Remains of three leaves, the bifolium trimmed at its head but mostly complete, the single leaf just a strip, all from a manuscript written in double columns of at least 55 lines of university hand, paraphs in red, red rubric, one tall initial in red with blue scrolling penwork, ties attached to flaps of wallet, lined with paper printed with burgundy and green flowerheads, pen-scrawls on what would have been the front cover of the wallet binding from reuse in '1644', some small scuffs, stains and folds from reuse, front cover of wallet: 295 by 216mm
The parent manuscript of these leaves began life in France, either the south and thus perhaps the University of Toulouse (founded 1229), or the south-east and perhaps the University of Montpellier (founded in 1220s). Then in the seventeenth century, these leaves were extracted and reused in an account of sale dated ""1644"". The use of the word ""Saldo"" for this transaction suggests that the person producing those accounts and this wallet binding was in either Spain or Italy, perhaps just across the border from France. By the mid-twentieth century this wallet binding had come into the hands of Ludovico (Vico) de Gobbis: with his armorial bookplate with the motto: ""Je fus sage; je fus sou"" and his initials 'VDG' in a monogram. Albertus Magnus', De Animalibus is a magisterial work by perhaps the greatest scholastic mind of his time. It was written in the 1250s and 1260s, and sets out in its opening books an exposition on Aristotle's Historia animalium, De partibus animalium, and De generatione animalium, followed by a synthesis of those works and a dictionary of animals. The leaves here contain parts of Lib. 1, tract. 2, caps. 13 (strip) and 17 (bifolium), on the manner of the bones of the hips, legs and feet, and the relation of the muscles to the skeleton when walking
