Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...
Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...
Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...
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IV 1<br />
IV 3 John of M<strong>and</strong>eville:<br />
Journey to the Holy L<strong>and</strong><br />
[1468–1472]<br />
Paper, 41.5 x 29 cm, 160 sheets<br />
WLB Stuttgart HB V 86<br />
Sheet 2<br />
This anthology, in various h<strong>and</strong>s, has been identified as having<br />
been written in the Earldom of Württemberg; a linguistic<br />
analysis indicates its provenance as being the upper<br />
Neckarl<strong>and</strong>. It was first acquired by the Weingarten Abbey<br />
as part of the library of Johann Friedrich Ochsenbach. <strong>The</strong><br />
first section (Sheets 2ra-53va) contains a German translation,<br />
by Michael Velser, of “the Journey to the Holy L<strong>and</strong>”<br />
by John of M<strong>and</strong>eville. <strong>The</strong> text is a French travel documentary<br />
in the form of a novel that was composed between<br />
1357 und 1371; the anonymous author calls himself Jean<br />
de M<strong>and</strong>eville. <strong>The</strong> travel report, large portions of which are<br />
fictive, quickly found a wide circulation after having been<br />
translated into Latin <strong>and</strong> nearly all European languages.<br />
A watermark expertise on this manuscript was provided<br />
by Gerhard Piccard. He describes it as written on Großregalformat<br />
paper from Milan containing a watermark of an<br />
eight-petalled flower without stem. Piccard was able to find<br />
an identical watermark in a Strasbourg incunabulum with<br />
the date 1474. Sheets 158 <strong>and</strong> 159 are different, <strong>and</strong> thus<br />
Piccard assumes that the Milan paper ran out in the course<br />
of the writing. <strong>The</strong> two added sheets are of the common<br />
Kanzleiformat <strong>and</strong> contain the watermark “Bull’s head with<br />
eyes, stem <strong>and</strong> five-petalled flower with attached mark”.<br />
For this watermark, Piccard refers to his Findbuch<br />
“Ochsenkopf” (No. 861), where the manufacture of paper<br />
with this type of Bull’s head is documented as dating from<br />
1470 to 1472. It is assumed that the stocks of large format<br />
paper took a longer period of time to be depleted, <strong>and</strong> thus<br />
Piccard first suggests manuscript HB V 86 as having been<br />
written between 1468 <strong>and</strong> 1478. <strong>The</strong> added pages in Kanzleiformat,<br />
however, enable a further chronological limitation,<br />
so that the final dating he offers is the period between<br />
1468 <strong>and</strong> 1472.<br />
Literature: Bremer, Jean de M<strong>and</strong>eville; Irtenkauf / Krekler,<br />
Die H<strong>and</strong>schriften der ehemaligen Hofbibliothek Stuttgart,<br />
Bd. 2,2.<br />
C.K. (C.P.-K.)<br />
IV 4 Vitae sanctorum<br />
[1439–1442]<br />
Paper, 29.5 x 21 cm, 178 sheets<br />
WLB Stuttgart HB XIV 19<br />
Sheet 4 (blank, watermark: “Bull’s head”)<br />
<strong>The</strong> original owner of this manuscript, “Lives of the Saints”,<br />
was the early humanist Felix Hemmerli. Hemmerli was born<br />
in either 1388 or 1389 in Zurich <strong>and</strong> died in Lucerne probably<br />
in 1458 or 1459. It is known that he was a participant<br />
in both the Council of Constance (1414–1418) <strong>and</strong> the<br />
Council of Basel (1432–1435). <strong>The</strong> manuscript later was ac-<br />
51