About this Item
Volume 1 has 533 pages including index. Volume 2 has 736 pages including index. Volume 3 has 747 pages including index.
Volume 4 has 812 pages with no index. Volume 5 has 641 pages with no index. Volume 6 has 595 pages with no index. Cumulative index has 581 pages. Ex-library markings and minimal shelfwear. Spines slightly sunned. Cloth binding torn beneath some of the library's spine labels. Front cover of 3rd volume has a few shallow scratches. Paper used for the 5th volume has yellowed. Some small faint stains on front cover of cumulative index, which also has a bumped upper front corner with small corresponding creases to first hundred pages. First two volumes bound with different cloth than subsequent issues.
"The present work is conceived primarily as a finding list for certain texts, and the main emphasis is on the textual content of the manuscripts listed, as against their script and decoration, external appearance, provenance and history. The content has also supplied the main criteria by which the material has been selected, and by which particular manuscripts, or types of manuscripts, have been included or excluded. These criteria are not too easy to describe, and they may appear to some extent arbitrary. When I speak of humanistic manuscripts of the Renaissance, I have in mind primarily philosophical, scholarly and literary manuscripts in Latin that were copied during the period between 1300 and 1600 and contain the writings of scholars who were active during that period. Since Renaissance humanism and philosophy had their origin in the centre in Italy, the emphasis on Italian authors may appear to some extent justified. The material thus defined constitutes the core of what I've been trying to collect, and for this type of material I have aimed at completeness. As a rule I exclude documents, statutes and chronicles, religious and liturgical works, vernacular poetry and literature in Italian and other languages, technical treatises on law and theology, on the sciences and on the arts, as well as musical compositions, drawings and maps. Yet I have decided to include selected manuscripts from any of these area because their authors or addressees or literary genre seemed to connect them with the mainstream of the humanistic and philosophic culture of the Renaissance period. Works by classical, patristic and medieval authors have been largely excluded. Exceptions have been made for manuscripts copied or owned by noted renaissance scholars, and above all Latin translations from the Greek, and Latin commentaries on classical Greek and Latin writers have been included, as far as possible. Moreover the chronological limits of the Renaissance have been occasionally exceeded. I have listed some manuscripts written before 1300 for Latin translations and commentaries of the classics, for certain works on medicine and rhetoric, or for text that seemed to illustrate the medieval antecedents of the humanism and scholasticism and of the university learning of the Italian renaissance. At the other end I have listed some philosophical and scientific texts of the early 17th century. All these materials are marginal in terms of the definition offered above, and no completeness has been intended or attained for them. In selecting them, I have been frankly guided by my own scholarly interests, and sometimes by those of my friends and associates. On the whole I've tended to sin on the side of inclusiveness, especially in the case of libraries that are relatively unknown or difficult of access. Yet I have also excluded many manuscripts that I have originally listed or even seen because they seemed to be irrelevant to the topic of this list, even when broadly understood. For my main intent has been to disclose the existence of material and of sources that are potentially interesting to the students of Renaissance thought and learning." - Preface. Oversized set may require additional shipping.
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