A bifolium from De Essentiis, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [France, mid-12th century].

Hermann of Carinthia (c.1105-after 1154)
A bifolium from De Essentiis, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [France, mid-12th century].
The earliest surviving manuscript of Hermann of Carinthia’s De Essentiis, one of the most important astrological-cosmological treatises of the Middle Ages, with substantial and ‘spectacular’ divergences from all the other extant manuscripts.

265 x 182mm. 2 columns of 45 lines written in a compact romanesque French hand, ruled space: 198 x 118mm., the text on the first leaf opening ‘Nec que dicta [...]’ and ending ‘ut omnis discr[...] and on the second ‘[...]santes’ to ‘[speciem] (p.88, line 17 to p.106, line 11 and p.170, line 16 to p.184, line 10 in C.S.F. Burnett, Hermann of Carinthia, De Essentiis: a Critical Edition with Translation and Commentary, 1982) (staining to margins, without affecting text).

Provenance:
(1) Philip Bliss (1787–1857), Under-Librarian of the Bodleian Library from 1822-1828, Registrar of Oxford University from 1824-1853, Keeper of the University Archives from 1826-1857 and Principal of St Mary Hall from 1848-1857. His collection of leaves was sold at Sotheby’s, 21 August 1858, lots 100 and 119, where acquired by:
(2) Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872), English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of manuscript material in the 19th century. Bliss’s collection of leaves became at least partially MS 18133 in the Phillipps library. Sold at Sotheby’s, 24 April 1911, lot 390, where acquired by:
(3) Edmund Hunt Dring (1863–1928), the first managing director of Bernard Quaritch Ltd.
(4) Edmund Maxwell 'Ted' Dring (1906–1990), senior director of Bernard Quaritch.
(5) Bernard Quaritch, Catalogue 1036: Medieval Manuscript Leaves, Principally from a Collection Formed in the 19th Century: Bookhands of the Middle Ages [I] (London, 1984), no. 109.
(6) Colker MS 333; acquired in 1984 from Quaritch.

Herman of Carinthia was a philosopher, astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and translator of Arabic works into Latin. He ranks alongside Adelard of Bath, John of Seville, Gerard of Cremona and Plato of Tivoli as the most important translator of Arabic astronomical works in the 12th century and was hugely influential in the development of medieval European astronomy. Of all his works, only the De Essentiis, completed in 1143 at Béziers in Southern France, presents his own philosophical and scientific views (according to C.H. Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, 1927, p.56: ‘as the De Essentiis is the only independent work of Hermann which has so far been identified, we must depend mainly upon it for light on his philosophic and scientific ideas’).

The present manuscript is comprehensively discussed by Marvin Colker in ‘A newly discovered manuscript of Hermann of Carinthia’s ‘De Essentiis’, Revue d’Histoire des Textes, 1986, pp.213-228, where all the divergences from the other known manuscripts are listed. It is also cited in Medioevo latino 12 (1991), p.200. Burnett and Colker identify only three other surviving manuscripts of the text: Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale MS VIII.C.50 (ff.58-80); London, British Library, Cotton MS Titus D.IV (ff.75-138v); and Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 243 (ff.91-115v). The Colker manuscript is a substantial fragment, representing one fifth of the total text in Burnett’s edition, and is the earliest of the surviving witnesses, dated by Colker closest to the first appearance of the text in 1143 as stated by Hermann himself.

The De Essentiis is a dialogue on the nature of the universe between Hermann and Robert of Ketton, first translator of the Qu’ran and later archdeacon of Pamplona. In it, Hermann draws upon classical sources including Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, Lucan, Seneca, Macrobius, Aristotle, Euclid and Ptolemy, but also more unusual sources such as Iorma Babylonius, Tuz Ionicus, Dorotheus Sidonius (for a complete list of sources, see Burnett, pp.370-9, and for the De Essentiis as a source of lost texts, see p.42). According to Colker ‘other than Hugh of Santalla Hermann seems to be the only author of the twelfth century to know definitely a work which was otherwise virtually unknown in the West, the De Secretis Naturae attributed to Apollonius of Tyana. Likewise, Hugh and Hermann appear to be the earliest witnesses to the text of the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermeticism. Because of its transmission of rare sources and especially because of its bold pioneer effort to synthesise Classical and Arabic thought, the De Essentiis is of enormous significance for intellectual history’ (Colker, p.215).

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