Harold B. Lee Library

Schoolbooks

Selected manuscript holdings

Donatus. Excerpta grammaticalia. Northern Italy, 13th century.

Aelius Donatus’ 4th-century works on grammar were the most popular textbooks of the Latin language in the Middle Ages. This manuscript contains excerpts of Donatus’ works dealing with such topics as syntax and grammatical errors which orators must avoid, as well as unrelated medical prescriptions and a letter to an Austrian abbot.

Call number: 091 Ex23 Vault Collection

Glossed Book of Isaiah. Italy, 13th century.

This manuscript contains the Glossa Ordinaria. The Biblical text (in the Latin Vulgate) is written in a central column, with the commentary written on either side and between the lines. With the added text, glossed Bibles had to be produced in many volumes – this manuscript contains only the book of Isaiah.

Call number: 091 B47i Vault Collection

Peter Lombard. Sententiarum Libri IV (Sentences). England, 13th century.

Peter Lombard, a 12th-century theologian, was a professor at the cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris. His Four Books of Sentences became the standard theology textbook for medieval universities across Europe, and was still used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Sentences are a compilation of biblical texts and the scriptural commentary of earlier theologians, but the work is arranged in a series of questions covering the whole of Christian doctrine in an attempt to organize the material and reconcile commentators’ differing viewpoints.

Call number: 091 P449 Vault Collection Quarto

 

Selected manuscripts in facsimile

Das ABC-Lehrbuch für Kaiser Maximilian I. Austria, 15th century.
This reader was made for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519) when he was a child. It contains the alphabet and basic religious texts like the Lord’s Prayer and the Ave Maria.

Call number: 091 Os7 1466 Vault Collection

 

Selected manuscripts online

Speculum grammaticae (German, ca. 1461) at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, Germany

Glossed Book of Genesis (France, 12th century) at Lund University Library, Sweden