Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer
The Fondation Martin Bodmer is one of the most important private libraries in the world. It seeks to reflect the “adventure of the human spirit” since the beginning of writing; in this it follows the example of its founder Martin Bodmer, who sought to set up a “library of world literature.” The collection comprises about 160,000 items, hundreds of Western and Eastern manuscripts, Egyptian Books of the Dead, 270 incunabula including a rare exemplar of the Gutenberg Bible, autographs by Goethe, Einstein and Mozart...
The Hebrew text of the Old Testament in CB 21 originated in Moorish Spain: Al-Andalus. Unlike most similar surviving manuscripts, it does not belong to the Ashkenazic tradition, but is instead an artifact of the Sephardic book culture of the 13th century. The ornamentation is strongly influenced by calligraphic art.
Online Since: 07/31/2007
Early 16th century Esther scroll from Ashkenaz, for private use with intricate floral and animal type ink drawings located over some of the monumental letters in the list of Haman’s sons.
Online Since: 12/14/2018
The Samaritan Pentateuch contained in this manuscript is incomplete – it begins with Gn 11:17 (f. 1r) and ends with Dt 24:15 (f. 266v) – and it is also out of order – f. 2r/v with Dt 18:15–19:8 should be between f. 259 and f. 260.The two-language manuscript is copied in Samaritan-Hebrew characters in two columns (ff. 1r-237r), with the Hebrew text on the right and the Arabic translation on the left, and then in four columns with the same alternation of languages (ff. 237v-266v). The main part of this volume was copied by the scribe Ab Nēṣāna ban Ṣidqa ban Yāqob (fl. 1468-1502), known for producing eight other copies of the Pentateuch, some of which have been dated to between 873 and 890 AH, or between 1468/1469 and 1485 CE (cf. Evelyn Burkhardt, Katalog samaritanischer Pentateuchhandschriften). Thus, while the Bodmer Pentateuch does not have a date, its production can be dated to the second half of the fifteenth century. Two other scribes worked on this copy. The first completed the missing parts of the manuscript: two leaves from the book of Numbers (ff. 219r-220v), as well as the text from Dt 4:21 onwards (f. 232r). The last scribe copied, later and on paper, parts of Exodus (f. 66r/v, 78r/v). Concerning this Pentateuch’s provenance, an acquisition note placed at the end of Numbers (f. 224r) states that it was sold in 1532. It appeared in Nablus in 1861, when it was bought by a London antiquities merchant, Mr. Grove, who resold it that same year to the count of Paris, Philippe d’Orléans, as his stamp attests (e.g., f. 38r, 52r, 67r). In 1960, Martin Bodmer bought it at auction at Sotheby’s in London.
Online Since: 09/26/2024
This volume of 25 leaves was produced between 1910-1916 to preserve eight fragments from five Greek parchment manuscripts. The fragments, almost all palimpsests, had been found around 1896 in the binding of an unidentified Syrian gospel from Harput (Anatolia). A: Fragm. 1-2 (4th century ex / 7th century in): parts of ch. 15 of Didascalia apostolorum; B: Fragm. 3-4 (6th century): parts of ch. 3-4 of First Epistle of Paul to Timothy; C: Fragm. 5, in extremely poor state of preservation: contents and dating unknown; D: Fragm. 6 (7th century): parts of the prologue and the beginning of the scholia on book 24 of the Iliad; E: Fragm. 7-8 (7th century): parts of Psalms 108, 114 and 115. The content of the writing on the lower parts of the palimpsests is neither known nor dated.
