Parchment, 170 ff., 24,7 x 15,5 cm; Italy, 1100-1150
The manuscript contains two ancient treatises on rhetoric, Cicero’s De inventione and the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, in the Middle Ages ascribed to Cicero. So, too, in this manuscript
De inventione is divided into two books, Rhetorica ad Herennium into four. In this manuscript the books of the two works are numerated consecutively, and Rhetorica ad Herennium is divided into 6 books, with markings of a new book at IV.xiii.19 and IV.xxxv.47. According to the rubrics the manuscript thus contains one work divided into 8 books. That may be due to the exemplar, or to an absent-minded or badly informed rubricator. Lack of concentration may be discernible in odd forms of the name Herennius in the incipits and explicits. In one rubric (f. 89v) it is stated that book three ends and book five begins. That one of the collaborators of the manuscript has been aware of the fact that it contains two different works becomes obvious from the last explicit on f. 167r, where it is stated that ”book 6. ends”
The three inner bifolia of the first quire are missing, causing a lacuna between f. 1 and 2, containing the text of De Inventione I.2-11 (… Qui dispersos homines magis | in agros et in tectis siluestribus ... purgationem et deprecati|onem purgatio est ...). There are two foliations in the manuscript, one old, another modern. In the old foliation the missing leaves are counted
A note on f. 1r tells that the manuscript once belonged to Jean Nicot (1530–1600). It later came to the library of Gottorp Castle near Schleswig, whose manuscripts were transferred to Copenhagen in 1735
Bibl.: Greek and Latin Illuminated Manuscripts X–XIII Centuries in Danish Collections, København 1921, p. 46 & pl. LXIIII. - Ellen Jørgensen, Catalogus codicum Latinorum medii ævi Bibliothecæ Regiæ Hafniensis, Copenhagen 1926, p. 294f. - Birger Munk Olsen, L'Étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles, I, Paris 1982, p. 191; IV.2, 2014, p. 271. - Erik Petersen (ed.), Living Words & Luminous Pictures. Catalogue, Copenhagen & Århus 1999, p. 71f. no. 99
Erik Petersen
