Citation/reference: The Splendor of the Word. (ed.) J. G. Alexander, J. H. Marrow, L. F. Sandler (NYPL / Harvey Miller, 2005), 79.
Citation/reference: New York Public Library. Spencer Collection. Dictionary catalog and shelf list, vol. II, p. 904.
Content: This MS. comprises two separate MSS. bound together: Part 1, ff. 1-55, Feuerwerksbuch von 1420, by an anonymous author, active 15th century. Part 2, ff. 56-156, Conrad Kyesr's Bellifortis (also called "Das puch exiles") in a version much closer to that found in Spencer Coll. MS. 58.
Content: The manuscript Feuerwerksbuch von 1420 is a treatise on explosives, including fabrication and use, constructed in the form of dialogue between master and pupils.
Content: Manuscript date from f. 50v.
Content: Layout: Written in 21 long lines per page, ruled in ink, prickmarks and catchwords visible.
Content: Decoration: Colored pen and ink drawings on nearly every page, many containing human and animal figures. Red initials, rubrics.
Content: Collation: four quires of twelve folios each; one quire of seven folios (originally eight -- stub visible before f. 49).
Ownership: fol. i German note by Wiegrebe, dated 20 August 1828.
Content: Binding, by Johannes de Pulco (active in Basel, in the third quarter of the 15th-century) identified in a scroll stamp inscribed 'io de putro': blind stamped brown leather over boards with five brass bosses with restored iron catch and lock, re-backed in the eighteenth century
Content: Splendor of the Word, PBL # 79: [64v-65r] Children on hobbyhorses carrying lighted tapers conjuring up the dead; soldiers laying siege to a castle using baskets as protective hoods
