Sixteenth Century
London: Richard Field, 1592.
A rare London pocket edition of Buchanan's Latin verse paraphrases of the Psalms: "The work which more than any other has secured to [Buchanan] his eminent place among modern Latin poets. Buchanan's translation of the Psalms may fairly be considered one of the representative books of the sixteenth century, expressing, as it does, in consummate form, the conjunction of piety and learning which was the ideal of the best type of humanist" (Cambridge History of English and American Literature).Buchanan, though a Scotsman, travelled widely on the continent. The two plays, Jephthe and Baptistes, which also appear in our edition were composed at Bordeaux during a spell of teaching at the newly founded Collège de Guyenne (where Montaigne was among Buchanan's pupils). The Paraphrasis was begun at Coimbra (Portugal) where Buchanan had been teaching at the time of the Inquisition. He had gone to teach there in 1547, only to find the university soon overrun with Jesuits who observed his every movement and confined him to a nearby monastery to reform his humanist tendency towards satire (and the eating of meat in Lent). The Paraphrasis was the product of his penance: an unmistakeable triumph of humanist piety and scholarship. The work was dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots (and the dedication is repeated in our Elizabethan edition) who appointed Buchanan tutor to her son, the future James VI. It was first printed by the Estiennes in 1566, but was also printed in England in 1580 and 1583. view more...
[Geneva:] apud Henricum Stephanum, & eius fratrem Robertum Stephanum, 1566.
[London : Henry Denham for William Brome], 1584.
Paris: Simon de Colines & Robert Estienne, 1543-1547.
An exceptionally rare complete set of the Colines-Estienne Cicero in a handsome uniform binding. Publication of the 10-volume series was begun by Simon de Colines in 1543 and completed by his stepson Robert Estienne in 1547. Some of the the individual volumes are very rare in themselves, some never having been seen by Renouard, the bibliographer of Simon de Colines.Cicero was the supreme orator of the Roman Empire and was pre-eminent among the classical authors valued by Renaissance humanists: "The ancient writer who earned their highest admiration was Cicero. Renaissance humanism was an age of Ciceronianism in which the study and imitation of Cicero was a widespread concern." (Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources). Such was the stature of Cicero that the word "humanism" was often interchangeable with "Ciceronianism." In the sixteenth-century Cicero represented several ideals: his language and composition were a model for any use of language, particularly Latin. His works were, for the humanists, the epitome of eloquence. As a philosopher, he combined both wisdom and eloquence, a combination which became the Renaissance ideal. He was also a man of the world, embodying the highest ideals of the renaissance philosopher or politician. Needless, to say his works were at the centre of the university curriculum in the sixteenth-century, and demand for complete and accurate editions of all his works was consistently strong. Few such editions can match the utility and functional beauty of the Paris Colines-Estienne editions.The individual volumes comprise the following:I. [Orations]. Orationum volumen primum [-tertium]. Paris: Simon de Colines, 18 November 1543-1544. Three vols, 1: ff. 424; 2: ff. 348 (misnumbered 356, due to faulty foliation, which skips from 208 to 217), [2] (last blank); 3: ff. 359 (misnumbered 357 due to faulty foliation: ff. 320 and 321 numbered 312 and 319 respectively), [1]. All three titles within Colines's "Figura architectonica" border. Text in italic; capital spaces with guide-letters. (See Renouard, Estienne, p. 70, note ad 14.). Appended to Part 2 are two Latin elegiac poems by H. Sussannaeus, addressed, respectively, "Ad Ioan. Gelinum Britonem Dioeceseos Briocensis" and "Ad Anianum Samesmynum Aurelium."II. [De Officiis & other philosophical works]. Officia diligenter restituta. Eiusdem De amicitia, & De senectute... Paradoxa, & Somnium Scipionis. Cum annotationibus Erasmi Roterodami, & Philippi Melanchthonis. Item, Annotation[ibus] Bartholomaei Latomi in Paradoxa. Paris: S. de Colines, 1543. ff. 174, [48] leaves. Title neatly backed, presumably at time of binding. With the comments of Erasmus and Melanchthon.III. [Philosopical works]. De Philosophia, prima pars [Philosophia volumen secundum]. Paris: Simon de Colines, May 1545-10 October 1545. Two vols, 1: ff 317, [3] (last two blank); 2: ff. 256. Colines's "Tempus IV" device on both titles. Texts in italic, capital spaces with guide-letters. Last leaf torn with loss of blank lower forecorner, neatly repaired by backing at time of binding. The full titles are (Vol. 1): De Philosophia, prima pars, id est, Academicarum quaestionum editionis primae liber secundus, editionis secundae, liber primus. De finibus bonorum & malorum libri V. Tusculanarum quaestionum libri V; (Vol. 2): Philosophia