Biblioteca Universitaria Research Articles

MORE AND LESS EVIDENCE FOR THE TEXT OF JULIUS EXUPERANTIUS

Abstract This paper examines a neglected fifteenth-century manuscript of the opusculum of Julius Exuperantius. It argues that that manuscript (Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, 748) is a sibling of Vatican City, BAV, Vat. lat. 3334, and situates the new manuscript in the stemma established by the last editor. It then proposes a modification to that editor's stemma, arguing that those two fifteenth-century manuscripts in fact descend from Milan, BA, H 37 sup., once owned by Francesco Pizolpasso. Finally, it considers the implications of those arguments for the editing and the history of the text.

The First Folio and the merchants of Venice: A collection of books from the natio Anglica in Padua

The Padua First Folio owned by the Biblioteca Universitaria does not include the original binding, but photos show the shelfmark as having belonged to the Santa Giustina Library. Other English books with the same binding and similar shelfmarks have been found, all coming from Santa Giustina. Some of them contain a mark of ownership by the two John Hobsons, consuls of the English nation in Venice in the seventeenth century, who bequeathed their books to the library of the natio Anglica at Padua University. We know very little about this library, founded in 1649. An Appendix proposes a reconstruction.

From Liguria to Sardinia. Notes about some incunabula in the Biblioteca Universitaria of Cagliari

The text examines some incunabula now in the Biblioteca Universitaria in Cagliari and their ex libris, which belong to the library collection of Giulio Salinero (1574-1612), a lawyer born in Savona, and also to the Dominican Convent of Savona. These books, formerly part of the Simon collection, settled in in Alghero, and of the Library of the Piarist Order in Cagliari, were given to the Biblioteca Universitaria in the second half of XIX century. They relate to the antiquarian interests growing in Sardinia between the end of XVIIth and the beginning of XVIIIth century.

The Thoughts of a Noble Prisoner: Giovanni Marco Pio da Carpi’s Laude as Examples of Good Morality

The fifteenth-century manuscript MS 157 of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna belongs to a series of books related to the task of comforting those condemned to death in Bologna. To carry out such comforting, the local Confraternity of Santa Maria della Morte (founded 1336) used, among other things, a corpus of 211 laude, 106 of which are found in MS 157, more than half of which are still unpublished. Eleven of these texts were written by the nobleman Giovanni Marco Pio da Carpi (d. 1469), an interesting example of a literate prisoner who expressed his morals and thoughts in poetry. This article examines the contents of Pio’s poems, nine of which are known only through MS 157, in order to analyse their edifying and exemplary function for those condemned to death.

Un codice di Federico Veterani alla Biblioteca Universitaria di Anversa

Un codice di Federico Veterani alla Biblioteca Universitaria di AnversaAntwerpen, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MAG-P 60.5 is the oldest manuscript held by the Special Collections department of the University of Antwerp. Because of its bibliographical value, specific attention has already been devoted to it in an article published in Scriptorium forty years ago. However, it failed to identify the scribe, the dedicatee and the occasion for which the manuscript had been created. Starting from a reconsideration of some neglected texts on the flyleaf of the manuscript and a fresh paleographical analysis, this article suggests to attribute it to the hand of Federico Veterani, a scribe for Federico da Montefeltro at the end of the fifteenth century.

Sigla Effe, editore genovese di Mio padre comandante di Fiume di Mario d’Annunzio

The collection Carte Tito Rosina, preserved in the Biblioteca universitaria of Genoa, contains the correspondence between Tiro Rosina (a genoese literary man), Ernesto Fassio and Gambaro (the first was the owner and the second the Director of Sigla Effe, a publisher in Genova). In the letters we can find the informations about a book by Mario d’Annunzio. This book is the way to discover Sigla Effe history and production.

Un poema hebreo de Alfonso de Zamora en alabanza de la versión latina bíblica de Pedro Ciruelo

Pedro Ciruelo (siglo XVI), filósofo, teólogo y científico, natural de Daroca, hizo una traducción literal interlineal («de verbo ad verbum») de varios libros de la Biblia hebrea. La empresa la comenzó hacia el año 1526 y aún continuaba con ella en 1538. Con motivo de la traducción literal interlineal del Pentateuco (1536), Alonso de Zamora (n. 1474), que al parecer fue su maestro de hebreo y su mentor a lo largo de la traducción, compuso un poema en hebreo para honrar aquel magno trabajo. En este estudio se publica el texto original hebreo (Ms. de la Biblioteca Universitaria de Salamanca, núm. 589, fol. 274), se traduce al castellano y se expone el significado que el propio Ciruelo y el mismo insigne converso zamorano concedían a la traducción bíblica literalísima.

