Table Of ContentMEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE
LETTER TREATISES AND FORM LETTERS
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE
LETTER TREATISES AND
FORM LETTERS
A Census of Manuscripts Found
in Part of Europe. The Works on Letter Writing
from the Eleventh through the Seventeenth Century
Found in Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, France,
Germany, and Italy
By
EMIL J. POLAK
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2015
ISBN 978-90-04-28477-7 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-28467-8 (e-book)
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff,
Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing.
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Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
To Patricia
for vigor at home and abroad
CONTENTS
PREFACE ......................................................................................................ix
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................xi
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHy ........................................................................xiii
ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA OF VOLUMES 1 (DMTS 8)
AND 2 (DMTS 9) ..........................................................................................1
ALBANIA .....................................................................................................35
AUSTRIA .....................................................................................................37
BULGARIA ................................................................................................175
FRANCE .....................................................................................................179
GERMANy ................................................................................................319
ITALy .........................................................................................................589
INDEXES ...................................................................................................837
Index of Manuscripts ........................................................................839
Index of Incipits ................................................................................872
Index of Medieval and Renaissance Authors ...................................901
Index of Anonymous Works.............................................................907
PREFACE
In this third and final volume of a vast project, a repertory of the Latin
manuscripts from the eleventh century to about 1700 with few exceptions,
there are compiled the manuals of letter writing (the ars dictandi and later
the ars epistolandi), formularies, and model letters as well as the ars aren‑
gandi, secular oratory, found in Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Ger-
many, and Italy. The format found in the first two volumes is used here,
namely an alphabetical inventory of the cities and monasteries, their libraries
and archives along with their relevant manuscripts with shelf numbers, mate-
rial, date, codex’s contexts, folios (or pages), author (or anonymous), title,
incipit, explicit, and colophon with catalogue references and bibliography.
For each country there are listed the many visited libraries and archives
found not to possess pertinent manuscripts. Also included are list of abbrevi-
ations, select bibliography with editions and studies, addenda and corrigenda
of volumes 1 (DMTS 8) and 2 (DMTS 9), and indexes of the manuscripts,
incipits, Medieval and Renaissance authors, and anonymous works.
In a capsule, probably no other time in history witnessed so pro-
lific a growth in epistolary composition as the High Middle Ages and the
Renaissance as the Church, States, cities, universities, and an educated soci-
ety developed. The major branch of rhetoric was written communication
involving every level of religious and secular societies. Although letters
date from Sumer (southern Mesopotamia), Egypt, Greece, and Rome where
besides satire, letter writing flourished as found, for example, in Vindolanda
by Hadrian’s Wall in a woman’s birthday invitation on wood, but it would be
a millennium later beginning in Monte Cassino, Italy where the genre would
appear and expand with hundreds of contributors (the dictatores) and a vast
literature, the ars dictaminis, on thousands of parchment and paper folios.
Also included in this Latin manuscript census is a less extensive rhetorical
art, the ars arengandi, secular oratory used in political, judicial, academic,
and social events. Its treatises and model speeches coexisted with the ars
dictaminis especially in the thirteenth century in northern Italy. Its impor-
tance has been further diminished in a recent study and partial edition of the
anonymous Oculus pastoralis by Terence O. Tunberg who failed to mention
the ars arengandi, the arenge, and their composers the arengatores.
Although Paul Oskar Kristeller passed away in 1999, he has remained
a beacon in my determination to complete this project as I forged ahead
in the peaceful trenches of Europe, visiting libraries and archives in over
x Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters
twenty research trips. In my Medieval Studies Seminar lecture at Columbia
University, he clearly stated that I had surpassed his number of visits to
libraries and archives. His Latin Manuscript Books Before 1600 (Fourth
Edition by Sigrid Krämer, 1993), its Supplement (also by Sigrid Krämer and
Birgit Christine Arensmann, 2007), and Iter Italicum (vols. I-VI and Index)
had made the project possible. A veritable shrine to scholarship, his home
by Columbia University found him as one of the last old-world scholars with
a manual typewriter, carbon paper, and file cards. A short distance uptown
was to be the final resting place for him and his wife Dr. Edith L. Kristeller
in the outdoor mausoleum in Trinity Church Cemetery where their niches
face south toward Columbia University where for sixty years he was a major
luminary in its intellectual life.
The prolonged time in completing this project with work in almost
nine-hundred libraries and archives in thirty-six countries can be attributed
to several factors. My teaching career in Colleges of the City University
of New york spanned forty-nine years and in a heavy teaching program
included over ten thousand students. As the only child in my family, and
likewise in the case of my wife, I assumed obligatory duties for my parents
who passed away at 92. Finally, there has been the lengthy time spent mostly
in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Butler Library of Columbia
University in the long and systematic process of consulting the manuscript
catalogues and related literature in finding manuscript references prior to the
research trips. For any omissions or errors I assume full responsibility.
The research here and abroad could never have been done without the
support of the City University of New york PSC-CUNy Research Award
Program, Queensborough Community College of the City University of New
york for the Fellowship Leaves, and grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas
Foundation, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and the Renaissance Society of America. Appreciation is extended to the
many librarians and archivists for their cordiality and assistance in my vis-
its as well as all the friends and acquaintances who over the years offered
praise and encouragement. I am very grateful to the anonymous reader and
to William H. Paauwe and Emilio Comay del Junco for their mastery of the
laptop. In conclusion, there is the indebtedness to my wife Patricia Faith
Leuzzi Polak who has shared the difficulties and rewards in this project since
its inception in 1977—ranging from Iron Curtain bureaucracies to the rich
treasures of museums.
Emil J. Polak
New york
