JOHANNES DE IMOLA: DECRETALS COMMENTARY

MS 5100
MS Short Title JOHANNES DE IMOLA: DECRETALS COMMENTARY
Text JOHANNES NICOLETTUS DE IMOLA: LECTURA IN LIBRUM SECUNDUM DECRETALIUM
Description MS in Latin on paper, Padua?, Italy, 1431-1447, 332 ff. (complete), 42x29 cm, 2 columns, (30x19 cm), 65 lines in a hybrid Gothic book script of medium quality, 400 painted initials, 18 large initials alternately in red with blue or purple penwork infills or in blue with red penwork, many with marginal extension, 7 pen drawings, 3 historiated initials, 2 with acanthus extensions with birds and a putto forming borders, 1 1/3-page miniature of St. James enthroned with supplicants and the coat-of-arms of Eugenius IV and of the Papal state, by an artist influenced by the Master of the Statuti della Società dei Drapieri, and anticipating the manner of Bartolomeo del Tintore.
Binding Italy, 18th c., mottled calf gilt, sewn on 5 cords, red edges.
Context The text is extremely rare, besides the present MS, only 2 MSS are known, Madrid, Bibl. Nc. MS 1915, and British Library, Royal Ms 9 C.VIII (incomplete copy).
Provenance 1. Lawyer and member of a confraternity dedicated to St. James, Padua, shelfmark Tab 22 (1447); 2. Sotheby's 6.7.2000:63; 3. Percy Barnevik, Sweden (2000); 4. Christie's 11.7.2002:25. Deaccession December 2010.
Commentary Pope Gregory IX issued the decretals in 1234 as a revision of the Decretals Gratiani in an attempt to provide the Bolognese and Parisian universities with an uniform and complete collection of the decretals. The decretals the basic text of medieval canon law. The text was commissioned in 1230 by Gregory IX and was completed in 1234 by Raymond of Peñafort, Dominican canon lawyer, and later supplemented by the decretals of Bonifacius VIII in 1298 and of Clemens V in 1317. The 3 comprised the corpus of canon law. Johannes de Imola (ca. 1372-1436), author of this commentary to the second of the 5 books of the decretals, is "famous throughout the world" as the colophon of the present MS gives the completion of the lecture series of Book II, On Judgements, "morning of 26 June 1425".
Place of origin Italy
Dates 1431-1447 AD