morienus romanus (6 Ergebnisse)

PAP. Zustand: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000.

PAP. Zustand: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000.

Zustand: New. In.

HRD. Zustand: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000.

HRD. Zustand: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000.

8vo (182 x 125 mm). Latin manuscript on vellum. 64 unnumbered pp. (complete; collation: I-IV.8); catchwords survive. 29 lines, ruled space: 126 x 86 mm, rubrics, paraphs and initials in red. A few maniculae, some passages underlined by a later owner. Bound in modern vellum over pasteboards. A handsome and early collection of nine medieval alchemical texts, written at the height of the Italian Renaissance and deeply rooted in the Arab tradition. The manuscript opens with the "Mirror of the Secrets of Alchemy", attributed on its first page to the legendary Byzantine monk Morienus, who went to Alexandria to study with the Arabian scholar Adfar, whose favourite student he became. Subsequently settling in Jerusalem as a hermit, he devoted his life to the hermetic arts before learning that Khalid, the Sultan of Egypt, "was desirous to find someone who could interpret for him the writings of Hermes and of Adfar" (Ferguson). - The second text is Arnaldus de Villa Nova's "Liber Lumen Luminis", a work attributed to Abu Bakr al-Razi. The third tract contains the famous "On the Philosopher's Stone". The fourth text ("Liber duodecim aquarium"), which lists the characteristics and composition of twelve different solutions including aqua rubicunda (red ink), aqua penetrativa (the universal solvent), and aqua mollificativa (which softens all things), is again attributed to Rhazes. - This is followed by the "Liber trium verborum", the translation of an Arabic treatise by the alchemist Khalid ibn Yazid, son of the Umayyad caliph Yazid I. Khalid's alleged alchemical pursuits likely stem from a ninth-century Arabic legend, which also falsely attributed to him the first sponsorship of Greek philosophical and scientific translations into Arabic; a process which actually began under Caliph al-Mansur (754-775). - The volume concludes with Latin translations of Jabir ibn Hayyan's "Kitab al-Thalathin Kalima" (The Book of Thirty Words) and his "Kutub al-Sab'un" (The Book of Seventy), unifying a large part of his alchemical writings by addressing the hidden powers of mineral, vegetable, and animal substances, as well as their practical applications in medicine and various other pursuits. - Lower half of fol. 4 cut away with loss of 10 lines of text, minimal dampstaining to gutters, else in excellent condition. - (1) Circular blue ink ownership stamp on fol. 1 and stamp along the inside margin, now almost entirely illegible. The 1977 Sotheby's catalogue had this as "Di casa Minutoli-Tegrimi": this is Count Eugenio Minutoli-Tegrimi of Lucca, who sold his collection in 1871, Catalogo dei codici manoscritti posseduti dal nobile signore Conte Eugenio Minutoli Tegrimi. Reproductions of the stamp in Alexander and de la Mare, Italian Manuscripts of Major J. R. Abbey, p. 53; and a list of other Minutoli-Tegrimi manuscripts in England on p. 55, no. 2. - (2) Sotheby's, 13 July 1977, lot 53. - (3) Sion Segre Amar (1910-2003), who assembled a collection of over 300 manuscripts in the 1960s and 1970s, the Comites Latentes (or "hidden friends"), his MS 188: brown and yellow sticker on the back pastedown "SSA - Nasce a guisa di rampollo a pie' del vero il dubbio - 188". - (4) Sold as The property of the Comites Latentes Collection, Geneva at Sotheby's, 12 December 1998, lot 88. - I: Ferguson II, 109. - II: Wüstenfeld, Die Übersetzungen arabischer Werke in das Lat. (1877), 65, 67. Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, III, 1934, 61; D. W. Singer, Cat. of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts, 1928-1931, 226. Ch. B. Schmitt / Dilwyn Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus. A guide to latin works falsely attributed to Aristotle before 1500 (1985), 40. - III: J. Corbett, Cat. des manuscrits alchimiques Latins (1939), I, 86. - IV: Schmitt/Knox, 17. J. Corbett, 20. - VII: M. Steinschneider, Europäische Übersetzungen (1906), 29f. Singer, 4. Corbett, 182. - VIII & IX: Singer, 84. Corbett, 22 n.