An anonymous manuscript tract found in the Incunabula collection

While updating the catalog records for the Incunabula collection, a copy of the Pseudo-Augustinian work Sermones ad heremitas was recently re-cataloged. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library has three fifteenth-century imprints of this work, two from Venice and one from Strasbourg. The copy printed by Paganinus de Paganinis on 26 May 1487 is the smallest in size of the three copies and is bound in vellum.

This copy also features an anonymous manuscript tract written on the last (blank) page and continuing on a leaf tipped in at the end. This tract is titled “Tractatalus de excelle[n]tissi[m]o sacramento corporis [Christ]i” (from explicit) and is written in a fifteenth-century hand, with the incipits and the explicit in red, and with two initials. 

This tract would be an excellent opportunity and a manageable editing project for a student studying classics, medieval studies, or paleography. DG