This manuscript was produced in a Parisian workshop around the end of the 13th century. It contains the Latin version of thirteen critiques written by, or generally thought to have been written by, Aristotle. The book ends with a fragment of De uno deo benedicto by Moses Maimonides. Forty decorated initials adorn the text, and a large drawing of Christ on the cross with Mary and John has been added on the last folio.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This manuscript contains three medical texts translated from Arabic and Greek into Latin. It begins with a small medical encyclopedia in ten books, the Kitâb al-Mansuri by Rhazes (ff. 4-126), in the translation attributed to Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187); this is immediately followed by a treatise on fever (ff. 126-144v) inspired by Johannitius (Latin name of the doctor and translator Hunain ben Ishāq al-Ibādī from Baghdad, 808-873). The collection concludes with the text Twelve books of medicine by the Byzantine physician Alexander of Tralles, divided here into three books and followed by the Treatise on fever (ff. 146-289v). The extensively annotated manuscript is adorned with decorated initials from which very beautiful red and blue "Italian extensions" emerge.
Online Since: 12/12/2019
This collection, dated to the end of the 15th century or the beginning of the 16th century, contains ten scientific treatises (astronomy, physics, mechanics, etc.) written in Latin or French and accompanied by several technical drawings. While four texts remain anonymous, the others were written by Christian of Prague, Petrus Peregrinus, Franco de Polonia, Philo of Byzantium, Marbod of Rennes and Jean Fusoris. The topics cover various areas, such as the astrolabe, magnetism, precious stones,the clavichord, etc.
Online Since: 10/08/2015
This portolan by Andrea Benincasa is signed and dated 1476 on the last chart, which is glued to the inside back cover. The five nautical charts, each occupying a double page of the atlas, describe the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea (chart 1), the coasts between Sicily and the Aegean Sea (chart 2), the Mediterranean Sea from Gibraltar to Rome with Corsica and Sardinia (chart 3), the coasts of the Atlantic between England and Ireland to the Strait of Gibraltar (chart 4), and finally the coasts between Gibraltar and Cape Bojador, including the Canary Islands and other islands (chart 5). The star-shaped rhumb lines with wind roses indicate the compass directions, while the scales, here marked in the corners of the leaves, make it possible to estimate distances. The precise course of the coasts highlighted with color and the elegant script of the toponyms are characteristic of maps from the Benincasa studio, which were intended as objects for book lovers, but not for navigation. Among the numerous inscriptions on these maps, those on the Atlantic islands are the most surprising, as they seem to anticipate the discovery of the American archipelago like “Antilia,” or the island of “Brazil”; these names were adopted by Christopher Columbus and his successors to name certain territories in the New World.
Online Since: 12/12/2019
This manuscript from the 9th century contains Book IV of the De compendiosa doctrina by Nonius Marcellus, a Latin grammarian who lived in the 4th century AD. The corrections which have been added to the text are ascribed to Lupus von Ferières. The existence of a brief text in Tironian notes and of a book catalog (a list of 21 titles) led earlier researchers to believe that the manuscript originated in Fleury-sur-Loire, but the most recent investigations indicate a connection with the cloister of Fulda in Germany
Online Since: 06/22/2010
This manuscript is remarkable because of its contents as well as its age: it is a dictionary of Tironian notes, copied in the 9th century. While puzzling at first glance, this dictionary is written as lists of signs, the "Tironian notes", accompanied by their Latin meanings. This shorthand from antiquity supposedly survived until the Carolingian era.
Online Since: 10/08/2015
Cicero's De officiis of is a political work on ethics, used throughout the Middle Ages, from Augustine, to the compilers of his moral sequences, to Christine de Pizan in her Chemin de long estude. Numerous commentaries have been written on this work, as attested by this 15th century paper manuscript. On the last double page (f. 120v-121r) the ethical theme of the Ciceronian text is continued as a schema of virtues. This manuscript was in the possession of the regent of the Collège de Genève, Hugues Lejeune (1634-1707), who donated it to the Bibliothèque de Genève.
