YALE UNIVERSITY
BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY
GENERAL COLLECTION OF RARE BOOKS AND
MANUSCRIPTS
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MANUSCRIPTS
Mellon MS 28
ALCHEMICAL MISCELLANY, in Latin
North Italy, perhaps Bologna, unsigned, about 1525
28.1 John Dastin. Rosarius philosophorum, with the prologue.
28.2 Anonymous. Elementa sunt quattuor... (with a diagram and
directions for mixing pigments).
28.3 Hermes or Merlin or Rasis. Laudabile sanctum, or Gemma
salutaris, a version in 83 (79) verses.
Paper codex, 16mo., 148 x 102, ff. 56, plus two paper flyleaves each at
beginning and end (the first and last flyleaves were originally pasted down),
plus a portion of a leaf from a thirteenth-century legal manuscript used for
sewing-in and visible inside both covers; ff. 1-54 correctly numbered in an
early hand, ff. 55-56 and the end flyleaves numbered 55-58 in pencil;
collation: (1-7)^^8, no signatures visible, catchwords written vertically,
lower right, at quire-endings; written space 112 x 58 bordered and lines
ruled in pale brown ink; the main texts neatly written throughout in Latin by
a single scribe, 29 lines to the page, in a small Italian humanistic hand,
brown ink, abbreviation standard and sparse; headings, parts of tables and
diagrams, some verses, and rubrication, in very pale red. Watermark in folds
and cut, not identified.
BINDING: Original North Italian (Bolognese?) binding of blind-stamped white
leather over blue-green pasteboards, the sides paneled with repeated stamps
of conventionalized foliage within double heart-shaped outlines, the whole
enclosed in blind fillets, the central compartment on each cover with a
large, circular floral stamp and two impressions of a lozenge-shaped stamp,
the back with three bands, fillets in the compartments; four linen ties on
each cover (two at fore-edge, one each top and bottom, all lacking except for
traces of seven inside covers); modern leather title label on backstrip.
PROVENANCE: Early ownership unknown; Denis Duveen, with his inked number 2
inside front cover; Mellon MS 52, acquired with the Duveen collection. De
Ricci-Bond 13 (52).
CONTENTS
Front Flyleaves: [Blank, except for largely erased modern pencil notes.]
f. 1r, 1: Incipit prologus [the following three words rewritten at a later
date over the faded and water-stained original writing:] libri qui vocatur |
Rosarius philosoforum ioannis de | asia anglici. Laus sit deo patri qui dat
sapienciam | sapientibus... [Ends f. 2r, 13:] ... et quem volueris
inhonorabis. | Explicit prologus | [one-line space.]
f. 2r, 16: Hic incipit quidam tractatus ex libr- | is antiquorum philosoforum
collectus | Desiderabile desiderium impreciabile | precium... [Ends f. 54v,
11:] ... quod est super omne mun- | di preciosum preciosissimum. | Deo
Gracias | [three-line space] Explicit Rosarius preciosissimus | ex libris
antiquorum philosophorum sub brevi- | tate collectus qui possidentibus fit |
preciosissimus et nonquam sapi- | enti comvmunicetur [sic] sicut in libri
principio commonui. | [two-line space] FINIS [On either side of the foregoing
word a leaf is drawn in the pale red of the handwriting.]
[28.1: John Dastin, Rosarius philosophorum, with the prologue, also
sometimes attributed to Arnold of Villanova, TK 403; DWS 231; Ze III, pp.
663-697 (without the prologue) . Within the body of the Dastin text two
extensive interpolations occur without distinguishing rubrics, as follows:]
f. 4r, 27: Elementa sunt quattuor ut | patet hic per figuram presentem | ...
[This is followed by a diagram and directions for mixing elements. Ends f.
8v, 15:] in sexaginta minuta ad equandum fractiones |
[28.2: Anonymous, Elementa sunt quattuor..., unidentified, but perhaps
related to texts with similar incipits noted by TK 496.]
f. 9v, 22: Est lapis occultus secrete fonte sepultus | Rupibus ex mundis
consurgens ... [Ends f. 44r, 25:] Undique candescat et candida tota nitescat
| Candida tunc venas faciet candore serenas |
[28.3: Hermes or Merlin or Rasis, Laudabile sanctum, or Gemma salutaris, a
poem in leonine verse, TK 511; DWS 793; Ze III, pp. 740-743. The poem occurs
in many differing versions; as here found it comprises eighty-three verses
(including four repeats), scattered through the Dastin text largely in
couplets and quatrains, without any headings. The order of verses in Mellon
MS 28 bears no relation to that printed in Ze, loc. cit.; a much longer
version is printed in Condeesyanus I, pp. 107-122. The quatrain beginning
"Destrue rem captam sibi per limpham satis aptam" occurs at f. 13v, 1-4, and
again at f. 34v, 22-25; a text with this incipit is noted separately by TK
405, following Corbett I, p. 104.]
f. 54v, 27: [In an eighteenth-century (French?) hand:] Adi 29. Luglio 1753.1
[a three-line note in French in the same hand, in which a name has apparently
been canceled at the beginning, apparently recording the hiring of a servant
and partly decipherable as: ] entre a mon | service ayant destine 40- | fl:
de gages [remainder not read.] | [f. 55r, 1, in a good calligraphic hand
sloping to the right, about 1700, a group of recipes beginning:] Recipe
Mercurium Sublimatum | [Ends f. 56r, 1:] ... contra | catarrum antichum. |
[The remainder of f. 56 and the recto of the first end flyleaf contain
unidentified extracts from Basilius on the gold of the philosophers and the
magnet, written in Latin in the hand which first appeared on f. 54v with the
note in Italian and French, beginning f. 56r, 3:] Basilius de Auro
Philosophorum. | dilecte Artis nostre Sectator aperte ... [verso of first end
flyleaf blank. Recto of second end flyleaf, otherwise blank, contains a
four-line note at top, written over an erasure which has left a large, torn
hole, with one word written on the board of the lower cover, in an
eighteenth-century hand, partly decipherable as:] 177[?] Die 21 Augusti [torn
space] magnum opus | Incepi Sed furnu Decepit | [remainder erased and
illegible.]
SUMMARY: All three of the texts in MS 28 are speculative, cryptic alchemies
of the types found repeated in many manuscripts, even though the second seems
to be unrecorded. The appearance of the codex is unusual because it imitates
the style of humanistic manuscripts fifty or more years older than it. The
design of the binding is similar to, and the double-heart stamp incorporating
leafy sprays is probably identical with, the same elements on a binding
executed for Christopher Schlich, Count of Passau, while he was a student in
the University of Bologna, 1523-26 (see T. De Marinis, La Legatura artistica
in Italia nei secoli XV & XVI, 1960, II, no. 1279, Tavola CCXXI). The use
of white calfskin is rare in Italy at this period, but does occur
occasionally. The most striking feature of the text is the extremely frequent
use of "o" for "u" in the Latin, e.g., "Tonc, sont, ombra, monda, fondo,
ondi," etc. These aberrant spellings have mostly been corrected by a later
hand. The neat writing, the contents consisting of scribal copies of
speculative or literary texts without the addition of any practical matter,
and the fine original binding all lead to the hypothesis that the codex was
originally prepared and bound for a library of some pretension, very possibly
for someone within the circle of Christopher Schlich at the University of
Bologna. Compare MSS 11, 16, 21, and 25.