Clues in a 14th Century Manuscript

Recently, a manuscript of Aristotle’s Politica, rhetorica et magna moralia (MS Lat 39), was in the Weissman Preservation Center lab for treatment in preparation for exhibition at Houghton Library. This manuscript is on view as of Monday, January 27th, in Incipit: A History of Early Manuscripts at Harvard, curated by Sara Powell.

The manuscript was written in early 14th century France in a gothic bookhand, or more precisely, in littera Parisiensis. Its limp vellum binding is not contemporary with the text.

The conservation treatment on this volume was straightforward. Tears were mended using small tabs of toned goldbeater’s skin—a thin, strong membrane from an animal intestine—which were adhered with a solution of fish gelatin.

During treatment, conservator Amanda Hegarty had the opportunity to make close observations and there are interesting features and suppositions to note about this volume. One of the first things to notice is the crude quality of the parchment leaves, which felt at odds with the confident hand and delicate rubrications throughout. Rubrications are decorative elements, usually in red or blue, which help to signify the beginning of sections or important passages. We can see rough preparation of the skin, uneven thickness of the skin and leaves with large missing areas. There are numerous tears and holes which predate the writing of the text. The color of the parchment varies widely and comes from different animals—below are details of what looks like goat hair and sheep’s wool on two parchment leaves. The dark, straight hair is seen on parchment with a pebbly grain characteristic of goat skin, and the white curly hair is more easily identifiable as wool. It is unusual to see hair or fur remaining on a properly prepared parchment. 

And here is a not uncommon spread that shows the uneven edges of the parchment, indicating an economical use of the skins for this manuscript.

Other frugal uses of the parchment are shown below. We can see that the text is carefully written about a millimeter away from the curved edge of the skin. And we can see a mend in the parchment that was sewn before the text was written.

A Harvard catalog of medieval and renaissance manuscripts describes the manuscript— “The quality of the parchment, script and decoration of this workmanlike manuscript suggest that is was made for the use of a university student, although marginal notes and other annotations by readers are surprisingly scarce.” (Catalogue of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Medieval & Renaissance texts & studies, I, 62-66.)

While few notes were added to the wide margins, there are some elegant emendations, likely added by a contemporaneous scribe. The small carets in the text with one or two dots indicate where the red bordered text belongs.

After this manuscript’s time in France, it resurfaced at the Dominican library of Santa Maria Novella in Florence—library stamp shown below.

Rubrications were added in after the manuscript was written. The style of rubrication changes towards the end of the book and were done in “the Italian manner”, presumably in Florence sometime after the manuscript’s creation in France.

Most of the pages have short pen strokes at the ends of the manuscript lines of text, seen below in the detail. These strokes, which were added in a different hand, act as hyphens for words that span the line break.

Piero Vettori, 1499-1585, likely used this manuscript in Florence, a couple of centuries after it was written. There is a note by his nephew on the verso of the first fly, which says that unlike some writings of Aristotle which were distorted by translators or copyists, this manuscript was “completed many centuries before, at a time when Aristotle’s books were more complete and correct, and its author, whoever he was, managed the task with great faith, and did not even change the order of the words.”