. 1 w/Apparatus of Tancred [original version] (1-77v); Comp. 2 w/Apparatus of Tancred [original version] (78-117)
  7. Urb.lat.568,
  8. Urb.lat.599.pt.2,
  9. Urb.lat.604,
  10. Urb.lat.1114.pt.1,
  11. Urb.lat.1114.pt.2,
  12. Urb.lat.1285,
  13. Urb.lat.1286,
  14. Urb.lat.1287,
  15. Urb.lat.1289,
  16. Urb.lat.1444,
  17. Urb.lat.1464.pt.2,
  18. Urb.lat.1536,
  19. Urb.lat.1541,
  20. Urb.lat.1566,
  21. Vat.lat.2487, 11 entries in eTK relating to astronomy, science and Avicenna; flyleaf lists contents 
  22. Vat.lat.3903,
  23. Vat.lat.4110,
  24. Vat.lat.4297,
  25. Vat.lat.4372.pt.1,
  26. Vat.lat.4372.pt.2,
  27. Vat.lat.4598 (Upgraded to HQ),
  28. Vat.lat.4639,
  29. Vat.lat.4659,
  30. Vat.lat.4678,
This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 199. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.
Reactions:  
No comments : Links to this post
Labels: ,

2019-03-02

Got Birds?

An Italian, Teseo Pini, wrote between 1484 and 1486 a book claiming to expose the tricks practised by organized beggars of various types. From what we know, there was fierce competition on the streets of Renaissance Europe for the attention of charity givers. Among the players were not just panhandlers and scammers, but also Franciscan friars and unemployed university graduates.

Pini's book, De Ceretanorum Origine Eorumque Fallaciis, became something of a best-seller and the Vatican Library has just digitized a late copy, Urb.lat.1217. It describes about about 40 types of alleged "cerretani" (charlatans, impostors) and their Italian jargon (instead of the Mafia term capo, they said imperatore for the boss of a gang, fol. 64r).

From Roberto Rusconi I read that one group, the Acconi, carried round images painted on wood of a boy, Simon of Trent, allegedly murdered by Jews. They sang anti-Jewish songs and hymns to the Virgin Mary. When the punters fell for this (usually when coming out of church) and the take in donations was good, the Acconi's Italian phrase for success translated as: "We seized our birds."

In the past week, 18 manuscripts were digitized and put online. The full list:
  1. Ott.lat.2836,
  2. Ross.90, book of  hours? 
  3. Ross.105,
  4. Urb.lat.613,
  5. Urb.lat.977,
  6. Urb.lat.1112 (Upgraded to HQ), dated 1648
  7. Urb.lat.1118,
  8. Urb.lat.1217, above
  9. Urb.lat.1231 (Upgraded to HQ), on fencing, sadly no illustrations.
  10. Urb.lat.1274,
  11. Urb.lat.1441,
  12. Urb.lat.1452,
  13. Vat.lat.4058,
  14. Vat.lat.4146,
  15. Vat.lat.4605 (Upgraded to HQ),
  16. Vat.lat.4640,
  17. Vat.lat.4708,
  18. Vat.lat.4713,
This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 198. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.
Reactions:  
No comments : Links to this post
Labels: ,

2019-02-23

To Conquer a Castle

Whacko military techniques star in a codex, Urb.lat.1397, just re-digitized in color at the Vatican Library, including a few hints about how to conquer a castle: drain its cisterns, blow it up from below with a barrel of gunpowder or sneak a platoon in by tunnel:

There is also a wonderful galley-ship you can dismantle and take anywhere by truck:

@DigitaVaticana says the artist is Siennese but otherwise anonymous. These illustrated handbooks of (easier said than done) military methods were a genre that began in late antiquity. Often the ideas were hand-me-downs from the past: rarely effective, but always delightful to dreamy inventors.

In the past week, 36 manuscripts were digitized in Rome. My unofficial full list:
  1. Barb.lat.2157,
  2. Ott.lat.1261,
  3. Ross.103,
  4. Ross.165,
  5. Ross.180,
  6. Ross.260,
  7. Urb.lat.551,
  8. Urb.lat.552,
  9. Urb.lat.580,
  10. Urb.lat.853.pt.2,
  11. Urb.lat.970,
  12. Urb.lat.974,
  13. Urb.lat.1038.pt.A,
  14. Urb.lat.1126,
  15. Urb.lat.1213,
  16. Urb.lat.1227,
  17. Urb.lat.1349,
  18. Urb.lat.1397 (Upgraded to HQ),
  19. Urb.lat.1424,
  20. Urb.lat.1438,
  21. Urb.lat.1448,
  22. Urb.lat.1463.pt.A,
  23. Vat.ebr.202,
  24. Vat.lat.2484 (Upgraded to HQ), eTK: Anticipans natus vel partus decem diebus a nono mense
  25. Vat.lat.2486 (Upgraded to HQ), eTK: Dubitatur utrum diffinitio medicine sit bona et arguitur Haly et;  Turisanus et alii quod non (15c)
  26. Vat.lat.3217 (Upgraded to HQ),
  27. Vat.lat.3976 (Upgraded to HQ),
  28. Vat.lat.4459 (Upgraded to HQ),
  29. Vat.lat.4486 (Upgraded to HQ),
  30. Vat.lat.4596,
  31. Vat.lat.4608,
  32. Vat.lat.4609,
  33. Vat.lat.4611,
  34. Vat.lat.4614,
  35. Vat.lat.4627,
  36. Vat.lat.4637,
This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 197. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.
Reactions:  
No comments : Links to this post
Labels: ,

