OROSIUS, ETC.
Vellum, 12.75 x 8.875, double columns of 43 lines. 15th cent., written by an Italian scribe or imitator of Italian hand.
Binding, stamped leather over boards, first cover surrounded with chess-board pattern, in centre of second cover panel with motto En dieu mafye1.
Small stamps: lion, pot of daisies (?), two beasts facing, tree in centre.
Donor, T. C. S. 2 fo. petratum.
Collation: a8 - e8 (wants 7) f8 - l8 (wants 6-8).
Contents:
1. Orosii Historia . . . . . . . . . . f. 1
Begins imperfectly in I 10: Post aquas in sanguinem uersas.
Lib. II, f. 4b; III, 13b; IV, 24b; V, 37b; VI, 49b; VII, 63b.
Ends f. 82b: iudicata si deleas. Expl. septimus liber.
2. Epistola Alexandri regis Macedonum ad Aristotelem . . . . 83
Semper memor fui.
Ends 84b: optime aristotiles ponderaris. Expl. laus deo et
b. marie et omnibus sanctis suis.
These two writings occur together in a manuscript at Eton.
The large initials throughout are in gold on a ground divided into quarters of blue and red, strewn with a pattern of white dots in groups of three.
1 Other books with this motto stamped on them are Gonville and Caius MS. 252; Jesus College MS. 42.
Negative microfilm in St John's College Library.
G. D. Hobson, Bindings in Cambridge Libraries (Cambridge, 1929), p. 29, plate VI.
Exhibited as a binding at Le Livre Anglais: tresors des collections Anglaises (Paris, 1951), catalogue no. 381.
Also exhibited as a binding at the Victoria and Albert Museum Exhibition of English Mediaeval art, catalogue no. 730 (London, 1930).
Nicholas Barker, 'A register of writs and the scales binder', The Book Collector 21:2-3 (Summer and Autumn 1972).
Item 2 was used by W. W. Boer in Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem ad codicum fidem edita et commentario critico instructa, dissertatio inauguralis (The Hague, 1953). As was MS. 184, item 8.
The initial on fol. 63 is roughly cut out.