Documents: 97, displayed: 21 - 40

Sub-project: Switzerland’s illuminated treasures

March 2020 - November 2020

Status: Completed

Description: The exhibitions celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the e-codices project, the Swiss platform for the digitisation of manuscripts. In this connection, both collections are showing highlights from their own holdings as well as a large number of valuable loans from other libraries participating in the e-codices programme.

All Libraries and Collections

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 88
Parchment · 72 ff. · 25.3 x 19.5 cm · France (?) · late 10th century / early 11th century
Horace, Works

Manuscript CB 88, which combines the Odes, the Epodes, and the Carmen saeculare, a piece interpreted by children's choirs of the Roman nobility during secular performances, is an unusual example of a Horace manuscript from the turn of the 10th to the 11th century. Its many marginal and interlinear glosses, which frequently consist of scholii by Pseudo-Acro, explain the verses and praise their metrical accuracy and verbal virtuosity. The alphabetical tables and the title were added in the 14th century at the end of the volume. (mes)

Online Since: 12/21/2009

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 91
Paper · 389 ff. · 29.2 x 20 cm · South Tyrol (Carthusian monastery of Allerengelberg?) · 1468
Hugo von Trimberg: Der Renner · Johann Hartlieb: Alexanderroman

This manuscript from the southern Tyrol was produced by two scribes in the year 1468 and bound as one volume during the same period. It brings together the didactic work Der Renner (The Runner or Courier) by Hugo von Trimberg and the Alexanderroman (Romance of Alexander) following a compilation by Johann Hartlieb. The codex contains 91 pen sketches. Instructions for the execution of these sketches can be found in the lower margins of the pages on which they appear. (fmb)

Online Since: 12/20/2007

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 93
Parchment · 59 ff. · 23.2 x 16.2 cm · France · end of the 14th century
Jacques de Cessoles, Echecs moralisés

This parchment manuscript from the time around 1400 contains a work by the Dominican sermonist Jacques de Cessoles, using the game of chess as the allegorical basis for a lesson in morals. The same theme is carried out in 16 accompanying illustrations as well. (fmb)

Online Since: 12/20/2007

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 98
Parchment · 169 ff. · 30 x 20.5 cm · Italy (Nonantola) · 9th century (first half)
Flavius Iosephus, Antiquitates iudaicae

This manuscript contains a Latin translation in pre-Carolingian script of the "Antiquitates Judaicae", originally written in Greek by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the first century. CB 98 was produced in the Benedictine abbey of San Silvestro di Nonantola (Province of Modena), as was Ms. CB 99, which also contains texts by Flavius Josephus. (fmb)

Online Since: 12/20/2007

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 105-1
Paper · IV + 514 + IV pp. · 38.3 x 27.5 cm · France · 15th century
Lancelot propre

This 15th century paper manuscript in four volumes brings together the prose texts Lancelot Propre, La Queste del saint Graal, and La Mort le roi Artu. The first volume contains 42 aquarelle tinted pen drawings, the fourth volume features two full-page illustrations on inserted parchment leaves. (fmb)

Online Since: 12/20/2007

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 111
Parchment · 45 ff. · 23.2 x 19 cm · southern German or Austria · 10th century (around 970?)
Macrobius, Commentarius in Ciceronis Somnium Scipionis

This 10th century parchment manuscript contains a commentary on the Somnium Scipionis by Macrobius, followed by excerpts from the Naturalis historia of Pliny the Elder and from De institutione musica by Boethius. The codex also includes diagrams which portray, for example, the Earth and the constellations. (fmb)

Online Since: 07/31/2007

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 113
Parchment · 35 ff. · 29 x 20 cm · France · 15th century
Marie de France, Fables

CB 113 is a copy of a manuscript from the Bibliothèque nationale de France and contains a collection of fables in the Æsopian tradition written by Marie de France in the 12th century. Marie de France, author of the famous Lais, augmented the 101 fables with six "fabliaux". The erotic passages of the fabliaux have been erased from this manuscript. (fmb)

Online Since: 07/31/2007

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 116
Parchment · I + 205 + I ff. · 32 x 21.5 cm · France · beginning of the 14th century
Prophecies de Merlin in prose

Of all the 19 surviving manuscripts and fragments containing the Prophesies de Merlin, only CB 116 transmits the entire text. The manuscript thus clarifies which episodes from the Arthurian tales comprise the complete body of the work. (fmb)

