Main content
Muzio Pansa Manuscripts
Notifications
Held at: Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division [Contact Us]
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Muzio (or Mutio; he also went by the pseudonym, Costante) Pansa (1565-1628) was a medical doctor and humanist writer from the Abruzzo region. Born in Penne, in the region of Abruzzo, Italy, he was the son of a merchant. He studied both philosophy and medicine with Cardinal Costanzo Torri da Sarnano in Rome, where he attended the Jesuit Collegio Romano and l'Università la Sapienza. During his schooling, he composed several works, including Poesie Amorose, Adnotationes Alphabeticae ex Universa Medicina Extractae (1587, a dictionary of medicine), La Raffaella (1588, a comedy), and Delle glorie di Sisto Quinto (a verse and prose opera). He lectured at the Accademia degli Aggirati and was rector of Accademia medica detta degli Ardenti. In 1588, he returned to Penne where he practiced medicine, continued his studies, wrote verse, published writings on various public (usually papal) occasions, and initiated and actively participated in various scholarly societies. His most well-known work is Della libraria Vaticana (1590), which describes the newly completed Sistine Vatican Library.
Consists of twelve mostly unpublished manuscripts from Renaissance scholar, Muzio Pansa, in fifteen volumes. Some of the manuscripts are from when Pansa was a student at the Jesuit Collegio Romano, where he was a contemporary of Galileo. Both students had Paulus Valla (Paulus Vallius) as a lecturer, and several of the lecture notes are copied from his lecture notes. The works in this collection range from fragments to tomes, and range in subject matter as well; in addition to the lecture notes are Pansa's unpublished Latin treatise on pharmacology, his pious Italian tragedy, Il mundo redento (published posthumously), writings on theology, and the De osculo, a significant work in the history of Renaissance Neo-Platonism.
Some of the later manuscripts are likely in the hand of his younger son and literary executor, Carlo Muzio.
This collection has not been arranged by the archivist, but has been arranged in chronological order by the dealer.
Purchased from Blackwell's Rare Books in 2019 (AM 2021-43).
For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. All analog audiovisual media must be digitized to preservation-quality standards prior to use. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed through the Ask Us Form.
This collection was processed by Amy C. Vo in 2022. Finding aid written by Amy C. Vo in 2022. Dealer-supplied description was used in the creation of item titles and item-level scope and content notes, with clarifying revisions made by the archivist.
People
Subject
- Publisher
- Manuscripts Division
- Finding Aid Author
- Amy C. Vo
- Finding Aid Date
- 2022
- Access Restrictions
-
The collection is open for research.
- Use Restrictions
-
Single copies may be made for research purposes. To cite or publish quotations that fall within Fair Use, as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission is required. For instances beyond Fair Use, it is the responsibility of the researcher to determine whether any permissions related to copyright, privacy, publicity, or any other rights are necessary for their intended use of the Library's materials, and to obtain all required permissions from any existing rights holders, if they have not already done so. Princeton University Library's Special Collections does not charge any permission or use fees for the publication of images of materials from our collections, nor does it require researchers to obtain its permission for said use. The department does request that its collections be properly cited and images credited. More detailed information can be found on the Copyright, Credit and Citations Guidelines page on our website. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us through the Ask Us! form.
Collection Inventory
Pansa studied at Perugia, before proceeding to the Collegio Romano in 1585. This manuscript, recording inscriptions of monuments in Roman churches - chiefly ecclesiastical, and often pontifical - probably dates from his earliest years in Rome. The manuscript is numbered in at least two sequences and fragmentary, but with a certain continuity. It appears to be the third section of a much longer work, and seems to be a precursor to Muzio's best known work, Della libreria Vaticana (1590). As they are now ordered, one of the quires, ends with the inscription on the monument to Alessandro Farnese, the Cardinal who funded the construction of the Church of the Gesù, and is followed by that of Ignatius of Loyala.
Physical Description1 item
An example of sixteenth-century lecture notes as copied by Mutio Pansa. The author of the Treatise on Metaphysics is not named, and may or may not have been Paulus Valla (Paulus Vallius). Valla had begun teaching at the Collegio Romano in 1585-1586; in the following year he taught Metaphysics, while in 1587 or 1588 he was teaching Logic. This may then represent the tail-end of Valla's course on Metaphysics, though perhaps the second piece marks the beginning of his Natural Philosophy course in 1588-1589.
Physical Description1 item
Consists of commentaries on Aristotle, in Questio format. Contains "De generatione et corruptione" (two books); "In Libros Arist. De anima"; and "In metaphysica Arist." The manuscript is in the style of Pansa's Collegio Romano notes, with his typical decorated initials, but without localization or date.