“Sollevazione di Tommaso Aniello di Napoli“. Il manoscritto di Alessandro Molini (BUB, ms 2466)

This is a diplomatic-interpretative edition of the manuscript Sollevazione di Tommaso Aniello di Napoli, written by Alessandro (Fra’ Sebastiano) Molini in the 17th Century. The introduction highlights the importance of the engravings inserted in the codex by the author. Since the end of the 19th Century many historians had been interested in those images because they depict main characters and places of the Neapolitan uprisings. The paper also offers a manuscript’s bibliography and the list of catalogues owned by Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna.

Storia, grafia e fonetica del Condaghe di San Pietro di Silki

The Condaghe di San Pietro di Silki (manuscript n. 95 of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Sassari) is a document dating from the 12th to the 14th century written in mediaeval Sardinian language. It is composed of several sections, one of which represents the condaghe’s oldest core (condake vetere), while the others are more recent and were gradually added to the earliest register. The document gives an account of the life, economy and possessions of a monastery of nuns in Silky, near Sassari, and of other religious institutions in the neighboring areas. The chronological confusion of the documents included in the manuscript is generally due to the lack of dates and of historically known figures, as well as to the alterations of the original order made during the constitution of the Condaghe. This contribution aims to analyze the main historical, linguistic and graphical aspects of the condake vetere and to identify the most relevant features that distinguish it from the later additions.

The Library of Ulisse Aldrovandi ( 1605): Acquiring and Organizing Books in Sixteenth-Century Bologna

This article uses various documents in Bologna’s Biblioteca Universitaria to explore the strategies that Ulisse Aldrovandi used in relation to acquiring books and keeping them in order. The first section is devoted to the physical arrangement of the Bolognese scholar’s library in his home, where it sat in contiguous spaces to his natural museum. This study then examines how Aldrovandi’s collection of books grew, how he managed to keep control over its contents through four different catalogues, and how it fared after his death. The third section outlines his interest in the libraries of other scholars, both in Bologna and elsewhere. Finally, we discuss how Aldrovandi was concerned to grow his library throughout his lifetime, through networks of printers, friends, and former students. Aldrovandi seems to have been particularly interested in the potential of collaborative research to help find books and manage the information they contained.

Diplomatic Transcriptions of Medieval Music

Diplomatic Transcriptions of Medieval Music William Hudson Le Codex de Chypre (Torino, Biblioteca Universitaria J.II.9), vol. 1, Rondeaux et Virelais I. Edition par Cécile Beaupain et Germana Schiassi sous la direction de Raphaël Picazos. English translations by Terence Waterhouse (Opus Artis Novae: Polyphonies en transcription diplomatique 1300-1500, vol. 1.) Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2011. [Introd. in Fre. and Eng., p. vii-xxiii; score, p. 2-72; indexes, p. 73-74; appendices in Fre. and Eng., p. 77-126; bibliog., p. 127. ISMN 979-0-2153-1898-4. €54.95.] Rondeaux et Virelais I is the first volume in Ut Orpheus's new series Opus Artis Novae, whose mission is to present editions of medieval polyphony in diplomatic transcription, that is, in the original notation. This volume includes a selection of works from MS J.II.9 (commonly referred to as TuB) located in the Biblioteca nazionale universitaria, Turin. Other offerings in the series include an edition of ballades in TuB, as well as plans for a second volume of rondeaux and virelais from TuB, and two volumes from the Codex Canonici Miscellaneous 213 (Bologna, Biblioteca universitaria)—Du Fay's pieces, and the chansons bourguignonnes, respectively. Rondeaux et Virelais I represents the first new edition of the pieces in TuB since Richard Hoppin's landmark edition of the entire Turin manuscript fifty years ago in The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino, Biblioteca nazionale, J.II.9 (4 vols., Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 21 [Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1960-63]). Hoppin was the preeminent scholar of this repertoire following his 1952 dissertation on the motets from TuB ("The Motets of the Early 15th Century MS. J.II.9 in the Biblioteca nazionale, Turin" [Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1952]). This fascinating repertoire has remained comparatively unexplored since then, and only a handful of recordings and a few scholarly articles have been devoted to specific aspects of this collection. The 1990s saw a resurgence of interest in TuB, exemplified by a conference in 1992, the proceedings of which were published in The Cypriot-French Repertory of the Manuscript Torino J.II.9: Report of the International Musicological Congress, Paphos 20-25 March, 1992 (Ludwig Finscher and Ursula Günther, eds., Musicologi cal Studies & Documents, 45 [Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, 1995]). A full-color facsimile edition was published in 1999 (Isabella Fragalà Data and Karl Kügle, eds., Il codice J.II.9: Torino, Biblioteca nazionale universitaria, Ars Nova, 4 [Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1999]). The MS Torino J.II.9 is a unique collection in the history of medieval polyphony because all of the music copied within it are both anonymous and unica. The creation of TuB can be linked to Janus's reign (r. 1398-1432) by the front flyleaf which contains an abstract from a papal bull of John XXIII responding to Janus's request for the creation of an Office to St. Hilarion. Although long believed to have been written in Cyprus, the works bear no resemblance to traditional Cypriot music, which gathers its style mainly from Ancient Greek and Byzantine sources. The pieces, instead, are stylistically related to the contemporary French ars subtilior repertoire from the Continent. The continental influence on Cyprus began when the island was wrested from Greek control by Richard the Lionheart in [End Page 314] 1191. In the following year, Richard sold the island to the recently dispossessed king of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan. Following Guy's death in 1194, his brother Aimery de Lusignan was elected king, thus beginning over 250 years of French rule, which ended when Venetians assumed control of the island in 1489. Thus, the ruling class of Cyprus was "in effect an ex-patriate French dynasty" (Andrew Wathey, "European Politics and Musical Culture at the Court of Cyprus," in The Cypriot-French Repertory Manu script Torino J.II.9, p. 33). Peter I of Cyprus (r. 1359-1369) is the most widely known of the Lusignan kings, having been written about in Guillaume de Machaut's poem La prise d'Alexandrie. Peter spent two months visiting the papal court in Avignon, and nearly a year in Venice in 1365. Three years...

