A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges

MS. Canon. Gr. 55

Summary Catalogue no.: 18508

Contents

Basil the Great, works
Language(s): Greek

Physical Description

Form: codex
Support: parchment

Binding

18th century, second half, Italian, for Canonici, a standard archaizing style: wood boards; diced brown leather, blind-tooled with lines and rolls in two frames around a blank diamond; spine with gilt lines and red-leather label. 294–295 × 218–220 × c. 110–115 mm. (book closed).

Remnants of a prior intermediate binding, 15th or 16th century, Italian: edges painted with prominent red rings linked with smaller design-elements; flyleaves cut from fine 15th-century Italian parchment ruled (but blank) for a larger book.

History

Origin: 12th century (?)

Provenance and Acquisition

Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805

Giuseppe Canonici , -1807

Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817

Record Sources

Summary description abbreviated from the Quarto Catalogue (H. O. Coxe, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae pars prima recensionem codicum Graecorum continens, Quarto Catalogues I, 1883, repr. with corrections 1969). Binding: 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).

Bibliography

Last Substantive Revision

2020-04: Binding description added.