volumen secundum, id est, De natura deorum libri III. De divinatione libri II. De fato liber I. De legibus libri III. De universitate liber I. Qu. Ciceronis de petitione consulatus ad M. fratrem liber I.IV. [Letters to His Friends]. Epistolae familiares, diligentius quam quae hactenus exierunt, emendatae. (Edited by Claude Chaudière). Paris: Simon de Colines, 8 February 1545. Ff. 327, [8] (last blank). Colines's "Tempus IVb" device on title (being a variant of "Tempus IV", here signed with the cross of Lorraine). Text in italic, headings in roman, index in smaller roman; extensive use of Greek. A rare book of which we can locate only one other complete copy (Glasgow, an incomplete copy was described in Schreiber's Colines catalogue [no. 218], then believed to be unique). Renouard, whose note for this edition is particularly garbled and incomplete, states that this is the only Colines imprint to bear Henri [sic] Estienne's device. The text was overseen by Claude Chaudière, Regnault's son. In the preface Claude Chaudière emphasizes his position as Colines's grandson on his mother's side, and the care he has taken in establishing the text. After Colines's death, in 1546, Regnault and Claude were to take over his printing house. Ff. TT3-6, comprise Chaudière's Latin translations of Cicero's Greek citations: "Graecorum quae in his epistolis sparsim interferuntur, Latina interpretatio", and some passages concerning Cicero from Catullus, Quintilian, Silius Italicus, and Pliny the younger.V. [Rhetorical Works]. Rhetoricorum ad C. Herennium. lib. IIII. De inventione lib. II. Topica ad Trebatium lib. I. Oratoriae partitiones lib. I. Paris: Simon de Colines, 1545. Ff. 218, [6] (last two blank). Colines's "Tempus V" device on title (its first [and only?] use: reproduction in Renouard, p. 404). Text in italic; use of Greek.VI. [De Oratore]. De Oratore ad Quintum fratrem lib. III, etc. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1546. Ff. 281, [3]. Estienne device on title. VII. [Letters to Atticus & Brutus]. Epistolae ad Atticum [Epistolarum ad Brutum liber]. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1 April 1547. Two parts in one volume: ff. 336 and 142, [2] leaves (last blank). Estienne device on title. view more...
[Venice: heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, 1535.]
The second Aldine edition, the first having appeared in 1515, immediately after the death of Aldus Manutius.These are the important works of the convert Lactantius (?250-?325), sometimes described as "the Christian Cicero". He was a pupil of Arnobius and native of the province of Africa. He received an appointment as professor of rhetoric from Diocletian, and spent part of his life at Nicomedia in Bithynia, later appointed by Constantine to educate the Prince Crispus in Gaul. His works include 'De opificio Dei', which contains a description of the body and soul of man, and can be seen as a supplement to the fourth book of Cicero's 'De re publica'; 'The Divine Institutes', is considered the greatest of all his works and was written against two opponents of Christianity and is a comprehensive survey of the arguments then available in favour of the new religion; 'De ira dei', an able discussion of the problem with which it deals, correcting the false conclusions of the chief philosophical schools. 'De ave Phoenix' is a medley of heathen and Christian elements, and generally believed genuine. Included is the Liber apologeticus of Tertullian. The edition is based upon manuscripts found in the Monastic Library of Monte Cassino. With prefaces of Paulus Manutius and his friend, the humanist, Joannes Baptist Egnatius. view more...
Lyon: Benoist Rigaud, 1576.
Scarce Lyon edition of Polydore Vergil's second and most famous book De inventoribus rerum ("History of Inventions") in French, with an interesting later Lyonnais provenance. In this ambitious work, Vergil addresses questions of origin, from the origin of the gods, man and languages to the origin of wine and liqueurs, marriage, magic, medicine, poetry, drama, geography and law. Drawing extensively on the Bible and original Greek and Latin texts, the title was one of the new encyclopaedias which attempted to disseminate the learning made available by the Renaisance humanists. The title was first published in Venice in 1499, with a revised and expanded edition appearing in 1521 (with the origins of the Christian Church); our edition was translated into French by Belleforest. An Italian by birth, Vergil spent much of his life in Britain, principally working as a Papal envoy under the direction of Adriano Castellesi da Corneto. Feted on his arrival as a cultured Italian, he enjoyed enduring royal favour of Henry VII and went on to write an important English history, the Anglica historia.The book contains the bookplate of Justin Godart, lawyer and Mayor of Lyon, who was a leading figure in the French Resistance (heading the Comité du Front National clandestin de libération de la France Zone Sud) during the Second World War. view more...
Lyon: Melchior & Gaspard Trechsel, 1533.