Online Since: 10/08/2020
With a beautiful binding à la "Du Seuil", this 15th century manuscript contains the Policraticus (The government of the state), a work of reflections on the vanities of courtiers, written by John of Salisbury (1115/1120-1180). It was copied in a careful hand, and the text was decorated with a large miniature showing an author reading his text before the king of France.
Online Since: 12/18/2014
This manuscript, copied in the years 1460-1480, contains De regimine principum by Aegidius Romanus, decorated with a miniature in which the author (Aegidius Romanus) dedicates the book to the king of France. The last leaves contain the Life of Aesop and his Fables, translated into Latin by Rinuccio di Arezzo. The manuscript was owned by François Bonivard († 1570), who was prior of the Cluniac Priory of St. Victor in Geneva.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This manuscript dates from the beginning of the 16th century and contains two poems by Raoul Bollart, the first of which celebrates the siege of King Ludwig XII of France against the Venetians in 1509. The second poem treats the subject of moral values and relates the supplications made to a rich person by the poor. All miniatures found in this manuscript, illustrating various scenes in the poems, were made in Rouen. The way in which they follow the morality text is similar to the style of modern comics. During the 17th century this manuscript was owned by the Petau family. In 1720 Ami Lullin of Geneva purchased the codex and donated it to the Bibliothèque de Genève.
Online Since: 12/09/2008
This manuscript, dated to the years 1170-1180, contains the text of the Alexandreis, a Latin epic poem written by Walter of Châtillon to tell the story of Alexander the Great. Dedicated to the Archbishop of Reims, the work quickly became a great success and remains known today as “the greatest epic poem of medieval literature”. In addition, the version preserved in this manuscript should be one of the oldest.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
At the request of his friend Othman Lillo Ferducci of Ancona, Gian Mario Filelfo composed the Amyris in the years 1471-1476. This long Latin poem was intended to thank Sultan Mehmet II for having freed Ferducci's brother-in-law, who had been taken prisoner by the Turcs during the capture of Constantinople in 1453. Gian Mario Filelfo had the manuscript decorated in Florence with "bianchi girari” ornamentation, had it bound in Urbino with a very beautiful Italian Renaissance binding, and then gave it to the Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, at whose court he was staying in 1477 and 1478.
Online Since: 12/18/2014
One of the ancient authors best known in the Middle Ages doubtlessly was Cicero. Some of his speeches - the Orationes - were rediscovered by humanists, as is attested by this copy. The manuscript contains 27 of Cicero's speeches, written in a round Italian humanistic script. It begins with a miniature depicting a group of speakers in a discussion (f. 1r), painted by Péronet Lamy, an illuminator who is documented from 1432 until 1453 and who worked primarily for Amadeus VIII, the Duke of Savoy. It is likely that Péronet Lamy carried out this decoration when he was at the Council of Basel as part of the Duke's entourage. Also present there was Martin le Franc (1408-1461), ducal secretary and author of the Champion des Dames and the Estrif de fortune et de vertu; according to a scraped entry (f. 290r), he came into possession of this manuscript. Thereafter it belonged to Germain Colladon (back pastedown), a fellow student of John Calvin, who fled to Geneva in 1550. Around 1615, one of his daughters-in-law sold the manuscript, together with Ms. lat. 53, to the Bibliothèque de Genève.
Online Since: 03/22/2018
This manuscript from the 16th century contains the Latin translation of the tract entitled De tranquilitate animi by Plutarch, made by the French humanist Guillaume Budé in 1505. It is preceded by a letter from Budé to Pope Julius II, to whom the translation is addressed. The manuscript does not include illustrations, though the 16th century binding contains two scenes depicting the Virgin Mary: the Assumption of Mary and the Blessing of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Trinity.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This miniature book of hours (11.5 x 7 cm) for use in Rome was probably made in Bourges by the Master of Spencer 6 (active between 1490 and 1510). All 35 full-page and framed miniatures show identical composition, where the main scene, presented in close-up, is complemented with a predella containing small figures. The manuscript's owner, the Naville family of Geneva (coat of arms on f. 1v), donated it to the Bibliothèque de Genève in 1803.