2019-02-16

Green Parrots

Around 1450, a talented young German painter showed up in Italy and got work as a miniaturist. We know him solely as Gioacchino di Giovanni, although he seems to have been born in Rottenburg an der Laaber, Bavaria (not Rothenburg ob der Tauber as claimed by the Grove Dictionary).

He must have been a big fellow, as he also went by the name Gigantibus. He also evidently had a thing about green parrots (I'm not making this up). Here's one that flew into his work in ms. King's 2 at the British Library:
The Vatican Library has just digitized his work in a Nicholas de Lyra manuscript, and of course there is a signature green parrot in there:
It's one of just six manuscripts digitized in the past week. The list:
  1. Chig.L.VI.210, an Italian translation of the Treasury of Brunetto Latini, with several fine diagrams:
  2. Ross.125.pt.2 (Upgraded to HQ), Breviary with this throne of heaven: 
  3. Urb.lat.1150,
  4. Vat.lat.2415,
  5. Vat.lat.4215, Nicholas of Lyra: here is God making the trees:
  6. Vat.lat.4650,

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 196. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.
Reactions:  
No comments : Links to this post
Labels: ,

2019-02-09

Herb Dictionary

The Fabio Chigi collection's Greek Dioscorides, a stunning Renaissance copy of the most famous herbal reference of antiquity, is the star turn of last week's digitizations at the Vatican Library.

The work itself is known as De materia medica. This non-text variant is termed a herbarius alphabeticus and is a picture dictionary of the medicinal plants in Greek alphabetical order. This copy, Chig.F.VII.159, is believed to be by the scriptorium of the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in mid-15th-century Constantinople, modelled on a 6th-century Dioscorides which is now in Vienna.

One of the finest miniatures shows an artist painting the plants at the instructions of Dioscorides:

Seemingly it had no text at all when first made. Some glosses added are said to be in the hand of Isidore of Kiev (c.1385- 1463), a Greek theologian who was for a time patriarch of all Russia, unsuccessfully sought the reunion of the Orthodox and Catholic churches and escaped death by a ruse in the 1453 fall of Constantinople. Five other hands, two Greek and three Latin, added plant names.

John Murdoch's Album of Science glosses 224v (above) as follows: Each flask is meant to contain the oil or balm specified, the plant from which the oil in question is derived being depicted to one side. Thus beginning at the left of the top row, we have oil of walnut (caryinum), oil of quince (melinum) and radish seed oil (raphaninum). The second row presents us with oil of roses (rosaceum) and some kind of resin oil (retininum).

Chigi's other herbal, the Dioscorides Latino, arrived online a couple of weeks ago. Chigi ended his life as pope Alexander VII. His heirs sold his books to the Vatican in 1923.

In all, 32 codices have just been digitized. The unofficial list:
  1. Barb.gr.331,
  2. Barb.lat.2158, which contains an account of the eruption of Mount Aetna on Sicily:
  3. Capp.Sist.588,
  4. Chig.F.VII.159 (Upgraded to HQ) (above)
  5. Ott.lat.352,
  6. Reg.gr.Pio.II.37 (Upgraded to HQ),
  7. Ross.289,
  8. Urb.lat.599.pt.1,
  9. Urb.lat.605,
  10. Urb.lat.759,
  11. Urb.lat.896,
  12. Urb.lat.1017,
  13. Urb.lat.1038.pt.B,
  14. Urb.lat.1122,
  15. Urb.lat.1215.pt.1,
  16. Urb.lat.1218,
  17. Vat.lat.2479,
  18. Vat.lat.2483, with incipit (see eTK): Medicina artium preclarissima hec verba ... Quoniam ut ars medicorum princeps
  19. Vat.lat.4183,
  20. Vat.lat.4332 (Upgraded to HQ),
  21. Vat.lat.4336,
  22. Vat.lat.4443,
  23. Vat.lat.4544,
  24. Vat.lat.4599,
  25. Vat.lat.4600,
  26. Vat.lat.4602,
  27. Vat.lat.4604,
  28. Vat.lat.4606 (Upgraded to HQ), see Jordanus
  29. Vat.lat.4631,
  30. Vat.lat.4633 (Upgraded to HQ),
  31. Vat.lat.15126,
  32. Vat.turc.340,
This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 195. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.
Reactions:  
No comments : Links to this post
Labels: ,

2019-02-02

Midget Minstrels

Maximilian I, the German emperor, is famous for adopting print as a means to increase his propaganda reach. His Ehrenpforte, a monumental printed frieze to be glued together, figures as a proto family tree in my book Mind's Eye. He wrote a chivalric novel Weisskunig (about "me" of course) with his secretary between 1505 and 1516 and commissioned illustrations.

