Penn in Hand: Selected Manuscripts

Mela, Pomponius.

[Cosmographia] [manuscript] / Pomponii Mel[a]e.

De chorographia

[Italy, between 1440 and 1450]

70 leaves : parchment ; 169 x 111 (116 x 68) mm. bound to 178 x 124 mm.

Geographical work describing the populated areas of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia as known to the historian and geographer Strabo. Many leaves of the manuscript are palimpsests, the parchment having been formerly used for legal documents and washed for re-use. The earlier texts are occasionally faintly visible running perpendicular to the Mela text.

Ms. codex.

Title from rubric (f. 1r).

Foliation: Parchment, 70 + ii; [1-70]; modern foliation in pencil, upper right recto (19th-century foliation with larger numbers, also in pencil, also upper right recto, skips f. 38 and f. 50; this earlier foliation and the note in pencil at the upper margin of the first page are both mentioned in the 1892 catalog of the Boncompagni library).

Layout: Written in 23-24 long lines; frame-ruled in lead.

Script: Written in a rounded northern Italian humanistic script.

Decoration: 1 6-line initial in blue with red acanthus-leaf decoration, ornamental frame, and extensions (f. 1r); 15 2- or 3-line initials in either red or blue; 5 of the red initials have penwork in black (f. 5r, 37v, 42r, 55r, 60r); marginal notations, mostly place names, in red or blue; rubrics in red.

Binding: 15th-century vellum over pasteboards.

Origin: Possibly written in northern Italy, before 1450 (date of ownership inscription, f. 70v); probably written between 1440 and 1450.

LJS 60

Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts University of Pennsylvania LJS 60