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Gerbert of Aurillac (ca. 945–1003) was the first Frenchman elected to the papacy and reigned as Sylvester II for the final four years of his life. His renown, however, stems from his prowess as a mathematician and pedagogue. Among his achievements were the reintroduction of the abacus and armillary sphere to Western Europe, via the Islamic civilization of Al-Andalus. He is also thought to be responsible for introducing the Hindu-Arabic numeration system to the Latinate world. This volume contains texts such as Gerbert’s correspondence with Adebaldus of Utrecht on the isosceles triangle, and a short treatise on the astrolabe, another instrument that he helped familiarize to Christian audiences. This manuscript is an excellent example of Renaissance engagement with scholarship from the High Middle Ages. An assiduous reader of classical authors, including Virgil, Cicero, and Boethius, Gerbert of Aurillac was an outstanding conduit of classical thought for much later readers.

Publius Vegetius Renatus (ca. 383–450 AD) is principally known as the author of two surviving works: the Epitomata rei militaris, whose influence on military tactics endured in the post-Classical world; and the Mulomedicina, a concise summary of ancient veterinary science derived in part from two earlier works. As a high-ranking Roman official, Vegetius traveled extensively throughout the Roman Empire, learning from the Barbarians and the Huns he encountered, and acquiring a working knowledge of horses and bovines, including the different breeds and the various equine diseases and their remedies. Veterinary activity chiefly dealt with the health of beasts of burden: horses, mules, donkeys, and cattle, for much economic and military activity depended on their wellbeing. The Mulomedicina maintained its popularity in the later Middle Ages, and four distinct dialectal Italian translations of the text appeared in the Renaissance. The present manuscript contains the first vernacular adaptation in a Tuscan dialect.

This manuscript is the sole surviving copy of the anonymous L’arte del navegare, a wide-ranging original treatise in four parts on navigation and the operation of seagoing vessels. The author dedicates the work to the Senate of the Venetian Republic and to the Doge of Venice, Cristoforo Moro (r. 1462–71), for whom this manuscript was a presentation copy. The unknown author benefited from an excellent humanist education, as the preface includes references to a diverse array of authorities, such as famous Greek philosophers, as well as Arab and medieval thinkers. Book I presents an account of the whole habitable world known to the author, at the dawn of the age of exploration. Book II deals with ship designs and the role of various officers on board. Book III discusses meteorology and astronomy as they relate to navigation. Book IV is dedicated to cartography, acting as a verbal portolan chart.

This short, rhymed work in French by the Burgundian chronicler and poet Georges Chastellain (ca. 1402/1415–75) is entitled L’oultré d’amour pour amour morte, or “The Lover’s Lament over the Death of his Love” in English. Chastellain was a prominent figure at the Burgundian court, serving dukes Phillip the Good and Charles the Bold with distinction. This copy was likely produced in Western France in the 1460s or 1470s, possibly dating from Chastellain’s lifetime. Given the popularity of this text in Renaissance France, this manuscript is especially notable because of its subsequent presence in an important humanist library, that of Jacques Thiboust (1492–1555), a noted book collector in early sixteenth-century France who served as a notary and secretary to King Francis I and his sister Marguerite de Valois.

Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend was among the most widely reproduced late medieval texts. This manuscript reproduces an Italian translation of all 182 of de Voragine’s chapters. The present copy, which is dated in its anonymous colophon to 19 April 1459, predates the first printed edition of the work (Cologne, 1470) by over a decade. This volume bears several ownership inscriptions, including the from the library of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara from an early date. This foundation was home to the firebrand preacher Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98) who would serve as assistant master of novices from 1478 to 1482. Such a provenance is unsurprising, as the Golden Legend was used extensively by members of the Preaching Orders as a source book for constructing sermons.

This is the presentation copy of a work on cryptography made for Alfonso da Borgia (1378–1458) during his three-year reign as Pope Callixtus III. The text demonstrates two methods for encrypting text based on alternate words supplied in tables, to which both communicating parties would have exclusive access. During his brief pontificate, Callixtus was preoccupied with countering Ottoman Turkish advances in the Mediterranean, calling for a new crusade in the wake of the fall of Constantinople. The intricate bianchi girari or white-vine decorations, depicted here on the manuscript’s first folio, were created by Gioacchino di Giovanni di Gigantibus (act. ca. 1450–85). Originally from Rothenberg, this professional illuminator worked for members of the papal court from 1448 onward, and his involvement indicates that Zopello was in Rome to coordinate the production of his manuscript.

The vogue for vernacular translations of classical epics, whether in prose or in rhyme, intensified throughout the fifteenth century as bibliophiles became less comfortable reading the original Latin or Greek texts. Among the more successful French translators was Octavien de Saint-Gelais (1468–1502), whose ecclesiastical career as bishop of Angoulême (as of 1494) brought him into contact with Louise of Savoy, mother of the future king of France, Francis I (r. 1515–47). The present manuscript is a fine copy of Octavien’s verse translation of the Aeneid, written in decasyllabic couplets. Like many such manuscript copies, the volume was intended from the start to accommodate large introductory miniatures for each book, but these remain blank.

This manuscript anthology on paper of forty-four Christmas Carols, or Noels, written principally in French and dating to the sixteenth century, are a combination of well-known songs and unique or unrecorded texts. One carol, “Il fault mourir à ce coup cy,” is attributed by an inscription to its author Olivier Maillard (ca. 1420–1502). The use of the regional Angevin terms “nau” and its diminutive “naulet” for Noël, as well as the notarial document reused as a wrapper mentioning Nantes, point to the Western Loire Valley as the region of production and use. The volume is notable for its twenty-five vividly drawn, watercolor-tinted sketches added to the blank marginal spaces surrounding the text. The manuscript can be dated to ca. 1520–30 on the basis of the script’s style and marginal images, whose pastoral character connects them to compositions found in tapestries of this period.

The emblem book genre, in which images and mottoes are accompanied by brief explanatory texts, was a late development of Renaissance humanism, instigated by the Milanese jurist Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata. This unusual paper manuscript is a unique derivation of the arcane emblem books that became enormously popular in sixteenth-century France. The otherwise unrecorded text, primarily in Latin but with some sections in Greek, consists of a dialogue in the form of short riddles posed by the Sphinx and answered at greater length by Oedipus. Fifty-eight watercolor scenes, one per dialogue, offer allegorical illustrations of the relevant riddle. Occasionally, the figures represent recognizable personages from antiquity, while others are manifestly Christian. The book’s text and illustrations are of an obscure genre and not readily linked to other printed or manuscript works.