The manuscript is written in an admirably clear and refined early humanistic bookhand, deliberately harking back to the Caroline minuscule which Florentine scholars regarded as preserving the script of antiquity. The adoption of this new hand was one of the most visible manifestations of the intellectual programme of early Renaissance humanism. In place of the compressed Gothic scripts of the later Middle Ages, humanist scribes developed an open and legible bookhand inspired by manuscripts which they believed to be ancient but which were in fact largely Carolingian. The present manuscript belongs to the early decades of this transformation, when the humanistic hand was still in an experimental phase.

Its probable production at Santa Maria degli Angeli places it within one of the principal centers of Florentine intellectual and scribal culture. The monastery's scriptorium was closely connected with the development of humanistic book production in the first half of the fifteenth century, and its manuscripts are distinguished by the combination of lucid script and refined illumination. The white vine-stem ornament found in the initials of the present codex is closely associated with the visual vocabulary of early Florentine humanistic manuscripts and supports an origin within this milieu.

The date also places the manuscript within the period of Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1439), the Camaldolese monk, scholar and translator who became general of his order in 1431. Traversari was one of the central figures of Florentine Christian humanism, a scholar of Greek and an important intermediary between Byzantine and Italian intellectual culture. His circle was deeply engaged in the recovery and correction of classical and patristic texts and in the cultivation of the new humanistic script. The spaces deliberately left for Greek words but never supplied in the present manuscript are characteristic of the practical difficulties encountered by Latin scribes copying texts that contained Greek.

Jerome was an especially important author for Renaissance humanists. As a Church Father, biblical scholar and translator traditionally associated with the Latin Vulgate, he represented an authoritative Christian model of philological learning. His mastery of Latin, Greek and Hebrew and his profound familiarity with classical literature made him a figure with whom humanist scholars could readily identify. His letters combine theology, scriptural criticism, ascetic instruction, polemic and personal correspondence, and their literary Latin attracted a readership extending well beyond strictly devotional contexts.

The transmission of Jerome's letters during the Middle Ages was complex. Collections differed considerably in both content and sequence, and no universally standard order developed. The present manuscript shows notable similarities to another fifteenth-century copy of Jerome's letters bearing the ex-libris of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici, now Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 19.12. The two manuscripts contain the letters in a closely comparable order, particularly in their first halves, and have similar headings. Since the medieval collections of Jerome's correspondence were highly variable, the similarities suggest a relationship within the same textual tradition or descent from related exemplars.

The exceptional feature of this copy is the extensive evidence of its reading by Bernardo Bembo. From ff. 31v to 335 the margins contain numerous notes and elegant maniculae in his hand. These annotations transform the manuscript from an important example of early Florentine humanistic book production into a document of Renaissance intellectual practice. They preserve the traces of Bembo's attentive reading and allow the codex to be situated within the surviving reconstruction of one of the significant humanist libraries of fifteenth-century Italy.

Born into a Venetian patrician family, Bernardo Bembo pursued a distinguished diplomatic career in the service of the Republic of Venice. His missions brought him to several of the principal courts of Renaissance Europe, including Florence, where he served as Venetian representative at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici. His prolonged contact with Florentine scholars and artistic culture contributed to the formation of a substantial library and to his position within the wider network of Italian humanism.

Bembo's books are of particular interest because many preserve evidence of his active engagement with their texts. His characteristic marginal annotations, manicules and ownership marks have enabled scholars to reconstruct portions of his dispersed library. The hand in the present manuscript was not identified as Bembo's until the work of A. C. de la Mare in 1981, and the codex consequently escaped notice in some earlier discussions of his collection. Its identification restored it to the corpus of books associated with Bembo and provided further evidence for his reading of patristic literature.

