Medieval MS 181
(Newberry/Notre Dame MS 5)

Processional from the Augustinian Abbey of Saint-Denis of Reims, copied in the first half of the thirteenth century. This book contains two types of graph-like musical notation: German-style neumes and the normal square-note notation of the late Middle Ages.

Collaborative acquisition with the University of Notre Dame. Newberry funding supported by the Brown/Weiss Book Fund.

Wing MS 147

Calligraphic transcription by C.L. Ricketts of a poem by François Villon. Ricketts was one of the most distinguished Chicago calligraphers and collectors of manuscripts of the first half of the twentieth century.

Gift of Mary Young.

Medieval MS 179
(Newberry/University of Illinois MS 3)

The only recorded copy of the thirteenth-century Dominican verbal concordance to the Latin Vulgate Bible in a North American library. The Dominican Verbal Concordance was a highly sophisticated reference tool comparable in scope and accuracy to modern printed Biblical concordances.

Joint acquisition with the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Newberry funding provided by the Brown/Weiss Book Fund and gifts by Roger S. Baskes, and The Georges Lurcy Educational and Charitable Trust.

*Case folio B5 1226.T5 1546

First edition (Strasbourg, 1546) of Paulos Fagius' Latin translation of Onkelos' Targom or Translation of the Five Books into Aramaic. Fagius was the first professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge. Christian Renaissance scholars were interested in the Targom because it was based on lost ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew original.

Funded by gifts from Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon Altman, William and Joan Brodsky, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Seymour Persky, and Liz and Jules Stiffel.

Wing MS 139

Scribal model book copied in 1699 by a Franciscan friar. This volume documents the survival of medieval calligrpahic traditions in Italy in early modern times.

Purchased on the John M. Wing Foundation Book Fund, with a gift from Chicago Calligraphy 1983.

*Inc 8217.5 no.4

Fragment of a very early (Paris, about 1498) incunable edition of François Villon's Le Grant tesament. This is the earliest recorded witness to Villon in either manuscript or print in the Western Hemisphere.

Supported by the Brown/Weiss Book Fund and gifts from the Florence Gould Foundation, Roger and Julie Baskes, Vincent J. Buonanno, The Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust, and Emil Massa, M.D.

Post-1500 MS 5168

French treatise on palmistry containing manuscript analyses of the palms of French aristocrats from the mid-seventeenth century.

Purchased on the T. Kimball Brooker Book Fund.