Decretum

Accession number:

MS M.446

Title:

Decretum

Created:

Italy, probably Bologna, first quarter of the 13th century.

Binding:

Quarter-leather (goatskin) binding by Marguerite Duprez Lahey with decorative paper sides; formerly in a 19th century tan Russia stamped panel surrounded by blind tooled foliage border.

Credit:

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

Description:

204 leaves (2 columns, 56 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 440 x 270 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. canon law written and decorated in Italy, probably in Bologna, first quarter of the 13th century.
The gloss is by Bartholomae Brixiensis (Bartholomeo de Brescia); prefaced by the Introductio liber decretorum distinctus est in tres partes (fols. 1-2), which has been ascribed to Paulus de Liazariis and which was written in the 15th century; fols. 203-204 are fragments of a 13th century summa.
Decoration: 1 composite tree of Consanguinity and Affinity (fol. 177); 2 trees, one of Consanguinity (fol. 203v) and one of Affinity (fol. 204); decorative organic penwork flourishes and sprays throughout the manuscript.
M.446 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.447 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:

textura

Language:

Latin

Resources:

Description/Bibliography

Century:

13th century

Genres:

Canon law

Manuscripts

Glosses (annotations)