(Venice, 1470'ies - 80'ies). 4to. 210x240 mm. In a lovely, strictly contemporary Italian binding. Original wooden boards with beveled edges. Top outer edge of front board chipped and a small split at bottom outer edge. Boards with remnants of the original leather previously partially covering boards, revealing the leather cords, and with an exposed spine revealing four strips of Medieval parchment that hold the quires together (along with a bit of restoration glue, barely noticeable). The top strip with red paint and the other three with fourteenth-century Gothic script. Original brass clasps to front board. An excellent, solid, contemporary binding. 70 ff. (f.70 blank), complete (i-v 12, vi 10), 29 lines to a page, mostly with ruling, occasionally only with frame ruling (150 x 77 mm). Vertical catchwords at the bottom of verso of the last folio of each of quire (i.e. ff. 12, 24, 36, 48, 60), surrounded by wave lines. Written in an easily legible, experienced Italian humanist miniscule. Space (sometimes with cue letters) for initials left blank. No rubrication, but majuscule lettering as headlines at new beginnings or major text divisions. Large, detailed drawing of pointing hand on f. 3, in contemporary hand. Ff. 8v and 24v with scribbled border in light brown ink around the textblocks, in an early modern hand. Another later hand, presumably a later owner, has added “Jacopi – che qui anno 1693 i Viterbo 1693” in runny ink on f. 29v. Crudely written calculations in the same hand to ff. 59v and 61r. Front pasted-down end-paper with paste stains, presumably from a previous bookplate, and with a note in 19th century German script to top. Foliation in modern pencil in top right corner throughout. F1 a bit dusty and with brownspotting. Occasional minor brownspotting. Minor damp staining to margins of last two quires, no loss and not affecting text. Otherwise generally in excellent condition. Two different watermarks in the paper: 1) a scale inside a circle (see ff. 52+57, at inner margin) – this is described in Briquet (Les filigranes…, 1923) as “Balance dens un cerele, à plateau concaves”, nr. 2474 – Venice, 1480. 2) the letter P with loop through shaft also (see ff. 64+70, at inner margin). We have not been able to identify this. The text is divided into the major setions divided mostly by Majuscule ""headlines"", and begins thus: 1) “[C]ARMINA QVI Condam studio florente peregi..."", ending (f. 9v) ""hec ubi regnant”" " 2) beginning “[P]POST HEC PAVLIS PER opticuit Atentionem..."", ending (f. 21v) ""Quo celum regitur regat”" " 3) beginning “[I]AM CANTUM illa finierat…"", ending (f. 41) ""Perdit dum videt inferos”" " 4) ""Explicit iii Incipit iiii L"", beginning “[H]EC cum Phylosophia dignitate vultus..."", ending (f. 58) ""Si dera donat”" " 5) beginning “[D]IXERUNT Orationisque cursum ad alia..."", ending (f. 69v) ""cum ante oculos agitis iudicis cuncta cernentis / GRATIAS DEO Amen”. F70 blank. Complete version of the text, with some minor word and orthographic variations in comparison to the printed standard version, and without the printed edition’s few lines in Greek. No space has been left for these and they were clearly not intended to be added later.
