Ms. document. Incipit in red ink. Script: Stylized cursive gothic bookhand. Collation: 92 leaves. Decoration: Red rubrics, alternately red and blue paragraph marks, two line initials, large three line initial. Layout: 2 columns of 38 lines, large decorated 3-line initial. Origin: The script, watermark, and binding support an origin in the Iberian Peninsula in Catalonia, c. 1450-1480, an origin also suggested by the Spanish spelling of alchemy, alquimia (for example, f. 3, last line; the more common alkimia is also used). This is one of only six known complete manuscripts of an important fourteenth-century alchemical treatise; all the extant manuscripts date from the fifteenth century or later. A modern critical edition of the text taking into account all the surviving manuscripts including this one is needed. The present copy includes lengthy contemporary glosses, possibly additions to the text, which deserve... Former shelfmark: Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (Amsterdam, Netherlands), MS 18. Shelfmark: Philadelphia, PA, Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History, MS 3. The script, watermark, and binding support an origin in the Iberian Peninsula in Catalonia, c. 1450-1480, an origin also suggested by the Spanish spelling of alchemy, alquimia (for example, f. 3, last line; the more common alkimia is also used). Owned in 1532 by Johan Laborya de Mossach (or Mossacs[?] or Mossacis[?]) who states that he lodged with Anthony Laurens "de la dita vila de P<?>essis (inscription in Catalan, verso last leaf). Signatures, "Despagne", top margin f. 1, and at the end of the text, f. 92, in black ink, the suggestion that this may be identified with Jean d'Espagnet (1564-c. 1637), French lawyer and politician, and author of works on alchemy including the Arcanum Hermeticae philosophiae (1623). The manuscript was in France in the seventeenth century; inside front cover, note in ink, dated 1668: "Le 7 Septembre 1668 antoine velloun a eté la queste avec le pere anselme et on luy donné 4 livres pour trente jours ouvriers sans compter le festes. Nota le convent ne lui doit rien jusques au jour present 27 Septembre." Lengthy handwritten description in German laid-in, early twentieth-century (?) (signed with the initials, A<R?>." Belonged to Joost R. Ritman (b. 1941), the Dutch businessman and distinguished collector of art and books, who acquired it around 1982; Bibliothecha Philosophia Hermetica MS 18. ("Philosophia Hermetica"; bookplate inside front cover). Purchased from Les Enluminures Ltd., 9 September 2013, Primer 2 Alchemy, [item] no. 3, (TM541) to Donald F. and Mildred Topp Othmer Library of Chemical History...
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