Codex Justinianus

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Accession number:

MS M.447

Title:

Codex Justinianus

Created:

Bologna, Italy, ca. 1280-1290.

Binding:

Previously in Italian diced and stamped Russian leather (ca. 1840); rebound my Marguerite Duprez Lahey in the 20th century.

Credit:

Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1910.

Description:

283 leaves (2 columns, varying number of lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 425 x 260 mm

Provenance:

Owned in the 17th century by an inhabitant of Padua; purchased in 1640 by the Marchese Linterno for his family museum in Milan; the Carthusians of Garegnano (a suburb of Milan); upon suppression of the convent in 1799 the manuscript passed to the duke C. Visconti Modrone of Milan; purchased from him by the engineer Guiseppe Bruschetti in 1834; in 1865 owned by the Milanese bookseller Gaetano Schiepatti; Marchese Girolamo d'Adda; C. Fairfax Murray; purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) from Alexandre Imbert in July 1910; J.P. Morgan (1867-1943).

Notes:

Ms. Roman law, written and illuminated in Bologna, Italy, ca. 1280-1290.
Includes the glossa ordinaria of Accursius, which is also written in 2 columns.
Incomplete; text ends on fol. 283v at Book IX, title 20.6 (out of a possible 51 titles).
Decoration: miniatures to all books unexecuted; 11 zoomorphic and anthropomorphic initials; inhabited penwork decoration.
M.447 is among the 25 manuscripts described by Louis Arrigoni in his Notice historique et bibliographique sur vingt-cinq manuscrits...ayant fait parti de la Bibliothq̈ue de Francois Petrarque, Milan, 1883, including M.446 and M.940; this provenance has been discarded as false by scholars,since the supposed evidence, Petrarch's engraved coat of arms on the flyleaves, was only added to the manuscripts in the 17th century.

Script:

Italian textura

Language:

Latin

Resources:

Description/Bibliography

Century:

13th century

Genres:

Civil law

Illuminated manuscripts

Inhabited initials