Treccani - Il romanzo dí Alessandro Magno i viaggi di Marco Polo cod, Bodley 264 Treccani - 2014-2014

Manuscript Roman d’Alexandre, known as Bodley 264, is rightly considered one of the most famous and precious illuminated codices of the entire Middle Ages.

Bodley 264 is kept in the Duke Humfrey’s Library, in the heart of the ancient Bodleian Library in Oxford, one of the oldest public libraries in the world, founded in 1602, where the precious Decameron (known as the Holkham Hall manuscript) is also preserved, already reproduced by the Treccani Institute in 2013 in an extraordinary edition in the series Secrets Revealed.

Bodley 264, begun in 1338 in Tournai (Belgium) and completed in London in 1410, contains the most complete version of the Roman d’Alexandre, the short Alexander and Dindimus in English, and the French version, Livres du graunt Caam, of Marco Polo’s Il Milione**.**

No other manuscript contains the three works together, and this gives it a unique historical and literary value, in addition to preserving one of the most remarkable programs of miniature art in any medieval manuscript.

The three-hundred-page commentary that accompanies it is divided into three sections corresponding to the three texts contained in the manuscript: each examines the history of the text, its position in the manuscript and other codicological features, the miniatures, the artistic context and the patronage. An accurate and up-to-date bibliography finally offers prompts for the reader who wishes to deepen the study of the work.

THE RECOGNITION OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT’S COINAGE MADE BY THE STATE POLYGRAFIC INSTITUTE AND MINT IN EXCLUSIVE PARTNERSHIP FOR TRECCANI

The minting of the coin dedicated to Alexander the Great that accompanies Il Romanzo di Alessandro e i Viaggi di Marco Polo, designed and produced by the State Polygraphic Institute and Mint, specifically and exclusively for Treccani, is a particular cultural operation for the Mint; it is a study in antiquity, a way to preserve ancient knowledge in the present and to make a historical document vital.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CODE

The codex preserves the most complete version of the Roman d’Alexandre written in Old French, with two sections added in England (about 1400): the Alexander and Dindimus written in verse in Middle English and the Livres du graunt Caam of Marco Polo in prose French.

The manuscript, of large size (measuring 29 cm x 41.5 cm), consists of a total of 274 leaves (548 pages, plus guard leaves).

All the quire leaves that compose the facsimile are watermarked as the original.

The folding and binding are done by hand: leather binding with a raised grain, front and back boards with blind tooling; spine mounted by hand with two-needle stitching using beige and gold cotton threads.

Backbone with 10 ribs and gilding impressions.

Box in cloth and leather-trimmed edges.

The facsimile is printed with stochastic screen on parchment paper from Fedrigoni paper mills, plus the application of bright hot gold leaf, and dull gold leaf worked, burin, and silver-toned pasta marks; gold sprayed on the three edges of the cut.

World edition of 499 copies hand-numbered (20 non-roman-numbered exemplars).

The facsimile is accompanied by a volume of over 300 pages, bound in parchment paper, with a critical commentary on the codex, a codicological card and a bibliography compiled by Mark Cruse, and contributions by Marcello Ciccuto and Monica Centanni.