Agreement to transfer to the Cathedral of Como certain books that are in the church of San Vincenzo, Gravedona, in Latin, manuscript document on vellum. Italy, Gravedona (on the north-western shore of Lake Como), dated 1229.

A transfer of books
Agreement to transfer to the Cathedral of Como certain books that are in the church of San Vincenzo, Gravedona, in Latin, manuscript document on vellum. Italy, Gravedona (on the north-western shore of Lake Como), dated 1229.
A rare dated record of a list of books and their transfer from one library to another.

c.160 × 412mm. 13 lines of main text plus a subscription, in a fine documentary script, endorsed ‘Adventarium(?) sacristie Sancti Vincentii de Grab.’, ‘1229’ (three horizontal and two vertical folds not affecting legibility, a few small holes and natural flaws)

Provenance:
Colker MS 70; acquired in 1965 from Scribners, New York.

Contents: ‘In nomine domini nostri Yhesu Christi. Anno dominice incarnatione Millesimo ducentesimo vigesimo nono […] Dominus presbiter Trussus archipresbiter ecclesie sancti Vincencii plebis Grabadone filius quondam domini Uberti Dainterre de Domaxio [and several others listed by name] […] dominus presbiter Zanbellus […] cathedrallis ecclesie sancte Marie de Cum’ qui olim fuit archipresbiter predicte ecclesie de Grabadona dedit et consignavit […] librum unum magnum qui vocatur Cassiodorus [followed by a list of the other books] […]’ ending with a list of witnesses, and the notarial sign of ‘Ego Arbustinus filius Iohannis ser Guidonis de Canova de Grabadona’.

Incorporating a fascinating and unusual list of books, including two diurnal antiphonaries, the Pauline Epistles, the gospels, Ecclesiastes, a book of sermons, a Missal, ‘duos libros sentenciarum divinitatis’, and unspecified works by Cassiodorus and Augustine. A distinction is made between ‘quatuorum libros evangelistorum Marchum, Mafeum [sic], Lucam et Iohannem’ and a ‘librum que apellatur evangeliorum’. There is also, tantalisingly, a ‘librum qui apellatur bibia vetus’.

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