Canon Law, first quarter of the 13th century, possibly as early as 1200

Component identifier:

Item 3

Content Summary:

Date: Script is above top line, so pre 1220 in Italy

Origin: Italian

Content: Text is the Decretals of Pope Innocent III (as stated by early modern hand in pencil at head and in rubric). Early example of the offices of Deacons and Canons.

Marginal hand: c1300 in Latin - indexing /summarising the penalties set out on the leaf

Script: Italian gothic rotunda with Italian glossularis features. Trailing final ‘S’ of Italian littera glossularis but lacks the compression associated with Bologna

Decoration: Flourished puzzle initials

Extent: 1 leaf

Other detail: First generation

Note: This item is contiguous with item 4

Immediate source of acquisition:

The documents in this collection were presented to the National Library of Australia by Sir Rex Nan Kivell in 1969. He referred to it as ‘The Nan Kivell Calligraphy Collection’. The documents were collected by him as specimens of early calligraphy and/or examples of early documentation. He acquired them over a number of years from varied sources which were not recorded. However, it seems likely that the group of legal documents in Series 1 relating to the Elliott family of Salisbury would have a single provenance. Nan Kivell had a country house in Devizes, Wiltshire, which is only a short distance from Salisbury.

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