[Incipit:] Li tradim[en]ti maligni maxi[m]e de iuda traditore

[Central Italy]: G.M.B. Stivivi (see below)], 1400. Original kermes-dyed pigskin over paste-laminate boards (very worn, wormed), Malatesta M stamp in the corners, initials GM in ink in the center of the front panel and blind impression of the same initials in the center of the rear panel (all decoration added in the 18th century). In a green morocco clamshell box (hinges worn, color faded).

THIS EARLY 15TH-CENTURY CODEX OF VERNACULAR SPIRITUAL ADVICE treats prayer, penitence, abstinence, obedience, poverty, chastity and patience. The final section lists virtues, beatitudes, degrees of humility, etc.
A LATE 18TH-CENTURY FORGER REFASHIONED THIS WOMAN'S PRIVATE DEVOTIONAL INTO A PRESENTATION COPY TO A MAN: GALEOTTO ROBERTO MALATESTA, LORD OF RIMINI (1411-32). The enterprising antiquary added a miniature of the Malatesta elephant, Malatesta's ownership inscription, his m stamp and a dedication letter "by" Girolamo Leonardi, Bishop of Rimini.
In the letter, written in blue and red inks on four contiguous medial leaves, "Leonardi" claims the surrounding text as his own work and that it was commissioned by Malatesta. However, the original text addresses a "spiritual daughter". The dedication's peculiar language and script hardly conceal the fabrication, and the anachronistic elephant doesn't comport with contemporary illustrations of the same subject.
Panofsky notes our forger's "PECULIAR MIXTURE OF ERUDITION, IGNORANCE, AND PATIENCE...LIKE FALSTAFF'S LIES, 'gross like a mountain, open, palpable'. It has a likably naïve, imaginative, and definitely non-professional touch".
A 15th-century Italian codex in Greek (Princeton Garrett ms. 26), purportedly a Maimonides(!) autograph with illuminations by Giotto(!), has a similarly forged armorial illustration and dedication to Malatesta. Both that manuscript and ours have ink stamps of the Franciscan convent at Montescudo, near Rimini, suppressed in 1797 (now dispersed). Giovanni Maria Belmonti Stivivi (1750-1800), a local official of the Napoleonic government (which ordered the convent's dissolution), has been tentatively identified as the forger of the Princeton manuscript and at least five other codices (not counting that offered here).
Pale stains not affecting legibility, marginalia removed on the first leaf, ink lightly abraded on some twenty pages. Offered by bookseller-collector Tammaro de Marinis (Catalogo VII (1907) 9, attribution as genuine), bookplate of William Davignon (1867-1924).
¶See Panofsky's "Giotto and Maimonides in Avignon: The Story of an Illustrated Hebrew Manuscript" in The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 4 (1941) 26-44 and Meldini's "I falsi malatestiani del marchese giacobino" in La Biblioteca di via Senato (XI.2020) 13-27; Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts (online) SDBM_265946.