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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.

In this manuscript, the seven Penitential Psalms are translated into Italian. The poetic rhyming scheme of this translation, which is known only through this single copy, transposes the Vulgate’s prose into Tuscan terza rima, the interlocking rhyming schema of the ABA BCB CDC type espoused by Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265–1321) in the Divine Comedy. The short volume also contains two other texts: the Trattato dell’amicizia (Treatise on Friendship) by Mariotto Davanzati (ca. 1408/10–after 1470), also in terza rima, and the Lettera consolitaria a Pino de Rossi by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) in which the author consoles Pino de’ Rossi following his exile from Florence. The book bears all hallmarks of Florentine book decoration in the 1460s, produced in the style of the city’s leading illuminator, Francesco di Antonio del Chierico (1433–84).

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 Franciscan compendium depicting Saint Francis in an illuminated letter P, painted in a Northern Italian style, features a varied collection of stories and apocryphal legends regarding Saint Francis, his companions, and his disciples. Known as I Fioretti di San Francesco (the Little Flowers of Saint Francis), this was one of the best loved of all Franciscan anthologies. The Fioretti comprises a florilegium of chapters recounting Franciscan stories and legends, some directly concerned with the Order’s founding figure and others related to his successive followers. The first edition of the text was printed in Vicenza in 1476. Originally based upon oral accounts transformed into Latin, these had been retranslated into the Tuscan dialect by the mid-fourteenth century. The volume also contains an Italian prose translation of the Life of Saint Clare, which has likewise not yet been the subject of a critical edition.