Victorinus: Commentarium in Ciceronis librum de inventione

The volume contains the commentaries to Cicero’s De inventione on rheotrics by C. M. Victorinus (4th century CE), grammatist of Rome of the Neoplatonist philosophical school. The manuscript was copied in Hungary before 1462; the illumination lacks any Renaissance features yet. As the autograph note at the end says, Johannes Vitez as bishop of Varad, read and corrected the text in 1462, although he found the corrections wrong. In spite of the fact that the bishop’s coat of arms is missing, the numerous autograph notes testify almost with certainty that the volume had originally belonged to his library. After Vitez’s death in 1472, the manuscript entered the royal library and after the establishment of the uniformized looks of the collection it received a gilded leather Corvina binding. (Edina Zsupán)

Source: The Corvina Library and the Buda Worskhop: [National Széchényi Library, November 6, 2018 –February 9, 2019] A Guide to the Exhibition; introduction and summary tables: Edina Zsupán; object descriptions: Edina Zsupán, Ferenc Földesi; English translation: Ágnes Latorre, Budapest: NSZL, 2018, p.188

DATA SHEET

Shelfmark: Cod. Lat. 370.
Country: Hungary
City: Budapest
Keeper location: National Széchényi Library
Author: C. M. Victorinus Afer
Content: Commentarii in Ciceronis librum de inventione
Writing medium: parchment
Number of sheets: 94 fol.
Sheet size: 303 × 204 mm
Place of writing: Várad?
Date of writing: before 1462 (f. 94v)
Scriptor: Scribe who had worked in the vicinity of Iohannes Vitéz
Illuminator: The workshop of Lehrbücher-Meister
Place of illumination: Central Europe (Vienna? Pozsony (today's Bratislava)? Várad?)
Date of illumination: before 1462 (f. 94v)
Possessor, provenience: Iohannes Vitéz; King Matthias Hunyadi; A. Cohn, Berlin-based antiquarian; Gusztáv Emich (see his bookplate on the inner face of the left board); National Széchényi Library purchased it from him in 1905.
Entries: Entries by Iohannes Vitéz; f. 94v: „Deo gr(ati)as, eme(n)davi qu(an)tu(m) fieri potuit et finivi Cibinii 27 Septe(m)bris 1462. Jo”
Binding: original gilded leather corvina binding; gauffered, gilded edge (probably in the late 1480s)
Language of corvina: Latin
Condition: Restored: NSZL, Ildikó Kozocsa, Enikő Csuzi, Emese Turi-Tugonyi ##, 1990
Hungarian translation(s) of work(s) included in the corvina: None