Speculum humanea salvationis

Collection Data

Dates / Origin
Date Created: 1400 - 1425 (Approximate)
Place: Germany, probably Cologne
Library locations
Spencer Collection
Shelf locator: Spencer Coll. MS. 15
Genres
Manuscripts
Miniatures (Illuminations)
Notes
Ownership: Owned (1634) by Johann Wassenbergh, custos of the abbey of Sankt-Odilienberg in Limburg (also by Petrus Wassenberg). Arms of the archbishoprics of Cologne and Mayence on f. 7v. Aquired for Spencer from L'Art Ancien of Lugano, 1925.
Citation/reference: De Ricci, 1338. Library dossier. Chart by Dr. G.B. Guest. Listed in Digital Scriptorium, University of California, Berkeley
Content: 27 lines per page in two columns, no discernible ruling. No original catchwords visible, but the first folio of each gathering later signed with a letter (A-G). Quaternions are the norm.
Content: 194 miniatures, one at the head of each column.
Content: Red and blue initials, rubrics, red slashes as placemarkers.
Content: Notes in dossier and De Ricci date this manuscript to ca. 1410. De Ricci places it in western Germany.
Content: 2: A, ff. 1-40v; B, ff. 41-49v
Content: The 'Speculum' is ascribed to Ludolph of Saxony and its composition is dated to 1324. This copy opens with a description of the Seven Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins. The 'Speculum' itself begins on f. 2.
Biographical/historical: Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts are vehicles of the collective memory of western European culture, and provide a material connection between the scribes, illuminators, and patrons who produced these works and the audiences who view them today. The works represent diverse genres, from Bibles and missals to romance literature and science texts. Dating from the turn of the 10th century until well into the period of the Renaissance, these works give vivid testimony to the creative impulses of the often nameless craftsmen who continually discovered new ways of animating the contents of hand-produced books through inventive and sometimes exuberant manipulations of all the elements of the book: form and format, layout, script, decoration, illustration, and binding. Drawn from the Spencer Collection and the Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library’s collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts focus on the 9th through the 16th centuries -- seven hundred years of political, ecclesiastical, social, and intellectual change in Western Europe and the world.
Physical Description
Extent: Ff. 1-49v, 319 x 218 mm.
Parchment
Type of Resource
Still image
Text
Identifiers
NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b22823165
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 1c6ee3b0-c622-012f-df61-58d385a7bc34
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x Pilate, Pontius, active 1st century
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x Name: Pilate, Pontius, active 1st century