Online Since: 03/25/2009

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 125
Parchment · I + 199 + I ff. · 29.1 x 19.2 cm · Italy · 14th century (around 1320?), notes from the 14th-15th century
Ovid, Metamorphoses

This manuscript from Italy contains Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The text is annotated with marginal and interlinear glosses by various contemporaneous and Italian hands from the 15th century. Four types of notes can be discerned: structuring, lexical and philological, intertextual and commenting, which testify to the vitality of Ovid’s text in the 14th century and up to the beginning of the modern era. The frontispiece is decorated with a letter surrounding a portrait of the author during the composition of his work, as well as a side border bearing an angel with red wings. (fmb)

Online Since: 04/23/2013

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 127
Parchment · 265 ff. · 44.8 x 30.5 cm · Premonstratensian monastery of Weissenau, Germany (Diocese of Constance) · 12th century
Passionary of Weissenau

This copy of the Lives of the Saints, produced during the 12th century, possibly in the German Cloister of Weissenau, is decorated with ornately detailed and illustrated initial capitals, including one notable initial in which the illuminator, "Fr. Ruffilus" includes himself (fol. 244r). (fmb)

Online Since: 05/20/2009

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 128
Parchment · II + 197 ff. · 40.2 x 29.8 cm · Reichenau (?) · 9th century
Paulus Diaconus, Homiliary (pars aestiva et commune sanctorum)

This large, incomplete manuscript in folio format contains the summer portion and the Commune sanctorum of the homiliary by Paulus Diaconus. It was written by various hands in a 9th century Carolingian minuscule; in addition to initials drawn in ink and decorated with red scrolls which indicate an Irish influence, there are even several elegant incipits in capital script. The manuscript probably comes from Reichenau, certainly from the area of Lake Constance. It belonged to the Phillipps collection, later to Chester Beatty; it was bought in 1968 by Martin Bodmer. (ber)

Online Since: 06/23/2014

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 130
Parchment · I + 185 + III ff. · 20 x 12 cm · Italy (Padua) · around 1500
Petrarch, Triumphi

This codex was produced in the opening years of the 16th century. Though it was created at a time when book printing had already proven its usefulness, this manuscript serves to demonstrate a high level of achievement in the calligraphic and illuminatory arts. Copied by Bartolomeo Sanvito, who also produced four other manuscripts of the Canzoniere and the Triumphi by Petrarch, CB 130 was written using a well-balanced, simplified script and refined illuminations. The beginning of the manuscript contains three full-page illustrations on parchment. (fmb)

Online Since: 03/25/2009

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 131
Parchment · I + 180 ff. · 23 x 16.3 cm · Italy · late 14th century
Petrarch and Dante, Rime

This manuscript unites two different collections of Italian poetry: a collection of 380 poems by Petrarch and a collection of works by the preceding generation of poets, especially Dante. In this mysterious "libro de la mia Comare" (Book of my Godmother), the poems of Petrarch are recorded in an archaic script, augmented here and there with individual glosses which are not found elsewhere, apparently in an effort to introduce these texts to a female readership. (fmb)

Online Since: 05/20/2009

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 135
Parchment · 39 ff. · 29.4 x 20.7 cm · Italy (Naples?)( · 14th century (about 1350-1370?)
[Peter of Eboli], The Baths of Pozzuoli

"De Balneis Puteolanis", a didactic poem by the Salerno physician Petrus de Ebulo, describes the health benefits of about thirty healing springs found in the region around Pozzuoli and Baia, Italy. This work was widely disseminated in Latin as well as in Italian and French translations. It describes baths that were destroyed by an earthquake in 1538. The manuscript is decorated with full-page illustrations and was probably produced in the artistic circle of Robert d'Anjou. (fmb)

Online Since: 07/31/2007

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 140
Parchment · 2 ff. · 42.5 x 56.5 cm · Livorno (?) · second half of the 17th century
Nautical charts of the Mediterranean Sea, attributed to Giovanni Cavallini or Pietro Cavallini (?)