Online Since: 12/10/2020
A remarkable manuscript from the end of the 10th century, undoubtedly produced in either Constantinople or Smyrna, CB 25 presents all four Gospels together in Greek. The biblical text is accompanied by commentaries by Peter of Laodiceia (an exegetical chain) written in cursive. The volume is decorated with two valuable full-page miniatures representing Luke and Mark against gold backgrounds.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Copied in the 13th century, probably in the north of France, this Latin Bible unifies in one volume the books of the Old- and New Testaments, most of them preceded by prologues. It transmits the standard Vulgate text, called the Paris version, with the chapter divisions attributed to Stephen Langton, and its last thirty pages provide a glossary of Hebrew names. Historiated initials open the various biblical books and give the volume its structure. A smaller script than usual in this volume has been used on fol. 1 for the Commentary on the Tree of Consanguinity, a text usually transmitted in juridical works, augmented here by an illustration of such a tree.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
This codex from southern Germany is composed of two parts bound together in one German binding in 1569. The first part of the manuscript contains about a hundred leaves from the 12th and 13th centuries. It begins with a calendar featuring numerous constellations and full page illustrations. Following are prayers and liturgical songs. The second part consists of thirty leaves containing a series of Latin prayers in carefully wrought late 14th century Gothic script.
Online Since: 12/20/2007
This manuscript contains the Song of Songs with a lacuna (6.5-8) due to the loss of a sheet. The Glossa ordinaria is written on the first sheet (1r-1v); it contains a heretofore unknown commentary. Placed alongside this is the first part of the Song of Songs (f. 2r-29r. until Ct 6.8), which in the beginning (f. 2r-v) is surrounded by another unknown commentary. The last sheets (f. 29v-30) contain excerpts from the prologue to the interpretation of the Song of Songs by Rupert of Deutz. The beginning of the Song of Songs is adorned with an initial depicting Solomon and the Shulamite.
Online Since: 04/09/2014
This Armenian manuscript was written in 1606 at the church of Saint Nikoghayos in Istanbul. It contains the Four Gospels, the Apocalypse of Saint John, and a Gospelindex devised for liturgical use written by another scribe in the same century. The silver binding was probably made a century after the manuscript writing. Special attention should be drawn to the illuminations of the canon tables painted according to the text of the “Commentary of the Canon Tables” of Stepanos Syunetsi (8th century), where the author thoroughly expounds the animal, floral and geometrical motives, as well as the symbolism of numbers and colors of each of the canon tables. The painter has interpreted the symbols and motives used in all ten canon tables by placing the explanations below each of them.
Online Since: 03/19/2015
Written in two columns in bastarda script with a decoration of fleuronné initials, from the first quarter of the 15th century (Wetzel), with two astrological tables added already in the 15th century (Wetzel) on the old flyleaf (f. 1r). The text of the Psalter, in the dialect of Rhenish Franconia (Hessen?), is closely related to the Psalter Göttingen, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Ms. theol. 214 v from the beginning of the 15th century. Wetzel assumes at least one common model. Thus the translation is part of Schöndorf’s group 9, subgroup c) around München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 182 or Walter’s Psalter 18.
Online Since: 12/17/2015
The Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine or Ameto, an early work (around 1341) by Boccaccio, recounts the transformation of the rough shepherd Ameto into a virtuous man after overhearing the stories told by seven nymphs, allegories of the virtues. The text is written as a prosimetrum — alternating prose and verse — as is immediately obvious from the single column page-design of the manuscript. Copied on paper without watermark, the manuscript opens with a single initial in watercolor that contains the coats of arms of the Almerici family (f. 2r), the owner of this copy who probably also commissioned it.
Online Since: 09/26/2017
The Elegia di madonna Fiammetta, dedicated to "women in love", describes in the first person the feelings of the young Neapolitan Fiammetta, who has been left by her beloved Panfilo. The Elegia, a prose work written by Boccaccio in his youth, praised for the subtlety of its psychological approach, mixes autobiographical elements and obvious references to Latin literature. It is preserved here in a manuscript copied in 1467 by Giovanni Cardello da Imola, whose regular calligraphy is set off by decorations in bianchi girari (white vine-stem).
