Arithmetica theorica

Item Information

Title:
Arithmetica theorica
Description:
[Q]uantitatum alia continua que magnitude.../...Igitur sufficient pro sententia huius liber arem[ ]re/ Deo gratias etc.
Author:
Bredon, Simon, -1372
Former owner:
Pol, Nicolaus, approximately 1470-1532
Annotator:
Pol, Nicolaus, approximately 1470-1532
Former owner:
Franziskanerkloster Innichen
Former owner:
Ludwig Rosenthal's Antiquariat
Former owner:
H.P. Kraus (Firm)
Date:
[ca. 1450]
Format:
Manuscripts
Books
Genre:
Manuscripts, Latin (Medieval and modern)--Germany
Manuscripts, Medieval--Germany
Gothic scripts
Inscriptions
Marginalia
Edge titles
Location:
Boston Public Library
Rare Books Department
Collection (local):
Medieval and Early Renaissance Manuscripts (Collection of Distinction)
Subjects:
Mathematics, Medieval--Sources--Texts
Mathematics--Early works to 1800
Places:
Germany
Extent:
13 leaves : paper, ill., charts ; 280 x 214 (190 x 130) mm bound to 29 cm, in box 31 cm
Permalink:
https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/4168cg37c
Terms of Use:
No known copyright restrictions.
No known restrictions on use.
Place of origin:
[Germany]
Language:
Latin
Notes:
Ms. codex.
Title devised by cataloger.
Bibliographic record created by BPL staff based on description by Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis.
Origin: Written in southern Germany in the mid-fifteenth century.
Notes (ownership):
Provenance 1: Belonged to Nicolaus Pol. According to Max Fisch, the manuscript was originally bound in Augsburg for Pol with four other works. The first of these, Georg of Puerbach, Theoricae novae planetarum [Nuremberg: Johann Müller of Königsberg, 1473-4] was sold by Kraus to the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois (Fisch, p. 174, nr. 179), and bears the inscription "Nicolaus Pol Doctor 1494" as well as the later ex libris, "Property of the Collegiate Church of Innichen 1632." Pol's collection of manuscripts, incunables and early sixteenth-century printed books surfaced in the early seventeenth-century in the abbey of San Candido in Innichen (on the Italian/Austrian border).
Provenance 2: When the monastery of San Candido was suppressed by Emperor Josef II in 1735, its possessions were confiscated and inventoried, and many of the books sold at auction. Many Pol manuscripts and incunables surfaced in the stock of Munich bookseller Ludwig Rosenthal in the early twentieth century. The majority of the Rosenthal volumes were purchased in 1907 by Edward Clark Streeter (Boston, Massachusetts) for $800, but it is unlikely that the present volume was among them. While the present manuscript was certainly part of the Innichen collection as part of the bound compilation, it likely remained in the Rosenthal stock after 1907 and was passed to Ludwig's son Heinrich, from whom it was acquired by H. P. Kraus in the 1930s. The bound compilation was offered by Kraus to the Cleveland Medical Library Association sometime before 1940 before being broken into its constituent parts, each of which was sold separately. A pencil note written after 1940 on fol. [1] recto reads "From the Library of Nicolaus Pol/ formerly bound with nos. 106, 109, 116, 122 and 120 in binding described under 20 in Catalogue no. 20 of H. P. Kraus, no. 120 in Cleveland Medical Library Ass'n." While the Kraus reference is correct, it is not entirely clear to what the remaining numbers refer (they are not Maggs, Kraus or Fisch numbers).
Notes (acquisition):
Immediate source of acquisition: Sold by Kraus to BPL in 1940 (cat. 20, nr. 20, Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts 57052 and 104827).
Notes (citation):
Bond, W.H. Supplement to the Census of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the United States and Canada, 211
Notes (object):
Secundo folio: disposium ut...
Collation: Paper, with watermark of a duck similar to Briquet 12204 and 12205, fol. i (modern paper) + 1 + 12 + i (modern paper) ; 11¹²⁺¹ (fol. [1] (blank) conjugate with fol. 11, and fol. 12 is a tipped-in singleton) ; catchwords at the bottom of each verso. Modern arabic pencil foliation, upper outer corner each page, starting on second leaf, here used for reference.
Layout: 1 column, approx. 30 lines. Bounding lines ruled by creasing.
Script: Written in a gothic cursive in brown ink.
Decoration: Spaces left for two-line initials throughout, no guide letters. Matrices and geometric diagrams throughout margins of fol. 1-8v in the hand of Nicolaus Pol, who owned the manuscript in the late fifteenth century.
Binding: Remnants of ink title (?) on lower edge. Bound in modern heavy fibrous beige paper, modern flyeaves at front and back, housed in green cloth clamshell case, gilt title on black spine label.
Notes (bibliography):
Bibliography: Margaret Munsterberg, "An Unpublished Mathematical Treatise by Simon Bredon," More Books XIX (1944): 411; Max Fisch, Nicolaus Pol Doctor 1494 (Cleveland, 1947). Luigi Ferrari, "Doctor Nicolaus Pol, la Collegiata di S. Candido ed i suoi incunaboli," Atti del reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti XCVI (1936-37): 109-169 and plates I-III.
Notes (language):
In Latin.
Identifier:
06_01_018675
Call #:
RARE BKS MS f Med.103
MS 1531 (no longer used)
Barcode:
39999090789437