These two illuminated maps probably were part of an atlas of nautical charts of the Mediterranean, also called Portolan. The first map is north-facing and shows a part of the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean and of the Mediterranean on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar, between the Canary Islands and northern Italy. The second map is western-facing and shows the islands of the Aegean Sea between Crete (Candia) and Thessaloniki, Greece and Asia Minor, with Troy and Constantinople sketched in anachronistically. A scale for the latitudes on the first map, graduated distance scales near the margins, rhumb lines, and wind roses decorated with fleurs-de-lis accompany the red and black coastal toponyms written perpendicular to the coasts. Their very stylized arrangement emphasizes the headlands and estuaries, and the cartographer also depicted some rivers, albeit without great precision. In the interior and rather vaguely placed are miniature pictures of cities with banners, mountains, and trees. At sea, a few ships and a marine animal appear on both maps. The names of the regions are written on banners or in larger letters. The particular style of the design of the cities, the decorations, and the writing refers back to the work of Giovanni Battista Cavallini or his successor Pietro Cavallini, who worked in Livorno between 1636 and 1688. (vag)

Online Since: 12/12/2019

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 143
Parchment · III + 220 + II ff. · 34 x 24.6 cm · France · around 1440
Benevenutus Imolensis, Romuleon

This manuscript contains the Romuleon, a collection of anonymous Latin texts about the history of Rome attributed to Benvenuto da Imola. CB 145 was written in France in about 1440, probably during the lifetime of Charles VII, whose portrait can be found on fol. 6v. There is a series of noteworthy miniatures at the beginning of the manuscript. (fmb)

Online Since: 03/25/2009

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 144
Parchment · I + 70 + I ff. · 24 x 15.5 cm · France · around 1470
René d'Anjou, Le mortifiement de vaine plaisance

This manuscript contains the tract Le Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance by King René of Anjou. This allegorical poem, composed in 1455, invites people to live a holy life by means of a dialogue between soul and heart about abstinence from unsatisfying earthly things. CB 144 is decorated with eight full-page miniatures made by Jean Colombe in about 1470. (fmb)

Online Since: 07/25/2006

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 146
Parchment · 38 ff. · 27.6 x 17.8 cm · Northern Italy · 10th century
Manuscript with rhetorical works, owned by Petrarch

10th century manuscript of Italian origin, which contains numerous works of rhetoric: the Ars rhetorica by Fortunatianus, the Principia rhetorices by Augustine, the Praecepta artis rhetoricae by Julius Severianus and the Partitiones oratoriae by Cicero. In the 14th century, it became the property of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), who, at various times of his life, added numerous marginal notes. The manuscript demonstrates the humanist’s interest in the Oratores latini minores (minor Latin orators), which contributed to their rediscovery and proliferation. (ber)

Online Since: 04/09/2014

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 147
Parchment · I + 388 + I ff. · 34.8 x 25.9 cm · France · end of the 13th century
Estoire Del Graal (interpolated)

This manuscript produced at the end of the 13th century contains a copy of the Arthurian romance tales in prose: "Estoire del Graal", "Merlin", "Suite Merlin", "Queste del saint Graal", and "Mort le roi Artu". The interpolations used in CB 147 make it a particularly unusual manuscript: the heroes of the Arthurian tales are made to utter translations of the Gospels, Genesis, and various other biblical texts as well as sermons by Maurice de Sully. The manuscript also contains the "Faits de Romains", and a prose version of the "Roman de Troie" not found elsewhere. The plentiful illuminations are executed in a highly unusual style. (fmb)

Online Since: 07/25/2006

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Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 172
Parchment · 194 ff. · 20 x 13 cm · Naples · around 1490
Anthologia latina

This late Renaissance Italian humanist manuscript contains excerpts of various works by Latin and Greek authors, among them Pliny, Cicero, Silius Italicus, Plautus, Livy, Horace, Sallust, Plutarch, Seneca and others. Pellegrin, following Tammaro de Marinis, attributes the writing to the copyist Gian Marco Cinico, who worked for the kings of Naples between 1458 and 1494. The different parts are introduced by golden initials with bianchi girari, only partly completed (ff. 1v, 4v, 20r, 22r, 50r, 186v). Some of these bianchi girari are left unfilled on a blue, red, green or black background, others are colored pink, green or blue on a black or golden background. The vine scrolls are inhabited by putti and animals such as rabbits, stags, butterflies or birds. Numerous frames show putti engaged in hunting or other playful activities (e.g., ff. 55r, 79r, 139r, 169r). (ber)

Online Since: 12/17/2015

Documents: 97, displayed: 21 - 40