The oldest herpetological collection in the world: the surviving amphibian and reptile specimens of the Museum of Ulisse Aldrovandi

The natural history collection of the Bolognese polymath, encyclopedist, and natural philosopher Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) is regarded as the first museum in the modern sense of the term. It was intended as a resource for scholarship and a microcosm of the natural world, not simply a cabinet of curiosities. In addition to physical specimens, Aldrovandi’s zoological material included a large series of paintings of animals (Tavole di Animali) that were integral to the collection. Following Aldrovandi’s death, his collection was maintained by the terms of his will, but by the 19th century relatively little remained. We examined surviving herpetological components of the collection, comprising 19 specimens of ten species, as well as the corresponding paintings and associated archival material in the Museum of Palazzo Poggi, Museo di Zoologia, and Biblioteca Universitaria Bolognese in Bologna, Italy. Although the antiquity of some of these dried preparations is in question, many are documented in the Tavole di Animali and/or are mentioned in 17th century lists of the museum, verifying them as the oldest museum specimens of amphibians and reptiles in the world. Exotic species are best represented, including two specimens of Uromastyx aegyptia and several boid snakes – the first New World reptiles to be displayed in Europe. However, the Tavole di Animali suggest that the original collection was dominated by Italian taxa and that greater effort may have been made to conserve the more spectacular specimens. The Aldrovandi collection provides a tangible link to the dawn of modern herpetology in Renaissance Italy.

Revista Biblioteca Universitaria electrónica: iniciativa Open Journal Systems

Actualmente la Secretaría General de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) lleva a cabo una iniciativa para integrar y administrar las revistas académicas electrónicas de la UNAM mediante el gestor de contenidos Open Journal Systems, un sistema especializado en revistas electrónicas; durante la xxxii Feria internacional del Libro del Palacio de Minería se le dio un gran impulso a este proyecto al presentar el Portal de Revistas Científicas y Arbitradas de la UNAM, el cual pretende alojar, apoyar y dar una amplia visibilidad a las revistas publicadas en dicho portal. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo dar a conocer los esfuerzos de la Dirección General de Bibliotecas por integrar su revista Biblioteca Universitaria en su versión electrónica al Portal de Revistas Científicas y Arbitradas de la UNAM, y con ello formar parte de las tendencias actuales y cumplir con los requerimientos y estándares de las revistas electrónicas académicas internacionales. De esta manera, pretendemos darle una mayor visibilidad en las bases de datos suscritas, así como ofrecer a nuestros lectores herramientas especializadas para su lectura.

The sea monsters in the Madrid manuscript of Ptolemy's Geography (Biblioteca Nacional, MS Res. 255)

The sea monsters in the Madrid manuscript of Ptolemy's Geography (Biblioteca Nacional, MS Res. 255)

Enunciating authority: exonarrative inscriptions on or near miniatures of the Divine Comedy

Enunciating authority: exonarrative inscriptions on or near miniatures of the Divine Comedy

Revista Biblioteca Universitaria: una década de evolución

The New Series of the journal «Biblioteca Universitaria» is now 10 years old. This work provides a review of its trajectory, its contents and the topics it has covered, and discusses the editorial work that increased its circulation and quality in terms of editorial criteria and graphic and editorial design. «Biblioteca Universitaria» mainly publishes technical and professional articles related to Library and Information Science. The journal is published by the General Directorate for Libraries (DGB) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Drawings for an exacting author: illustrations from Giovanni Antonio Scopoli's Deliciae florae et faunae insubricae

Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (1723-1788) was one of the most versatile naturalists in eighteenth-century Italy. In 1785, Scopoli conceived the ambitious publication, "Deliciae florae et faunae insubricae". Appearing in installments, this included descriptions and illustrations of plants, animals and minerals found in northern Italy. Unfortunately, Scopoli's sudden death halted publication of the "Deliciae" after its third installment. Recently, a corpus of 98 paintings, in the gouache style, were discovered in the Biblioteca Universitaria of Pavia. These gouaches appear to be the basis for plates planned in future installments of the "Deliciae". Marginal notes in Scopoli's handwriting are included. Because Scopoli's plant and animal specimens have been destroyed or dispersed, these drawings are crucial for reconstructing his scientific opus. Combined with other documents, Scopoli's marginal notes also reveal his exacting standards. He criticized the way his artists had poorly rendered the scientific details of the paintings.

Iulius Casserius (1552-1616): the self-made anatomist of Padua's golden age.

Giulio Cesare Casseri (1552– 1616), whose name was Latinized into Iulius Casserius, was born in Piacenza; therefore, the nickname Piacentino (Placentinus) was often used. According to Sterzi (1910), who based his claim on a statement contained in Casserius’s will, his date of birth was around 1552. It should be noted, however, that although most modern authors accept this date (Roberts and Tomlinson, 1992; Premuda, 1993), some (Singer, 1957) still report 1561 as his birth date on the basis of the inscription (Fig. 1) appearing on the portrait published in Casserius’s work De Vocis Auditusque organis that ascribes to the author the age of 39 years. According to most of his early biographers (Tomasini, 1630; Ghilini, 1647; Papadopoli, 1726), Casserius’s family was very poor and the young Iulius, perhaps as the servant of some student (Sterzi, 1910), moved to Padua, the city that shared with Bologna the reputation of being the seat of Italy’s most illustrious university. He soon assumed the job of servant in the house of the famed Gerolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente (Fabricius, 1533– 1619) (Fig. 2), Public Lecturer of Anatomy and Surgery (Tomasini, 1630; Ghilini, 1647). As Tomasini (1630) reports, “from a servant he became first Fabricius’s auditor, then instructor and brilliant disciple.” We do not know when Casserius matriculated in the School of Medicine of the Universita Artista. As mentioned several times in his works, Casserius, in addition to Fabricius, had the well-known physician Gerolamo Mercuriale (Mercurialis) as a teacher and mentor, who held the chair of Clinical Medicine of Padua in the years 1569–1587. The precise date he obtained his degree in medicine and philosophy is unknown, because the official records are missing from 1580 to 1587; a likely date is ca.1580 (Sterzi, 1910; De Ferrari, 1978; Premuda, 1993). After the award of his degree, Casserius, in addition to giving private lectures on anatomy to the students of the Universita Artista and working as Fabricius’s preparator, started a practice as physician and surgeon in Padua that was very successful (Tomasini, 1630). In 1584, Casserius’s reputation was already so great that he took Fabricius’s place as member of the board of examiners for the finals in surgery. These examinations, held in private houses in the presence of the Rector of the University, conferred the license to practice surgery. The profession of surgery was considered in those days as a minor branch of Medicine and the surgeon had to take an oath that he would not involve himself in the treatment of serious diseases, but would call a licensed physician whenever the patient was in real danger.

Illuminated Musical Manuscripts in Byzantium: A Note on the Late Twelfth Century

The Oktoechos, Messina, Biblioteca Universitaria, San Salvatore, gr. 51, is the one surviving Byzantine musical manuscript with illuminations invented for its text. These illuminations are the subject of the article. In terms of attribution, they yield two conclusions: that their compositions were invented as book illuminations in the twelfth century, very probably for the Messina manuscript itself; and that the Messina manuscript was made in the late twelfth century in a place other than Constantinople, perhaps Palestine. Aesthetically, the miniatures adhere closely to the text: they represent literally the words of the initial sticheron of each mode, thus making visible its meanings, and they show the sticheron being performed. Historically, a comparison of the Messina Oktoechos with other illuminated musical manuscripts leads to the conclusion that, although the introduction of miniatures into musical manuscripts coincides with the Comnenian period, when a number of great devotional icons associated with hymnographic themes were created, manuscripts were probably not the source of the icons.

Lyric Sequences in theCantigas d'amigo

Lyric Sequences in the<i>Cantigas d'amigo</i>