Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Borgh. lat. 52

1v-108v, Emmo of Gellone - Liber de qualitate caelestis patriae ex sanctorum patrum opusculis excerptus

Link to digitization: here.
In the upper part of fol. 1r a late medieval shelfmark indicating the armour and the content of the manuscript: “F Sanctorum manuscriptus”. On the upper margin of fol. 1v stands the late 13th- or early 14th-century exlibris “Ecclesie sydonensis” which shows that the manuscript once belonged to the Cathedral Church of Sidon in the Holy Land. After the loss of Sidon, it obviously was brought back to southern France by the last bishop of Sydon, the Dominican friar Rostagnus de Candole, who visited several times Avignon and died in Marseille shortly before 24 August 1329. The manuscript thus came to Avignon during one of his visits or after his death according to the pope’s right of confiscating the goods after a cleric’s death. The manuscript was one of Pope John XXII’s personal working copies as can be seen from some autographical notes. The manuscript is mentioned in the catalogues of the papal libraries under Urban V from 1369 (no 1424) and Benedict XIII from 1411 (no 425) and was finally brought from Avignon to Rome in the year 1566: EHRLE 1890, p. 501 no 689; DE BRUYNE 1934, p. 125; PELZER 1947, p. 134; MAIER 1952, p. 66 sq., here p. 66 (“Saec. XII–xIII ... ‹Haimonis Halberstatensis› Liber de laude et qualitate caelestis patriae ex sanctorum Patrum opusculis excerptus”); MAIER 1963, p. 152 no 425; MAIER 1964, p. 23 no 100 and p. 24 no 9; MAIER 1967, p. 40–42; GASNAULT 1969, p. 276 with n. 2; SZARMACH 1981, p. 139; JULLIEN/PERELMAN 1994, p. 353 (“XIIe–XIIIe”; “f. 1”); JULLIEN DE POMMEROL 1996, p. 138 with n. 40 and p. 153 n. 40. The manuscript is not mentioned by MORIN 1912; ROCHAIS 1953, p. 252 with n. 2.