Bernardo's son Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) inherited and greatly extended the family's intellectual reputation. Humanist, poet, scholar, collector and later cardinal, Pietro became one of the most influential figures in the formation of literary Italian, advocating the Tuscan of Petrarch and Boccaccio as linguistic models. The distinction between father and son is important in the present manuscript: the marginalia are those of Bernardo Bembo, not Pietro.

The later history of the codex places it in a succession of distinguished collections. By the twentieth century it had reached the Munich antiquarian Jacques Rosenthal, who sold it in 1932 to Charles Harold St John Hornby, founder of the Ashendene Press and one of the important British bibliophiles of his generation. It subsequently passed to Major John Rowland Abbey, whose collection of manuscripts and fine books was among the most distinguished formed in twentieth-century Britain.

At the Abbey sale in 1975 the manuscript was acquired by Peter and Irene Ludwig, becoming MS XI 2 in their celebrated collection. It subsequently entered the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles as MS Ludwig XI 2. After its deaccession it passed through Bruce Ferrini and entered the James and Elizabeth Ferrell Collection in the United States, and was later placed on long-term deposit at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

A remarkable survival from the formative decades of Florentine humanism, combining an early humanistic script, refined illumination, an important patristic text and extensive annotation by one of the leading Venetian humanists of the fifteenth century.

Provenance:

Written in Florence in the 1430s, probably in the scriptorium or immediate milieu of Santa Maria degli Angeli; the shield in the partial border on f. 6 left blank.

Bernardo Bembo (1433-1519), Venetian diplomat, humanist and bibliophile, envoy to the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, with numerous marginal notes and maniculae in his hand from ff. 31v to 335.

Unidentified later owner or owners, with traces of a red oval stamp and erased inscriptions.

Jacques Rosenthal (1854-1937), antiquarian bookseller, Munich; pencil note to front pastedown recording sale on 10 August 1932, and probably his stock number and collation to verso of front flyleaf: "607, 351 Bll."

Charles Harold St John Hornby (1867-1946), British printer, founder of the Ashendene Press and partner in W. H. Smith & Son; MS 87, purchased from Rosenthal.

Major John Rowland Abbey (1894-1969), British bibliophile, acquired with the Hornby collection; his bookplate to front pastedown and shelfmark "JA 3227", with date "15.09.1946" to rear pastedown.

Peter and Irene Ludwig, Aachen, MS XI 2, acquired at the Abbey sale, Sotheby's, London, 25 March 1975, lot 2957; their bookplate to front pastedown.

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, MS Ludwig XI 2; subsequently deaccessioned.

Bruce Ferrini, Important Illuminated Manuscripts, 2000, item 12.

James and Elizabeth Ferrell Collection, USA, with their bookplate to front pastedown; formerly on long-term deposit at the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

European private collection.

J. J. G. Alexander & A. C. de la Mare, The Italian Manuscripts in the Library of Major J. R. Abbey (London, 1969), no. 8 (MS 3227), pp. xxv, xxxiv, plate XII.

A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009).

C. H. Clough, "The Library of Bernardo and of Pietro Bembo", The Book Collector 33 (1984), pp. 302-331.

B. Conring, Hieronymus als Briefschreiber, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 8 (Tübingen, 2001).

M. Danzi, La Biblioteca del Cardinal Pietro Bembo, Travaux d'humanisme et Renaissance 399 (Geneva, 2005).

N. Giannetto, Bernardo Bembo: Umanista e politico veneziano (Florence, 1985).

Isidorus Hilberg (ed.), Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Epistulae, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum 54-56 (Vienna).

B. Lambert, Bibliotheca Hieronymiana manuscripta. La tradition manuscrite des œuvres de Saint Jérôme (Steenbruges, 1969-72).

E. F. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1985).

Settimana del libro antico e raro (IV Fiera Internazionale del Libro, Catalogo di 100 preziosi volumi) (Florence, 1932), no. 13, plate XI.

A. von Euw & J. Plotzek, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig III (Cologne, 1981), pp. 52-56, figs. 13-14.