First edition of two of the most influential and characteristic works by the renaissance physician and humanist, Symphorien Champier, colleague of Michael Servetus and François Rabelais at the Schools of Medicine at Lyons.In the Campus Elysius Galliae and Hortus Gallicus, Champier sought to reform the French pharmacopoeia and material medica, insisting that France had all the medical resources it needed in the form of herbs and medicinal plants without recourse to the exotic remedies espoused by the Arabic medical tradition. In doing this, Champier linked politics, culture, medicine and horticulture in praising the new cultural fertility of France (the Hortus Gallicus is dedicated to King Francis I). He cites various drugs known to be "pernicious and venomous" to Europeans, albeit perfectly suited to the inhabitants of other regions and other times (cf. Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: local knowledge and natural history in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 2007). Champier's thesis derives from his deep antipathy to the Arabic medical tradition: several of his many earlier works sought to purify Galenic and Hippocratic medicine of Arabic influence partly in the belief that by stripping away latter Arabic influence the physician was drawing closer to the pure Classical origins of western medicine. It also expresses his persistent critique of the occultist tradition, so deeply ingrained in medical theory and practice at the opening of the Renaissance.Champier's Renaissance attitudes to medicine may not have been original but they were certainly influential. Lyons was one of the most important centres of the Renaissance in France (witness his prominent contemporaries) and he was very prolific, writing or editing at least 45 individual books. Many of his works are hard to classify and their very diversity is typical of the spirit of the age. He has been criticised for attempting to uncover the truth by simply piling authority upon authority, drawing from history, poetry, philosophy, magic and medicine without distinction. This approach may be alien to the modern mind, but Champier wrote at the very beginning of the scientific Renaissance and his works are highly characteristic of the humanist cast of mind. "He shared with many humanists the capacity for oratorical exuberance. So that when Scaliger called him 'insolens, tumens, turgens,' perhaps this spirit should be interpreted as an indication that he was full of the 'spirit of the Renaissance,' that rare gas which the historical laboratory has never yet succeeded in holding in solution" (Thorndike). The three works here have separate titles but were almost certainly issued together. The Campus Elysius contains several additional tracts: De sanguinis missione; Epistola J. Champerii avunculo suo Symphoriano (dated 25 June 1532); Speculum medici Christiani (dedicated to Champier's son Antoine) and De Theriacâ gallicâ. The Periarcha is dedicated to Charles de l'Estang, protonotaire of Saint-Siége. Each work is notable for the careful typography characteristic of Champier's printed works: he worked closely with his printers (Dumaitre, Histoire de la medecine et du livre medical, p. 195).Symphorien Champier, was born into a bourgeois family at Saint-Symphorien-sur-Croise, near Lyon and studied at the University of Paris before 1495, when he matriculated at the medical school of Montpellier, which granted him his doctorate in 1504. He taught liberal arts in Grenoble and took a doctorate in theology in 1502. In 1509 he was appointed physician to Antoine Duke of Lorraine, who brought him to Nancy. Champier followed the duke several time to Italy, where he was involved in the battles of Agnadello (1509) and Marignano (1515). During his stays in Italy he won recognition as an academic teacher from the University of Pavia. In 1519 he became an alderman in Lyon, and for the last twenty years of his life he was at the center of the cultural Renaissance of that city, while simultaneously promoting the study of medicine by helping to found the College of the Holy Trinity and sponsoring translations of, and writing commentaries on, the works of Hippocrates and Galen. view more...
London: Thomas Berthelet, 1532.
Second edition of Gower's great Middle English poem, completed about 1390 and dedicated to Richard II. Gower is chiefly remembered as a friend of Geoffrey Chaucer and his Confessio Amantis is frequently cited as the origin of William Shakespeare's play Pericles (who's story is taken from book 8 of the Confessio) but he should be accepted in his own right as one of the great pioneers of English literature.The plan of the Confessio was doubtless borrowed from the Roman de la Rose, and consists of a dialogue first between the poet, in the character of a lover, and Venus, and afterwards between the poet, in the character of a penitent, and Genius, whom Venus assigns to him as a confessor. In the conversation between the penitent and the confessor the seven deadly sins are discussed and illustrated from Gower's encyclopaedic knowledge of Ovid, Josephus, Vincent de Beauvais, Statius, the Gesta Romanorum, the Bible, and other sources. In the eighth book, having described the duty of a king and prayed for England, the poet bids farewell to earthly love. The work is a profound meditation on human love and morality and in Gower's own words in the Prologue it was "a boke for Englondes sake".The work survives in numerous early manuscripts (attesting to its immediate popularity) and was first printed by Caxton in 1474. Thomas Berthelet's edition of 1532 is considered textually superior to Caxton. Pforzheimer notes that the "edition was printed from a manuscript, resembling MS. Bodley 294, but inferior in correctness, collated with Caxton's edition from which several passages lacking in the manuscript were supplied. In the prefatory note 'To the reader' Berthelet included the alternative form of the introductory lines Prologue 24-92, also from Caxton's edition, so that on the whole this edition is textually an improvement over the earlier one. It is also a good example of workmanlike printing much above the average English work of the period" (Pforzheimer). The third edition of 1554 is merely a paginary reprint of the present.The early ownership inscription of William Sotheby is dated 1532. This copy is handsomely bound in the style of Mackinley for the Earl of Stafford, among the richest men in England at the opening of the nineteenth-century. The Earl was himself a latter-day member of the Gower family (he claimed descent in the male line from Sir Alan Gower of Stittenham, supposedly sheriff of York at the time of the conquest). Several antiquaries had previously suggested that the poet's origins lay in the same place, so this would have been a fitting acquisition for the Earl. view more...
* Given as a guide only. Based on an exchange rate of £1 = US$1.495795 for the day 10 March 2010 but liable to fluctuate.
10 March 2010
