Two Connected Medieval Manuscripts of Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla in Cluj and Alba Iulia

The article argues that two manuscripts of Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla, kept in Alba Iulia and in Cluj, are possibly the product of the same Viennese scriptorium, and were both used in Cluj in the last decades of the fifteenth century or in the early sixteenth century. The Cluj manuscript, kept at the archives of the Roman-Catholic Archdiocese of Transylvania in Cluj (inventory number MS 52), has only recently become available to the scholarly community. It contains commentaries to the four Gospels, and is dated in 1470. The Alba Iulia manuscript (Batthyaneum Library, MS I.12) contains the postilla to the remaining books of the New Testament, and is dated in 1471. Furthermore, the two manuscripts have the same size and layout, and were demonstrably bound in the same workshop. A colophon formula in German in the Cluj manuscript shows that the manuscript was copied in a German-speaking area; moreover, the watermarks in the Alba Iulia manuscript suggest that it was copied in the area of Vienna.

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