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<p>Free Library of Philadelphia, LC 14 23. Italy, The watermark can be localized to Venice; february 27, 1460. The principal text in this legal compendium is Angelo de Gambiglioni's Tractatus de Malificiis (fols. 1r-102v). Other authors represented include Bartolus de Saxoferrato, Iacobus Butrigarius, and Iacobus de Arena. In all, forty-four texts are present though most are only excerpts. The colophon on fol. 103r informs us that the scribe for the first part of this volume was Johannes Batista de Aversa who wrote it for Franciscus de Berardis de Callio, judge and podestà of Roche contracte, and that is was completed on February 27 1460. The paper on which it is written bears a Venetian watermark. There are a number of changes in the scribal hand in the remaining part of the manuscript, and the texts are glossed throughout. Some of these texts are written in the hand of Franciscus de Berardis, who refers to himself as Judex Civitatis Tuderti, placing this manuscript in the Umbrian town of Todi. In addition to the historiated initial showing Angelo de Gambiglioni and full border on fol. 1r, there are thirty-one marginal drawings in ink illustrating the text of the Tractatus de Maleficiis. These show various crimes (both deliberate and accidental) being committed, from sword-fights and murders to hunting accidents and a hanging, and do not appear to be the work of a professional artist. Along with judge Franciscus's own handwriting, these vignettes vividly evoke this manuscript's active working life in a fifteenth-century Italian law court.
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<br>Subjects: Treatise; 15th century; Italian</div>
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Free Library of Philadelphia</div>
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