Ancient Latin Agricultural Writers, Vol. I

...it is to us that so many codices have survived the ages.4 Fabricius commemorates several, and among these, primarily based on the testimony of Menagius, who in his notes to Diogenes Laertius (p. 54, Wetstein ed.) praises the Columella of the Corbie monastery, which today is preserved in Paris at the library of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I believe this is the same one that Nicolaas Heinsius often praises in his notes on Ovid, from which it was permitted for the illustrious Schöttgen and myself to extract his many observations and emendations. Indeed, either I am very much mistaken, or it is the same as that Goesianus the copy belonging to Goes of which more will be said later. The illustrious Fabricius continues: Three other manuscripts exist in the Medicean Library. A friend of Pontedera and a man of letters, Georgius, perhaps used one or two of these. Indeed, it is reasonable to suspect that those used first by Angelo Poliziano, and after him by Piero Vettori, are now counted—and rightly so—among the Medicean manuscripts, a fact which must also be commemorated in the apparatus of this edition. Regarding that one which Fabricius numbers as the fourth, and which he says exists in Venice at the library of Saint Mark, I doubt little that it is the same one used by the aforementioned pair of men, and that it should not be sought in Venice, but in Florence, among the brothers of Saint Mark (for the Evangelist is honored there too), or indeed in the Medicean library itself. For as for the fifth, which [is among] those of the Augustinians of Saint...

4. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina, vol. 2, p. 680, praised a passage by Poggio Bracciolini from his dialogue On the Unhappiness of Princes, where among the Latin authors found by him, who were previously mangled and deformed, Columella is also included. But if this is so, I wonder how it happened that neither the first printers, nor Angelo Poliziano, nor Vettori, made any mention of that fact. What if those Poggian codices of Columella were brought into the Medicean library?

...was used by Poliziano and Vettori, there is no doubt that it must be referred to among the Medicean manuscripts. Since these things are so, it is probable to me that the fourth and fifth codices of Fabricius are contained within the three Medicean ones. It is, however, fair that all who daily use the Fabrician treasures with such great convenience should not only bear it kindly if he did not see everything, but also that each, as far as he is able, should contribute his own small change to the rich treasury. We, indeed, attempt some such thing with this preface, not, however, to reproach a man amiable on many accounts for the fact that some things can be corrected in his most excellent books. Therefore, one can add to the Fabrician list a collated Codex of Columella, which exists in the library of Edward Bernard, no. 7478, no. 132, p. 227 of the Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae; as well as the one that Thomas Bartholinus says is in Naples in the library of San Giovanni a Carbonara (De Peregrinatione Medica, p. 26). But two manuscripts in particular have been useful for this edition of ours. First, Willem Goes had collated Columella with a codex of the best quality for the Cologne edition; Janus Broukhusius had inscribed that collation into the 1533 Paris edition; this book then reached the library founded at Leipzig by Johann Jakob Käf, councilor to the King of Poland and senator of Leipzig, into which that man, as fond of rural matters as he was skilled, had gathered a great quantity of books pertaining to all parts of it. From this library, the illustrious Schöttgen had first received it for use, and then the opportunity was also given to me through Thomas Wagner, jurist and royal councilor,