With Henry Ravenhall, A HOSPITALLER BOOK IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE. NOTES ON THE OWNERS OF COLOGNY, BODMER 147

Abstract

This article offers new information about the provenance of Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 147, a manuscript of Arthurian, sacred, and historical material in French compiled in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. We identify the surviving heraldry as belonging to the Benini family of Florence, and more precisely Giuliano Benini (1388-1453), a Hospitaller knight. This heraldry is not original to the manuscript, however. Using digital imaging techniques, the first section studies the arms on various pages in Bodmer 147 and attempts to reconstruct the original heraldry, tentatively proposing the northern French Hénin-Liétard family as an early owner. The second section outlines Bodmer 147’s fifteenth-century Florentine owner, Giuliano Benini, considering the axis of transmission between him and the manuscript’s one known named owner, Antonio da Rasignano. The third section then situates Bodmer 147 in fifteenth-century Florence, its Hospitaller reading community, and, more locally, the Hospitaller Commandery complex, San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini. We conclude by discussing two sets of medical recipes included on a final guard-leaf.