ANTONINUS FLORENTINUS

Exceptionally neat and clean ms of this major canon law treatise dealing especially with excommunication, in an unusual pocket-size format for easy carrying and consultation. Antoninus Florentinus (1389-1459) was a Dominican writer of moral theology. He advised the Pope during the Council of Florence (1431-49) and became an important authority in the C15 and C16, especially after his works reached the press. He was appointed Archbishop of Florence in 1446, which sets a ‘terminus post quem’ for this ms, where he is thus identified. The handwriting style, more influenced by the Gothic than humanist script, indicates a date of composition potentially within the author’s lifetime and before the first printed ed. of c.1475, from which this ms text differs in some details. Part of Antoninus’ huge ‘Summa Theologica’, ‘De censuris ecclesiasticis’ discusses excommunication beginning with its meaning – ‘the exclusion from communion’ – and types: ‘major’ (or anathema), ‘minor’ and ‘a deo’, with a focus on clerics, as well as the difference between suspension and interdict. Each section is devoted to specific cases which may warrant excommunication, e.g., heresy, theft from and the desecration of holy places, bigamy, inquisitors who end up believing heretics, those who use violence to obtain an absolution, or divulge confidential issues concerning the election of a pope, those who enter monasteries unauthorised, or marry a spouse within the kinship degrees prohibited by canon law, and dozens of others. Especially interesting are the sections on the forgery of apostolic letters or the revision of papal documents without authorisation. The treatise also considers the cases where absolution may be granted by the pope alone. This little ms was still being used for reference c.1500, when a canonist added a couple of glosses to the first section, on those who assault or attack ecclesiastical figures. A most handsome, unusually fine and clean C15 legal ms.