Josephus De Bello Judaico

Place

Melbourne, Victoria

Repository

State Library of Victoria

Collection

Shelf mark

RARES 091 J77 

Former shelf mark

Name

Josephus, De bello judaico

Summary

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

Support

Parchment 

Dimensions

325 x 225 mm. 

Extent

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

Collation

1⁸, 2-14¹⁰, 15⁹ 

Catchwords

Catchwords agree 

Signatures

Several quire signatures 

Foliation

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

Condition

Layout

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. 

Scribes

Scripts

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

Decoration

Red rubrics and running titles 

Program of Decoration

Initials, two and three lines high, in blue and red finely flourished in the alternate colour occur throughout. Decorated painted initials six or seven lines high introduce the prologue and seven books of the history on fols 1ra, 2va, 35ra, 62ra, 77vb, 88ra, 98vb and 118vb. They are coloured blue or pink and are set against gold grounds which are sometimes indented at the corners and curved towards the outer margin. The foliate and tracery designs which fill the interstices are elongated and tapering in shape. These initials are in varying shades of blue, green, pink, brown and red. Spiky fronds extend into the borders, which are also decorated by gold circlets. Folio 1r has a full border, in the same colours, composed of a three-sided bar entwined by slender, curving, leafy fronds and fine tendrils with spiked flowers. At the top of the page the border terminates in tapering branches of the same pattern. Heads in profile or three- quarter view, framed by leaves in a rough diamond shape, appear in the centre of each of the side panels. A diamond-shaped lozenge also appears in the centre of the lower margin. 

Musical notation

Binding

Nineteenth-century blue morocco with gilt crest 

Seals

Accompanying material

 Origin

Catalonia, Spain, fifteenth century 

 Provenance

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. 

 Acquisition

Bought by the State Library of Victoria from W. H. Robinson in 1949. 

 Bibliography list

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. 

 Commentary

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. 

¹ François Avril first indicated the probable Catalonian origins of this manuscript. 

 Description by

 Acknowledgements

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.

 Other descriptions

 Digital copies

http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/179354