Marston MS 166     Northern Italy, s. XII/XIII
Augustine, De doctrina christiana, etc.

1. f. 1r  [Heading, added s. xv-xvi:]  Retractatio Beatissimi Augustini
In libros De doctrina christiana.  [text:]  Libros de doctrina christiana
cum imperfecos [sic] comperissem.  perficere malui.  quam eis...quem de 
sacramentis siue de philosophia scripsit.  Hoc opus sic incipit.  Sunt 
precepta quedam.

Augustine, Rectractatio XXV; A. Mutzenbecher, ed., CC ser. lat.
57 (1984) pp. 92-93.

2. ff. 1r-67r  [Heading, added s. xv-xvi:]  De Doctrina christiana liber
eiusdem Incipit.  [prologue:]  Sunt precepta quedam tractandarum
scripturarum.  que studiosis earum uideo non incommode posse tradi...tale
nobis occurrit exordium.  [text, f. 3v:]  Due sunt res quibus nititur
omnis tractatio scripturarum.  Modus inueniendi que intellegenda sunt...sed
aliis etiam laborare studet.  quantulacumque potui faccultate disseruj.
[added later:]  Omnis uirtutes ipsa primis inuenies si adeo me.

Augustine, De doctrina christiana; J. Martin, ed., CC ser. lat.
32 (1962) pp. 1-167.  The text on f. 67r written in a later hand, s. xiv.

3. f. 67v  Aristoteles V topica.  [brief quote from Aristotle,
Topica
5.129, Translatio Vetus; followed by list of 8 pairs of friends:]
Achilles/ Patroclus...Scipio/Lelius.

4. Rear pastedown:  two brief quotations from Ecclesiasticus 4.31 and 5.8.

Parchment (speckled), ff. ii (i = pastedown, ii = flyleaf) + 67 + ii
(i = flyleaf, ii = pastedown), 162 x 106 (122 x 68) mm.  30 long lines.
Double vertical bounding lines, full length and single or double horizontal
bounding lines.  Rulings for text often extend through gutter.  Ruled in 
hard point on hair side.  Prickings in upper, lower, and outer margins.
I-VIII 8, IX 4 (-3).  Horizontal catchwords enclosed by rectangle in
lower margin, verso (later additions, s. xiv).  Original quire signature
(V) on f. 40v.
Written in late caroline minuscule.
Plain initials with foliage motifs, in red, 6- to 5-line, on ff.
1r, 13r; initial, 5-line, red and deep purple, f. 31r; similar initial
in deep purple and black, f. 45v.  Allegorical diagram of the cross, in
outer margin, f. 31r:  "altitudo, latitudo, longitudo, profundum."
Binding:  Italy, s. xv.  Original wound sewing on three tawed skin, slit 
straps laid in channels on the outside of wooden boards and pegged.  A 
three-core, red and green secondary endband is sewn on a core of twisted, tawed
skin laid in a groove and pegged.
Covered in brown calf with corner tongues and
blind-tooled with a concentric frame pattern alternating multiple fillets, the
Visconti serpent device (piccola biscia) in a square on its point, and
two different dotted ribbon tools.  For the biscia device see De Marinis,
La legatura, v. 3, pl. CCCCXXV.  Annular dots in blank areas, possibly
originally gilt.  This binding discussed and illustrated in A. Hobson, 
Humanists and Bookbinders:  The Origins and Diffusion of the Humanistic 
Bookbinding 1459-1559...(Cambridge, 1989) p. 13, pl. 8. 

Written in Northern Italy at the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th
century; brief notes by several Italian hands, s. xiv-xv.  Belonged to the
Visconti family of Milan for whom it was bound in the first half of the
15th century (see binding above); the manuscript can probably be identified
as no. 511 in the 1426 Pavia inventory (E. Pellegrin, La Bibliotheque des
Visconti et des Sforza ducs de Milan au XVe siecle [Paris, 1955] p. 187).
Unidentified signature, s. xv, along lower edge, verso, of rear
flyleaf:  "Geruasius" or "Ceruasius."  Purchased from H. P. Kraus in 1957 by
L. C. Witten (inv. no. 1540), who sold it in 1958 to Thomas E. Marston
(bookplate).

secundo folio:  possum

Bibliography:  Faye and Bond, p. 83, no. 166.

Barbara A. Shailor