St Catharine's College : Laelius seu de amicitia

St Catharine's College

<p style='text-align: justify;'>A fifteenth-century copy of Cicero’s treatise on friendship <i>Laelius seu de amicitia</i>, moderately glossed and annotated; potentially a student text. While hundreds of manuscripts of the <i>amicitia</i> survive, less has been made of later annotated copies like this one, and their potential as witnesses to Ciceronian scholarship in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. The first printed edition of Cicero’s text was published by Ulrich Zell, of Cologne c. 1467, and is thus roughly contemporaneous with this manuscript. Also of particular interest here is a charming fifteenth-century <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(43);return false;'>child’s drawing</a> present on the inside back cover, showing a castle being attacked by bowmen on horseback.</p>