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Jean Bodel, who was a member of the Brotherhood of Buskers and a bourgeois (middle-class resident) of Arras, wrote his Chanson des Saisnes (Song of the Saxons) during the last third of the 12th century. This epic in Alexandrine verse tells of the war prosecuted by Charlemagne against the Saxon King Guiteclin. The Chanson exists today in three manuscripts (a fourth was completely destroyed in the fire at the library of Turin) which present different versions of the text. The long version held by the Fondation Martin Bodmer is in a small-format manuscrit de jongleur or performer's script. It was probably produced around the end of the 13th century and is a simple piece of work, without miniatures, written on parchment, much of which was poorly cut, and it is roughly sewn together.
Online Since: 12/21/2009
Boethius' De consolatione Philosophiae knew continuous success during the Middle Ages. This 14th century manuscript offers a complete copy of the Latin text with some interlinear glosses. The book decoration consists of a historiated initial with a half-length frontal portrait of the author as he points to his book (f. 1). From this initial sprouts a short leaf scroll. In addition there are very beautiful decorated initials placed at the beginning of the various books of the Consolatione (f. 8, 17, 30 and 41). Their style indicates that the manuscript was made in northern Italy, perhaps Bologna.
Online Since: 12/12/2019
The Edelstein contained in this manuscript consists of 100 fables, composed around 1330 by the Bernese Dominican Ulrich Boner; the fables were taken from various Latin sources and were translated by Boner into Swiss Dialect. The script and the typical characteristics of the layout with spaces for never-executed illustrations indicate a work from the late phase (approximately about 1455-1460) of Diebold Lauber’s workshop in Hagenau in Alsace, a work that had been prepared to be completed at the request of a buyer.
Online Since: 12/13/2013
This parchment manuscript from the end of the 15th century contains the "Chronicle of London" as well as a version of the paraphrase text of the "Metrical Chronicle" by Robert of Gloucester found only in this manuscript, CB 43. The dialect used in the text indicates that the manuscript was written by a scribe from the southern Midlands.
Online Since: 03/25/2009
This copy of Cesar's "Commentarii" from about 1480 attests to the great popularity this text attained during the early Renaissance (there are more than 240 surviving manuscripts of the "Commentarii" from the 15th century). This manuscript was produced in the atelier of the illuminator Cola Rapicano in Naples. The "bianchi girari" (white vine) book decoration and the illuminated initial capitals which mark the beginning of each book are of a type often found in codices containing humanistic works. The illuminated initial capital on fol. 1r, on the other hand, portrays the Roman ruler in an unusual way, as an armored horseman.
Online Since: 03/25/2009
A collection of Spanish poems, addressed to Don Alvar Garcia de Santa Maria, advisor to King John II of Castille. The collection includes all the Proverbios of Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana, and poetry by Juan de Mena, Diego del Castilla, Fernando de Escobar, Gomes Manrique, Juan Angras, Juan De Dueñas, Juan Rodrigues de la Camera, and others. The manuscript was commissioned by Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, first Count of Haro, one of the most powerful personalities of the 15th century, well known as a statesman, independant scholar, poet, and bibliophile.
Online Since: 03/22/2012
This elegant codex, written in humanistic script, was commissioned by Pope Leo X († 1521). The Medici coat of arms can be found in the middle of the original binding’s cover, in a rich frieze on the frontispiece, and in the initials on f. 3v and f. 134v. The decoration is attributed to the famous Florentine illuminator Attavante degli Attavanti († 1525) or his circle. This codex is from the collection of Major J.R. Abbey.
Online Since: 03/22/2017
The Carmina by Catullus contained in this codex was written in a humanistic cursive, attributed to the calligrapher Ludovico Regio di Imola. The frontispiece in grisaille with gold highlights is framed by motifs in the manner of antiquity with trophies, sphinxes and mascarons, while the title in gold letters stands out from the crimson background. At the bottom of the page, the coat of arms on a disc held by two putti is overlaid in the same crimson color.
Online Since: 12/13/2013