A Roman Catholic homiletics 15th century manuscript from the St. Egidien monastery in Nuremberg: addenda et corrigenda to a scientific description

Aim of the research is to study the structure, content, certain textual peculiarities, provenance, inscriptions and notes of the Latin late medieval manuscript, to analyze the structure of the codex and used materials, to determine the time and to localize the place of its writing and binding. Methodology involves the complex use of the statistical, comparative, empirical methods, and the method of source heuristics, the special methods of codicology and bibliopegy taking into account the regional characteristics of the codex as well. Scientific novelty. For the first time, a detailed visual and textual study of the structure of the codex was carried out. The comprehensive information about the design and features of the making of the codex (book block, binding), its physical condition and preservation of its components is provided. New assumptions were made regarding the authorship of the texts and their further attribution. For the first time the margin iscriptions were presented and commented, the illustrations added. The place of manufacture and binding of the codex was localized, the time of its creation specified, narrowing the time borders to seven years. Conclusions. The codex includes sermons on 26 special dates of the Church calendar in winter time, from St. Andrew’s day to the feast of Corpus Christi. Some sermons had been attributed to Jacobus da Voragine already by the scriptors of the codex. The bookbinding was made of blind stamped pigskin over wooden boards, with metal clasps and cornerpieces and a title under the brass frame. The first initial includes a miniature representing a clergyman with a book. Initials were decorated with multi-coloured and gilded floral embellishments according to the decoration style of manuscripts and incunabula of those times. A donation note says that the manuscript was handed to the St. Egidien monastery in March 1472. The codex was probably written and bound in the Benedectine monastery of St. Egidien in Nuremberg in 1465-1472. The most probable provenances of the codex were the collection of Chaudoirs family, the library of the Roman Catholic Seminary or Roman Catholic Bishops Library, that in the 1920s made a part of the Volyn State Museum collection in Zhytomyr, which was later transferred to the V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine.