Asconius Pedianus: Commentaria in Ciceronis orationes

The text of Asconius Pedianus (cca 9 BC‒cca 76 CE) is a remarkable piece in the row of commentaries on Cicero as out of the five speeches here discussed only three have been preserved, and the two missing ones are known only from this commentary.
The manuscript was probably not made on order, it was a simple product of trade copied and modestly decorated with white vine in Florence. One and a half decade later, in Buda, the “First Heraldic Painter” added King Matthias’s coat of arms and the volume received a leather Corvina binding.
On the margin of the title-page we find the possessor’s note of Johannes Fabri (1478–1541). The researchers of the Corvina Library owe much to Fabri, bishop of Vienna, as he purchased the Corvinas that the Humanists of Vienna, Brassicanus and Cuspinianus had acquired from the library of Buda after King Matthias’s death. The bishop left his own collection to the Saint Nicholas college from where the Corvinas entered first the library of the Vienna University and then the Library of the Court, predecessor of the National Library of Austria. The journey of the volume of the Commentaries was slightly different as from Fabri’s collection it directly entered the Library of the Court in 1576. (Ferenc Földesi)

Source: The Corvina Library and the Buda Worskhop: [National Széchényi Library, November 6, 2018 –February 9, 2019] A Guide to the Exhibition; introduction and summary tables: Edina Zsupán; object descriptions: Edina Zsupán, Ferenc Földesi; English translation: Ágnes Latorre, Budapest: NSZL, 2018, p. 198

DATA SHEET

Shelfmark: Cod. Lat. 427.
Country: Hungary
City: Budapest
Keeper location: National Széchényi Library
Author: Asconius Pedianus
Content: Commentarii in Ciceronis orationes
Writing medium: parchment
Number of sheets: 84 fol.
Sheet size: 260 × 180 mm
Place of writing: Florence
Date of writing: 1450–1470
Scriptor: a:II (comp. De la Mare 529)
Place of illumination: Florence
Date of illumination: 1450–1470
Crest: King Matthias' Hungarian and Bohemian royal coat-of-arms, "first" heraldic painter, Buda, late 1480s
Possessor, provenience: Johannes Cuspinianus (see possessor entry on the recto of the 2nd endleaf); Johannes Fabri, Bishop of Vienna (comp. bookplates); St. Nicolas College of the Nuinersity of Vienna (1540); University of Vienna; Imperial Court Library, Vienna (1756); in line with the Venice Agreement (signed on November 27, 1932), it was returned to National Széchényi Library.
Binding: original gilded leather corvina binding; gauffered, gilded edge (probably in the late 1480s)
Language of corvina: Latin
Condition: NSZL Mária Czigler, Éva Fodor 1981-1982
Hungarian translation(s) of work(s) included in the corvina: None