Josephus De Bello Judaico

RARES 091 J77 

Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, with Latin translation attributed to Rufinus 

Parchment 

325 x 225 mm. 

 i (modern parchment) +147 + ii (modern parchment) folios 

1⁸, 2-14¹⁰, 15⁹ 

Catchwords agree 

Several quire signatures 

No foliation or pagination. Folios ir, 1v, and iir are blank.

Text space: 215 x 144 mm. Black ink fading to brown in places, ruling light brown ink. Ruled brown ink in two columns of 43 lines. 

First half of fifteenth-century Italian littera gothica textualis with explicit 147v^b. Explicit feliciter liber iosippi 

Red rubrics and running titles 

Nineteenth-century blue morocco with gilt crest 

Catalonia, Spain, fifteenth century 

On the covers are a crest, the initials ‘T.W.’ and the motto ‘Deus alit me’. The initials T.W. on the cover, as Sinclair has indicated, are the monogram of the Reverend Theodore Williams (1785–1875) and at this owner’s sale in 1827 the book was acquired by Sir Thomas Phillipps and numbered ‘3505’. Folio i^v carries the State Library’s stock no. 587559. i^v also has a sticker with the words: ‘Bound by C. Lewis, Duke St. St. James’s’. On fol. ii^v is ‘WH Robinson 5.9.49’ indicating the year in which the manuscript was purchased. 

C.A. McCallum, The Public Library of Victoria 1856-1956, Melbourne, 1956, p. 107.

K.V. Sinclair, ‘Phillipps Manuscripts in Australia’, The Book Collector, Vol. 11, 1962, p. 335.

K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, pp. 375–6, no. 221.

M.M. Manion and V.F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, p. 229, no. 96. 

The script and decoration are characteristic of fifteenth-century Catalonian book production.¹ The initials T.W. on the cover, as Sinclair has indicated, are the monogram of the Reverend Theodore Williams (1785–1875). The book was purchased by Sir Thomas Phillipps in 1827, and it is his library number which appears on the spine. It was bought by the State Library of Victoria from W. H. Robinson in 1949. 

Digital imaging and research on this manuscript were supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australia: Researching and Relating Australia’s Manuscript Holdings to New Technologies and New Readers (2010-13). Substantial donations from the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Catholic Church Insurance and the National Australia Bank are gratefully acknowledged. The Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, The Network for Early European Research, and Newman College, The University of Melbourne, have also generously contributed to the project.

This detailed entry draws on the information in earlier catalogues and updates it. In particular, it is based on the following publications: K. V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, M. M. Manion and V. F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, and B. Stocks and N. Morgan, eds, The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2008. The debt to these pioneering publications and dependence on them are acknowledged here.

ARC Team

The ARC team comprised Chief Investigators (CIs) Professor emeritus Margaret Manion (The University of Melbourne), Professor Bernard Muir (The University of Melbourne), and Dr Toby Burrows (The University of Western Australia). Shane Carmody was the representative of the Chief Industry Partner: The State Library of Victoria. Graduate research assistants were Alexandra Ellem, Dr Hugh Hudson and Dr Elaine Shaw. Postgraduate scholar and conservator, Elizabeth Melzer (The University of Melbourne) contributed expertise in medieval materials, and the following curators, conservators, photographers and computer experts at The State Library of Victoria provided valuable specialist assistance: Katrina Ben, Des Cowley, Ian Cox, Adrian Flint, Ross Genat, Jean Holland, Shelley Jamieson, Afsana Khan, Coralie McInnes, Monika McIntyre, Helen McPherson, Peter Mappin and Sarah Mason.

Other contributors, besides the ARC team, both in Australia and overseas, are acknowledged in relevant endnotes.

Margaret M. Manion on behalf of the ARC team, October, 2013.