The sketchbook, Vat.lat.8570, has just been digitized by the Vatican Library and is a feast of silliness to be enjoyed page by page: here are some midget minstrels at fol. 107r:

The drawings, which served the engravers who made the wooden plates under the supervision of Konrad Peutinger in Augsburg, were later pasted into the scrapbook which ended up in the Vatican.

In all, 29 digitizations went online in the past week. My unofficial list:
  1. Ross.106, book of hours
  2. Urb.lat.148,
  3. Urb.lat.183,
  4. Urb.lat.615,
  5. Urb.lat.733,
  6. Urb.lat.760,
  7. Urb.lat.765,
  8. Urb.lat.776,
  9. Urb.lat.811,
  10. Urb.lat.846,
  11. Urb.lat.853.pt.1,
  12. Urb.lat.1088.pt.2,
  13. Urb.lat.1088.pt.3,
  14. Vat.lat.2473, commentaries on Avicenna
  15. Vat.lat.2477,
  16. Vat.lat.2481, date 1385, by the Italian surgeon Gentile da Foligno 
  17. Vat.lat.4555,
  18. Vat.lat.4575 (Upgraded to HQ), humanist historian Flavio Biondo (1392 - 1463): De verbis Romanae locutionis [ad Leonardum Brunum]
  19. Vat.lat.4576 (Upgraded to HQ),
  20. Vat.lat.4577,
  21. Vat.lat.4580,
  22. Vat.lat.4581,
  23. Vat.lat.4588,
  24. Vat.lat.4607,
  25. Vat.lat.4612 (Upgraded to HQ),
  26. Vat.lat.4615,
  27. Vat.lat.4628,
  28. Vat.lat.8570 (Upgraded to HQ),
  29. Vat.turc.314, flyleaf note in German dates this to 985, author Isqi Munsaat
This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 194. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.
Reactions:  
No comments : Links to this post
Labels: ,

2019-01-26

Rose by any Other Name

Among the most glorious picture books in the Vatican Library is the so-called Dioscorides Latino, a bound collection of images of medicinal plants. Chig.F.VII.158 belonged to Fabio Chigi (later Pope Alexander VII) and was acquired by the Vatican in 1923.
Despite the name, it is not the complete dictionary of medicinal herbs written in Greek by Dioscorides Pedanius between 50 and 70 CE. It contains only Latin-name captions and a few lists.

The Vatican portal has just digitized this treasure for everyone to enjoy. It seems to date from the start of the 15th century, and is therefore much younger than the Vienna Dioscorides.
Its charm includes line drawings that let one see outlines amid the color swatches, as here with a rose:

When it was exhibited in the United States in the Rome Reborn exhibition, Anthony Grafton wrote in the catalog that it was probably associated with a Salernitan herbal known as the Circa instans, with plants, animals, and minerals arranged in alphabetical order with plant lists and captions in Latin. A BnF catalogue writer suggests the Dioscorides Latino is a misnomer for what would be better termed a Tractatus de herbis.
The connection with the Materia Medica of Dioscorides seems therefore to be doubtful. Just enjoy it for the splendour of the images. It is one of 36 items new online in the past week:
  1. Borg.sir.162,
  2. Borg.sir.24,
  3. Chig.F.VII.158, so-called Dioscorides Latino, (above). See also the description in the St Louis catalog.  
  4. Patetta.2060,
  5. Ross.73,
  6. Ross.85,
  7. Urb.lat.542,
  8. Urb.lat.575,
  9. Urb.lat.584,
  10. Urb.lat.592,
  11. Urb.lat.625,
  12. Urb.lat.700,
  13. Urb.lat.722,
  14. Urb.lat.723,
  15. Urb.lat.771,
  16. Urb.lat.792,
  17. Urb.lat.795,
  18. Urb.lat.796,
  19. Urb.lat.932,
  20. Urb.lat.962,
  21. Urb.lat.965,
  22. Urb.lat.969,
  23. Urb.lat.1088.pt.1,
  24. Vat.lat.2437,
  25. Vat.lat.2439,
  26. Vat.lat.4106 (Upgraded to HQ),
  27. Vat.lat.4280,
  28. Vat.lat.4388,
  29. Vat.lat.4438,
  30. Vat.lat.4449, 15th-century, works by Sigismundus de Polcastris, see eTK with the incipits Cum sepe me exhortatus et deprecatus and Utrum medicine dicte tales
  31. Vat.lat.4558,
  32. Vat.lat.4567 William of Moerbeke translation of Elementatio Theologica of Proclus (upgraded to HQ), translation online at Augsburg;
  33. Vat.lat.4570, Latin translation of Harmonics of Ptolemy, once owned by the Italian music theorist Franchinus Gaffurius, featured in Rome Reborn 
  34. Vat.lat.4574,
  35. Vat.lat.4584,
  36. Vat.lat.5590,
This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 193. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.
Reactions:  
No comments : Links to this post
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )