It’s not every day that I have the pleasure of announcing that the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at OSU has acquired an original medieval codex, and I’m pleased to say that today isn’t one of those days either. Pleased, you might ask? Yes, because today I happily announce that we have just added three medieval books to our collection! These acquisitions mark the first complete medieval manuscript additions to RBMS’s collection in over twenty years. All three manuscripts were acquired based on a range of criteria: content, scriptural style, codicological context, uniqueness and, most importantly, their ability to serve as valuable foundations for individualized and classroom teaching and ongoing research. Each manuscript is distinct and includes qualities that previously had not been available in OSU’s manuscript collections.

Our first new addition is Pseudo-Sextus Aurelius Victor’s De viris illustribus Romae, a historical work that includes seventy-six summaries of the lives of famous Romans.  Although a sixteenth-century inscription in OSU’s copy attributes the work to Suetonius and one recent scholarly opinion credits Pliny the Elder as its original author, the true authorship of this text has been contested for centuries. Produced in Italy in the late-fifteenth century (ca. 1450-1475), OSU’s copy (one of an estimated five examples in North America) is written in a fine humanistic script. Adding further flavor to the item is its binding: a leaf from a late-twelfth century decorated Italian Lectionary. Taken together, the book’s text and the binding’s late Carolingian script offer students a wonderful opportunity to see side-by-side Italian humanistic script and the original scriptural style upon which it was modeled. The manuscript also provides interesting codicological fodder, giving readers a chance to see a fifteenth-century binding error and a number of later inscriptions and paratextual additions.

An early-fifteenth century noted Cistercian Processional in Latin (with some rubrics in Dutch) is our second new codex. The manuscript includes an array of text and music used during processions for important liturgical feasts and celebrations such as the Purification of the Virgin, Palm Sunday, Corpus Christi, and others. Also included are the antiphons sung to celebrate the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday. The text is written in formal gothic bookhand in brown ink and red rubrications. The manuscript is particularly valuable from a codicological standpoint, surviving, as it does, in its original leather-covered pasteboard binding. Pasteboard bindings were not common prior to the early-sixteenth century, a fact that makes OSU’s volume extremely interesting not just because of its early date, but also because the pasteboard is made from sheets of parchment—rather than paper—that are glued together. Although OSU has several examples of medieval musical manuscripts in its collection of disjunct leaves, this volume is the first musical medieval codex to come to the University.

Original medieval vernacular manuscripts can be hard to come by, but occasionally a fine example appears on the market. Our third manuscript addition is a lovely little volume of prayers, masses, and a sermon likely produced in northern Italy between 1375 and 1425. The first twenty-three folios include an array of prayers and masses in both Latin and Italian, but the book’s final 128 folios feature a macaronic sermon written mostly in Italian, but with occasional Latin additions. Luke 14:16 (“Homo quidem fecit cenam magnam”) is the sermon’s main theme, but other subjects such as the two natures of Christ, the influence of the heavens and planets on everyday life, Purgatory, Hell’s punishments, and the glories of Paradise are also discussed. Unfortunately the text’s original binding doesn’t survive, so we’re deprived of any inscriptions or marks of ownership that may have helped us piece together its provenance. Given its small size (93 x 66 mm)–note the small scale by comparing the text to the elegant thumbs holding it open–and the fact that most of it is in the vernacular, this book may have been intended for personal rather than institutional use.

All three manuscripts are welcome additions to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library’s growing collection of original medieval documents and will prove to be popular, highly useful teaching and research tools. One ambitious and gifted student has already begun historical and codicological research on the Cistercian Processional, and work toward producing an edition and translation of the Italian prayer and sermon manuscript is also underway.  Students from the French department have also conducted in-depth, hands-on analysis of one of the manuscripts during a class session at the Library earlier this quarter. Although the manuscripts are amongst the Library’s oldest holdings, it’s clear that they are already finding ways to speak to today’s students and scholars.

Eric J. Johnson, Associate Curator