The Red Hat Man

My favourite subject of Renaissance/Early Modern painting in art museums is Jerome of Stridon, who you always recognize instantly from the red hat that he either wears or has hanging on a hat peg. Reklams Lexikon der Heiligen says it was only in the 15th century that the legend arose that Jerome had been a cardinal no less of the Holy Roman Church. From then on, that cardinal's hat was a must.

An illumination in a 15th-century (?) Vatican manuscript digitized in the past week, Vat.lat.2277, gives Jerome the full hat treatment, plus a messy desk covered with his codices and scrolls to translate the Bible into Latin, a fanciful 5th century Holy Land scene outside and a golden halo:

An older legend, first documented in 615 according to Reklams Lexikon, has it that Jerome helped a raging and distressed lion by removing a thorn from its paw. The illumination shows a remarkably calm lion accepting a fix from Jerome's manuscript knife, while the monastery donkey pops its head around the corner to bray. Look up the donkey's story if you haven't read it before. It's quite baroque.

There are 23 new manuscripts on the Digita Vaticana site:

1. Chig.H.VIII.248, Cicero, Rhetorica de Oratore
2. Vat.lat.2175, Petri de Ebano, Problemata Aristotlensis

   One day after my visit to Padova, its famous son Pietro d'Abano turns up in @JBPiggin's list of MSS @DigitaVaticana. MS of his expositio of the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata.https://t.co/vS5UwleDIj pic.twitter.com/UVwZcj2qGU

   — Pieter Beullens (@LatinAristotle) April 9, 2018

3. Vat.lat.2232, 14th century manuscript of Iohannes Andreae, c.1270-1348 Novella on the Decretals of Gregory
4. Vat.lat.2234, ditto
5. Vat.lat.2277, Johannes de Imola on the Decretals of Gregory (above)
6. Vat.lat.2306 (Upgraded to HQ), Gulielmi Rayotis, Compendium Summae Confessorum
7. Vat.lat.2765, Horace
8. Vat.lat.2832, Andria, a comedy by Terence adapted from a Greek play by Menander. Explicit: "valete et plaudite Caliopius recensui". Bibliography (as of 2018-04-09) mistakenly points to a work dealing with Vat.lat.2382.
9. Vat.lat.2838, poetry by Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), humanist and poet from the Duchy of Spoleto: autograph from the library of Angelo Colocci
10. Vat.lat.2847, Latin poetry, first item by Jacopo Sannazaro
11. Vat.lat.2854 (Upgraded to HQ),
12. Vat.lat.2860 (Upgraded to HQ),
13. Vat.lat.2870, poetry of Antonio Flaminio, see tweet below
14. Vat.lat.2886 (Upgraded to HQ), Cicero, De officiis
15. Vat.lat.2888, Cicero, De officiis, heavily annotated in the 14th century. The endpapers are from a 12th or 13th century manuscript of the Institutions of Justinian

    Studying can be boring... until you meet a "Smiley-Q" looking at you!
    
    Vat. lat. 2888, 14th C., Marcus Tullius Cicero, De officiis lib. I-III; Vat. lat. 2870, 15th-16th C., Antonio Biaxander (Antonio Flaminio or Flaminio Siculo), collection of poems. #LatestDigitizedManuscripts pic.twitter.com/4kNU2pXjzy

    — Digita Vaticana (@DigitaVaticana) April 9, 2018

16. Vat.lat.2907, Cicero, Philippic Orations, also with old lawbooks as endpapers, and this wild overblown initial A:
    
17. Vat.lat.2914, on rhetoric
18. Vat.lat.2923 (Upgraded to HQ), Juan de Segovia
19. Vat.lat.2931,
20. Vat.lat.2932, Philodoxeos fabulae
21. Vat.lat.2965, Tacitus
22. Vat.lat.2966,
23. Vat.lat.2980, Boethius: Latin translation of Aristotle's Categoriae (?), plus Boethius De Interpretatione, according to Nils Galindo-Sjöberg's list. Heavily annotated by a previous owner who also did stemmatic drawings at the front.
    

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 157. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.