Collection ID: 0025 | Metadata type: TEI | TEI XML | Data

Title

Liber de secretis naturae seu de quinta essentia

Authors

• Pseudo-Lull

Other related names

• Petrus Joseph Puccius, Urbinas, former owner
• Thomas, Alan, former owner
• Tenschert, former owner
• Ritman, Joost R., former owner (http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2013058385.html)

Funders

• Council on Library and Information Resources

Call number

Othmer MS 7
(Philadelphia, Science History Institute, Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History)

Publisher

Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History

Language

Latin

Origin

Place

Italy, Venice

Summary

This manuscript contains a copy of the central text of the Pseudo-Lullian alchemical corpus. It includes the complete text and two versions of the "Tertia distinctio"

Notes

• Worming and foxing throughout.
   
• Structure of quire 3 uncertain, catchword on fol. 16 is evidence it was once at the end of a quire and was followed by fol. 20, the catchword on fol. 18 correctly matches the text on fol. 19; these first three quires were originally two quires of 10, i=fols. 1-7, 17, 18, now missing one leaf, without apparent loss of text, possibly cancelled?, ii=fols. 19, 8-16; Quire 20 appears complete, folio 3 is single.
   

Watermark

Unidentified watermark (fragmented)

Extent

Iii+182+i; 164 x 115 mm bound to 176 x 121 mm

Foliation

Early (eighteenth-century?) foliation in ink top outer corner recto

Collation

1 (8), 2 (6), 3 (5, +5), 4-19 (10), 20 (3, +3)

Support

Paper

Catchwords

Vertical catchwords lower inner margin (e.g., fols. 16v, 18v)

Binding

Modern brown leather over pasteboard, spine tolled in blind with four raised bands

Layout

Thirty long lines, ruled in blind hard point with the top two and bottom two lines full across and double full-length vertical bounding lines; written area: 115 x 72 mm

Decoration

One inhabited initial on fol. 1r in ink - an addition by a later reader, blank spaces left for initials with no guide letters throughout the rest of the text; blank space for illustration titled "Hec est figura arboris" (fols. 141r-141v); rubrics, red strokes through majuscules, and red paragraphs throughout; two illustrations, fol. 10r, drawings in red ink of alchemical vessels, and fol. 36r, detailed drawing of "furnus Athanor," twenty-three charts and other figures; manicules throughout (e.g., fols. 1r, 33r, 50r); marginal headings in red throughout; some paragraph signs hyperextended with decorative features (e.g., fol. 29r)

Script

Humanistic Cursive; scribe: Johannes Cycurius Theatinus

Colophon

Copied in Venice in 1498, and completed on October 8; signed and dated on fol. 174 by the unrecorded scribe Johannes Cycurius Theatinus (not listed in Bénédictins du Bouveret, Colophons de manuscrits occidentaux, or in Krämer, Scriptores possessoresque, Online resources), who says he copied the manuscript in the house of Leonardo Loredano (1436/8-1521), Doge of Venice from 1501 until his death; When the manuscript was copied he was procurator of St. Mark's ("Magistri Domini Leonardi Loredani procuratoris sancti marci")

Provenance

• Belonged to Petrus Joseph Puccius, Urbinas probably in the eighteenth or nineteenth century; inscribed front flyleaf, fol. iii; Sold at Christie's, 17 July 1985, lot 303 to Alan Thomas; his catalogue 48, 1986, no. 3; sold at Sothebys, 21 June 1988, lot 90 to Tenschert; belonged to Joost R. Ritman (b. 1941), the Dutch businessman and collector of art and books, who acquired it from Tenschert in 1992; Bibliotheca Philosophia Hermetica MS 100 (bookplate front flyleaf i); described in Gentile, 1999, no. 36, pp. 221-224.; briefly described in Medieval Manuscripts in Dutch Collections (Online Resources)
   

Keywords

• Treatise
• 15th century
• Italian
• Italy
• Science
• Manicules
• Inhabited initial
• Illustration
• Drawing

Licenses

• Text

  These images and the content of Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History, Othmer MS 7: Liber de secretis naturae seu de quinta essentia 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

  To the extent possible under law, Othmer Library, Chemical Heritage Foundation has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this metadata about Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History Othmer MS 7: Liber de secretis naturae seu de quinta essentia. This work is published from: United States. For a summary of CC0, see https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Legal code: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.

  URL

  https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

Table of contents

• fol. 1r — Liber de secretis naturae seu de quinta essentia; incipit: Contristatus erat Raymundus et non modica desolatione repletus

Decorations

• fol. 10r — Drawings in red ink of alchemical vessels
• fol. 36r — Detailed drawing of "furnus Athanor," and a full complement of Lullian figures
• fol. 47v — Radix Arboris Phylosofalis
• fol. 48r — Radix Arboris Phylosofalis continued, and the circular figure "S," with explanation
• fol. 139v — A detailed circular "figura S"
• fol. 142r — Circular " figura individuorum"
• fol. 152v — Small diagrams
• fol. 165r — Nine circular figures of "Physica perfectorum"
• fol. 167r — Circular "figura quadrangularis"
• fol. 174r — "Hec est prima figura huius artis que est de mixtione principiorum Arboris phylosophye"
• fol. 174v — "Hec est figura secunda huius que est de mixtione principiorum figure fundamentalis"
• fol. 175r — "Tabula est dat modum qualiter extrahatur noster mercurius a Vino albo et Rubeo …"
• fol. 175v — Circular "figura Indiuiduorum"
• fol. 176r — "Arbor philosophie"
• fol. 176v — Lullian figure with explanation below
• fol. 177v — Circular figure "Generatio"
• fol. 178r — Circular figure "Aqua Mercurij"
• fol. 178v — Circular figure
• fol. 179r — Circular figure "Aqua Mercurij"
• fol. 179v — Circular figures
• fol. 180r — Tables with explanations
• fol. 180v — Tables with explanations
• fol. 181r — Tables with explanations
• fol. 181v — Detailed circular figure
• fol. 182r — Detailed circular figure