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MS. Canon. Class. Lat. 187

Summary Catalogue no.: 18768

Aristotle, Ethics (tr. Leonardo Bruni .

With prologue and letter to Martin V.

Premissio quedam ad evidentiam nove translationis

Colophon: Explicit feliciter, Deo gratias, Amen: die vero decima, Aprelis mº. ccccº. xxxiiiiº

Language(s): Latin

Physical Description

Form: codex

Support: parchment

Extent: i + 107 + ii fols.

Dimensions (leaf): 260 × 172 mm.

Layout

1 col., 29 lines, 175 × 100 mm.

Hand(s)

Humanistic script attributable to Domenico di Niccolò Pollini . (Pächt and Alexander ii. 218

Decoration

Fine initials. (Pächt and Alexander ii. 218, pl. XIX)

Binding

15th century, second quarter, Italian, Florence (as MS.): wood boards; reddish-brown leather, blind-tooled with lines, dots and strapwork to form an eight-point star as centrepiece (Islamic influence?), and spine cross-hatched with double lines and dots in diaper pattern; remnants of two clasps with lost straps of blue patterned fabric; edges plain, trace of ink title. 268 × 178 × c. 33–36 mm. (book closed).

History

Origin: 1434 ; Italian, Florence

Provenance and Acquisition

'Iste liber est mei Rafael de Carena nova (?) [Canenavena (?), Canenanona (?), Canenanova (?)] qui vadit ad scolas domini Antonii de Camarino, qui est bonus magister in sua gramaticha et in sua sciencia et unum modichum famtastichus', 15th century, fol. 109v.

Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805

Giuseppe Canonici , -1807

Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817

Record Sources

Description adapted (2025) from the following sources:

B. C. Barker-Benfield, Bookbindings of Canonici manuscripts : a survey of early and non-standard bindings, mostly Italian, in the Canonici collection of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (Oxford, privately printed, 2020)

A. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries (1984), no. 178

Otto Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford, II (1970), no. 218

H. O. Coxe, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ pars tertia codices Græcos et Latinos Canonicianos complectens, Quarto Catalogues III, 1854

Quarto Catalogue, vol. 3, col. 193

Summary Catalogue, vol. 4, p. 321

Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (1 image of binding from 35mm slides)

Bibliography

Binding:

Tammaro de Marinis, La legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI, 3 vols., Florence 1960, III no. 3022 (under Florence)

Anthony Hobson, Humanists and bookbinders: the origins and diffusion of the humanistic bookbinding 1459–1559 …, Cambridge 1989, p. 19 and n. 23.

Printed descriptions: