Collection ID: 0001 | Metadata type: TEI | TEI XML | Data

Title

Cosmographia

Authors

• Mela, Pomponius

Other related names

• Bonius, Antonio de, former owner
• Boncompagni, Baldassarre, 1821-1894, former owner

Call number

LJS 60
(3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6206., University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts)

Alternate identifiers

• bibid: 9946451633503681
• http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/822230177
• http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/medren/4645163

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania

Language

Latin

Origin

Date

between 1440 and 1450

Place

Italy

Summary

Geographical work describing the populated areas of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia as known to the historian and geographer Strabo. Many leaves of the manuscript are palimpsests, the parchment having been formerly used for legal documents and washed for re-use. The earlier texts are occasionally faintly visible running perpendicular to the Mela text.

Notes

• Ms. codex.
   
• Title from rubric (f. 1r).
   

Extent

70 leaves : 169 x 111 (116 x 68) mm. bound to 178 x 124 mm

Foliation

Parchment, 70 + ii; [1-70]; modern foliation in pencil, upper right recto (19th-century foliation with larger numbers, also in pencil, also upper right recto, skips f. 38 and f. 50; this earlier foliation and the note in pencil at the upper margin of the first page are both mentioned in the 1892 catalog of the Boncompagni library).

Support

Parchment

Binding

15th-century vellum over pasteboards.

Layout

Written in 23-24 long lines; frame-ruled in lead.

Decoration

1 6-line initial in blue with red acanthus-leaf decoration, ornamental frame, and extensions (f. 1r); 15 2- or 3-line initials in either red or blue; 5 of the red initials have penwork in black (f. 5r, 37v, 42r, 55r, 60r); marginal notations, mostly place names, in red or blue; rubrics in red.

Script

Written in a rounded northern Italian humanistic script.

Provenance

• Formerly owned by Antonio de Bonius (?), 1450 (inscription, f. 70v).
   
• Formerly owned by Prince Baldassarre Boncompagni of Rome (no. 356 (306)).
   
• Appears in J. Halle Antiquariat's cat. 50 (1914), no. 20.
   
• Sold by Sam Fogg Ltd. (London) to Lawrence J. Schoenberg, Feb. 1997.
   
• Deposit by Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle, 2012.
   

Subjects topical

• Cities and towns, Ancient--Early works to 1800
• Geography, Ancient--Early works to 1800

Genres

• Codices
• Palimpsests
• Manuscripts, Latin--15th century
• Manuscripts, Renaissance

Keywords

• 15th century
• Legal
• Italy
• Italian
• Geography

Licenses

• Text

  These images and the content of Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts LJS 60: Cosmographia are free of known copyright restrictions and in the public domain. See the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark page for usage details, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/.

  URL

  http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

• Text

  Metadata is © and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License version 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. For a description of the terms of use see the Creative Commons Deed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

  URL

  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

Table of contents

• fol. 1r — Proemium, f. 1r
• fol. 1v — [Liber primus, Descriptio orbis], f. 1v
• fol. 26r — [Liber secundus, Situs Europae], f. 26r
• fol. 50r — [Liber tertius, Ambitus orbis, ora oceani et insularum eius], f. 50r

Decorations

• Inside front cover — Bookplate, Inside front cover
• fol. 1r — Decorated initial, Initial O, f. 1r
• fol. 37v — Decorated initial, Initial D, f. 37v
• fol. 42r — Decorated initial, Initial P, f. 42r
• fol. 47v — Decorated initial, Initial S, f. 47v
• fol. 55r — Decorated initial, Initial G, f. 55r
• fol. 60r — Decorated initial, Initial B, f. 60r