In his monumental work on the royal library of the Aragonese Kings of Naples, Tammaro de Marinis describes three manuscripts copied in the 1470’s by the Italian scribe, Jacobus Laurentianus. Jacobus copied least one of these manuscripts from an early printed edition of the same works. Brown University Library has a fourth manuscript by Jacobus Laurentianus, and we have determined that it, too, was copied from the earliest printed edition of the works it contains.
The John Hay Library is currently exhibiting the manuscript itself (Koopman 1400? D4) as well as the 1470 Roman edition from which it was copied, the De viris illustribus of Sextus Aurelius Victor, and the Rerum Gestarum a Romanis of Sextus Rufinus (AmB 323).
What would have been an elaborately illuminated title page is missing from our manuscript, but we have included, here, the title page from another of Jacobus’ manuscripts (Escorial h-II-2), as well as images of the colophons from the Escorial manuscript and our own, which indicate the name of the scribe.
Text by William S. Monroe, Senior Scholarly Resources Librarian. (with thanks to Professor Elizabeth J. Bryan, English Dept., and the Real Biblioteca el Escorial, for the images of Escorial h-II-2). The John Hay Library is open 9 to 6, Monday through Friday and 1 to 5PM on Sundays.