Marston MS 73     Italy, s. XV 3/4

Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, It. tr.



ff. 1r-126v  [Preface:]  Meritamente sono obligati gli huomini di douere

rendere grandissime gratie agli scriptori...antichi tenpi discriuerremo.

[text, f. 5v:]  [L]a prima generatione degli huomini apresso a doctissimi

et prestantissimi philosophi...e scripse molte altre cose d'india delle

quali innanci non sera auto cognitione alcuna.  ff. 127r-129v ruled, but

blank


   Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, Books I (parts 1 and 2)-II, in an

unidentified and freely adapted Italian translation (e.g., the opening portion

of Book II is greatly abbreviated).  Corrections and additions were carefully

made by the scribe over erasures or in gaps. According to J. Monfasani (letter

on file), Florence, Bibl. Naz., MS Magl. XXIII, 46 contains the same 

anonymous Italian translation, but with Latin marginalia and comments on 

the Greek original.  This Italian translation was compared with the Greek 

text in F. Vogel, ed., Teubner (1887) pp. 2-226.



   Parchment, ff. i (contemporary parchment) + 129, 213 x 141 (151 x 84)

mm.  Written in 29 long lines.  ff. 1-70:  double vertical bounding

lines (Derolez 13.31), ruled in ink, single prickings in outer margin 5 mm.

below bottom ruling for text; ff. 71-128:  double vertical and horizontal

bounding lines (Derolez 13.36), ruled in hard point on hair side.

   I-XII 10, XIII 10 (-10, blank).  Vertical catchwords with dots and

flourishes before and after, between inner bounding lines (Derolez 12.5),

verso.

  Written in an elegant, upright mercantesca script by a single scribe,

below top line.

   Spaces for headings and decorative initials remain unfilled.  Initial

on f. 1r later addition.

   Binding:  Italy. s. xv.  Sewn on four tawed skin, slit straps nailed

in channels on the outside of wooden boards.  Yellow edges.  Pink, green

and cream endbands sewn on five cores.

   Covered in dark red goatskin with corner tongues, blind-tooled with a

central ornament in a panel bordered with rope interlace in concentric

frames.  Two fastenings, leaf-shaped catches on the lower board and the

upper board cut in for the clasp straps.  Rebacked twice.



Written in Italy in the third quarter of the 15th century; early

provenance unknown.  Belonged to Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali

(1651-1737; bookstamp on f. 1r; C. Eubel, et al., eds., Hierarchia

catholica medii et recentioris aevi [Regensburg, 1925; reprinted Padua,

1952] v. 5, p. 17).  Marston MS 73 cited in G. Fontanini, Bibliotheca

Josephi Renati Imperialis... (Rome, 1711) p. 155.  Unidentified shelf-marks or

price codes include "73" in ink on front pastedown; "$5DDD$1/ III/ S [or 5?] 7"

in ink on f. i recto (a similar shelf-mark occurs in Beinecke MS 156); and "871" in pencil on f. i recto.

Acquired through the Anderson Auction Company, New York (12-13 April 1915,

no. 168) by the medical historian Dr. Edward Clark Streeter (1874-1947;

note, in ink, on front pastedown:  "40. N. Y. '15").  Purchased from

L. C. Witten in 1955 by Thomas E. Marston (bookplate).


secundo folio:  gloria



Bibliography:  Faye and Bond, pp. 72-73, no. 73.

Barbara A. Shailor