gems, early lapidaries, Marbode

Wiemann presents a critical edition and German translation of Johannes Cuspinianus’s Latin commentary on Marbod of Rennes’ Liber lapidum, a medieval didactic poem describing sixty stones and their supposed natural, medicinal and magical properties. The study is based principally on Vienna manuscript Cod. 5195, with comparison to the editio princeps of 1511, which Cuspinianus prepared for publication. It makes the Renaissance commentary accessible through a critically established Latin text and facing or accompanying German translation and provides material for studying the transmission and early printed reception of Marbod’s lapidary. The work is particularly relevant to the history of gemological and mineralogical literature because it documents how a major medieval lapidary was interpreted and transmitted by an early-sixteenth-century humanist scholar.