Online Since: 10/04/2018
This manuscript, dated to about 1200, contains several texts, among them the Martyrology of Usuard (Benedictine monk, died around 875), an incomplete homiliary, the Rule of St. Augustine, and the necrology of Sixt Abbey (France, Haute-Savoie) that was expanded with later additions into the 17th century. According to François Huot, the various parts could have existed separately, but they seem to have been combined since the beginning of the 13th century. Primarily in the 13th and 14th century, diverse texts were added on previously blank pages, among them list of dues owed the abbey noted on pages f. 75v and 99r. This manuscript belonged to the Augustinian Canons Regular of Sixt Abbey, who used it during the Officium capituli; the manuscript must have been in their possession until the French Revolution. In the 19th century it was purchased by Auguste Turrettini (1818-1881) from Geneva.
Online Since: 10/08/2015
This volume, which was produced in Italy in the mid to late 15th century, is a collection of letters, bringing together letters by Phalaris, Diogenes of Sinope and Brutus, who were regarded in the middle ages as the true authors of these letters. They were translated into Latin by Francesco Griffolini Aretino and Ranuccio of Arezzo. A decorative illustration in bianchi girari (entwined white vine style) is found at the beginning of the section by each author. Two fragments of De officiis ministrorum by St. Ambrose are found at the end of the volume.
Online Since: 04/15/2010
This manuscript was deposited in the Bibliothèque de Genève in 2007 by the priests of the Congregation of St. Francis de Sales (at the Institut Florimont in Geneva). This composite manuscript unifies two previously separate texts: a copy of Prician's Institutiones Grammaticae made during the 11th or 12th centuries in Italy, and the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana. The latter is illustrated with 65 miniatures; this 11th century copy was probably written in southern Italy, judging by the Beneventana and Carolingian minuscule scripts used. This previously unknown Beatus manuscript discovered in Geneva adds to the 26 illuminated exemplars already on record.
Online Since: 11/03/2009
Philibert de Viry's manuscript is one of the rare Books of Hours for use in the Diocese of Geneva to have survived until today. Illuminated in Lyon by the Maître de l'Entrée de François I, it contains miniatures directly inspired by Albrecht Dürer's (1511) woodcuts Petite Passion. This is an early witness of the reception of this series of images in France and an example of the often unsuspected influence of engraving on book decoration.
Online Since: 03/17/2016
This manuscript was probably written in the 15th century in the Waldensian Valleys of Piedmont (Italy). As also with a large part of the remaining Waldensian manuscripts, now dispersed across various European libraries, this is a collection of various treatises, sermons and upraising or doctrinaire texts. This manuscript probably reached Geneva around 1661, where it was brought, together with other manuscripts, by the Waldensian pastor Jean Léger. Classified as a Spanish manuscript by Jean Senebier in 1779, it was not recognized as Waldensian until the middle of the 19th century.
Online Since: 06/23/2016
This manuscript was probably written in the 16th century in the Waldensian Valleys of Piedmont (Italy). As with a large part of the remaining Waldensian manuscripts, now dispersed across various European libraries, this is a collection of various treatises, sermons and upraising or doctrinaire texts, partly in Latin and partly in the vernacular. This manuscript probably reached Geneva around 1662, where it was brought, together with other manuscripts, by the Waldensian pastor Jean Léger. Initially classified as a Latin manuscript, it was not recognized as part of the Waldensian codices until 1832.
Online Since: 12/20/2016
The De Divina Proportione is a mathematical treatise by the Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli (1445-1517). The Italian text is followed by sixty polyhedra, drawn filled or empty, and influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. Of the three copies written during the author's lifetime, only two remain. This copy, held by the Bibliothèque de Genève, is the presentation copy of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, whose coat of arms and motto adorn the manuscript (fol. Ir and LXIIv).
Online Since: 02/27/2019