Physical Description1 item
A treatise on metaphysics in four parts that is perhaps incomplete as the verso of the last leaf has 'Capu' only on it (possibly what would have been the beginning of Chapter 5, as there are 6 blank leaves following). Though not signed, dated, or otherwise localized by Pansa, this is likely to be the course of metaphysics which Pansa took when he went to the Collegio Romano in 1585, and, if so, the lecturer was Paulus Valla (Paulus Vallius). Pansa often would record his authorship, or ownership, so it is possible that it is a later set of notes by Carlo Muzio.
Physical Description1 item
This manuscript contains two parts, with some incomplete portions. This is a major unpublished work dedicated to patron of the arts, Cardinal Odoardo [Edoardo] Farnese. Part one is titled: 'Finis prime partis die Xa Julii 93 circa meridie[m] ad Dei laudem et B. Virg[inis].' Part two is entitled: 'Pharmaciae ... Secunda pars in qua agitur de humoris peccantis evacuandi ratione, Mutio Pansa Pinnensi medico authore, Ad Odoardo Farnesium, S. RE. Card. De multiplici evacuationis significatione, et quid proprie sit evacuatio.' Most of the second part is on purgatives.
Both parts of this work are in 40 chapters, although the second part runs out before the end of chapter 39. There are numerous sidenotes, apparently added later, some lengthy ones being additions or amendments to the text, more often the identification of a quotation. There the works Pansa cites are from ancient, medieval, and modern sources, and enough of the 'Arabic school' to justify the assertion made by the scholar, Giovanni de Caesaris, that Pansa's medical thinking was suffused with the Arabic tradition: although there is no Averroes or Avicenna, we do find Geber, 'Haly', and Constaninus Africanus. Among the medieval sources are Kimchi, Henricus de Asia [Hassia], and among the moderns are Cardano, Erasmus, Fernel, Falloppio, Porta, and Huarte.
Physical Description1 item
Act V of this manuscript ends in the middle of Scene 3. The play was published posthumously in Venice in 1641, edited by Carlo Muzio Pansa, Muzio Pansa's son. This is a working draft, without the introduction which appeared in the printed version. The corrections seem to be in the author's hand, but some might be in his son's. It is an allegorical work, with the chief characters being The World, Pluto, The Flesh, Death, and Sin, and others including the Virgin Mary, apostles, centurions, Scribes and Pharisees, etc. There are some decorated initials in Pansa's usual style, though a few are only rudimentary. While Pansa was a prolific poet, this is one of only two of his known dramas.
Physical Description1 item
A work on Galen and Aristotle, comprising part of Chapter XVI through to Chapter XXII (incomplete). Possibly composed by Pansa after settling as a medical doctor at Chieti in 1595, or later, in Penne.
Physical Description1 item
Consists of four volumes, with two versions of volume two. The shorter of the two versions may be the earlier version, but both appear to be working drafts. The work was published in Chieti in 1601 as "De osculo ethnicae et Christianae philosophiae. Unde Chaldeorum, Aegyptiorum, Persarum, Arabum, Graecorum, & Latinorum mysteria, tamquam ab hebraeis desummpta fidei nostrae consona deducuntur: tomi quatuor," and was reprinted in Marburg in 1605. These four volumes all show Pansa at work: he added more than he cut. The effort has been characterized as 'syncretic neoplatonism'.
Pansa works through each of his subject in roughly the same order, starting with Zoroaster (who gets a large portion), Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, then on through the Greeks to 'Omnes phylosophi', a portmanteau term for 'the rest of the world', including assorted Sybils, Rabbis, Arabs (especially Avicenna and 'Avenrhois' [Averroes], and Druids. The endeavour owes much to Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, both of whom are often referenced in the work.
Physical Description4 items
Consists of three and a half chapters from an unidentified work on ecclesiastical governance with extensive alterations to the text, and on the relations between church and state. There is a reference to Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historia, and there are quotations from Horace, the Bible, Church Fathers, etc.
Physical Description1 item
Comprising a half-page preface and twelve chapters, Pansa expresses support for the Papacy.
Physical Description1 item
Contains: In lib Aristotelis, De generatione et corrup; On the Aphorisms of Hippocrates; De compositione medicamentorum usualium iuxta praxim Neapolitana. This work is likely in the hand of Carlo Muzio, Pansa's youngest son, when he was in university (likely in southern Italy).
Physical Description1 item
Possibly in the hand of Carlo Muzio Pansa, as the handwriting is similar to that of "[Commentaries on Aristotle, and other texts], 1630." Subtitled "In universam physicam," this manuscript contains numbered paragraphs with plates and drawings at the end of the volume.
Physical Description1 item