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Detailed record for Harley 4081
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| Author |
Giovanni da Correggio |
| Title |
De quercu Julii pontificis sive de lapide philosophico |
| Origin |
France |
| Date |
1506 |
| Language |
Latin, French |
| Script |
Humanistic cursive |
| Decoration |
Partial border in colours and gold with floral and foliate decoration and a large intial in gold on a blue ground (f. 1). Large initials in brown or blue. Rubrics in red. Paraphs in blue or brown. |
| Dimensions in mm |
210 x 145 (145 x 90) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 40 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 1 at the end) |
| Form |
Paper codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Marbled pasteboards. |
| Provenance |
Written in 1506: colophon, 'Anno ab incarnatione verbi MCCCCCVI Ipso concedente deo....' (f. 40).
Notes in French in a sixteenth-century hand (f. 40v).
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library. |
| Notes |
The single surviving manuscript of the alchemical work by Giovanni da Correggio (b. 1451, d. 1506?), one of the most controversial alchemists of the late 15th century, who called himself the 'Angel of Wisdom' and the 'younger Hermes'.
Contents:
ff. 1r-3r: Giovanni da Correggio, Preface to Pope Julius II ('Quid, de quo, ad quid… ac totius operis argumentum'.);
ff. 3r-40r: Giovanni da Correggio, De Quercu Julii, begins 'Magna enim multa et gloriosa..';
f. 40v: Notes in French in a sixteenth-century hand. |
| Select bibliography |
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1808-12), III (1808) , no. 4081.
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), no. 802.
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: Accedunt Alia Itinera: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other Libraries 7 vols (London: Warburg Institute; Leiden: Brill, 1963-1997), IV (1989), p. 178.
Paul Oskar Kristeller, 'Lodovico Lazzarelli e Giovanni da Correggio, due ermetici del quattrocento, e il manoscritto II. D. I. 4 della Biblioteca Comunale degli Ardenti di Viterbo,' in Paul Oskar Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, 4 vols(Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1956-1996), III (1993), pp. 207-25 (p. 220).
Chiara Crisciani, 'Hermeticism and Alchemy: The Case of Lodovico Lazzarelli,' Early Science and Medicine, 5 (2000), 145-59 (p. 150, n. 19).
Chiara Crisciani and Michela Pereira, 'L’alchimia fra Medioevo e Rinascimento,' in Storia della Scienza: Medioevo, Rinascimento, 4 vols (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 2001), IV, pp. 907-20 (pp. 918-19).
Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Ruud M. Bouthoorn, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500): The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 43-44.
Wouter Hanegraaff, 'Pseudo-Lullian Alchemy and the Mercurial Phoenix: Giovanni da Correggio's De Quercu Iulii pontificis sive De lapide philosophico', in Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry, ed. by Lawrence M. Principe (Sagamore Beach: Watson Publishing, 2007), pp. 101-12. |
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f. 1
Partial border and decorated intial |
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