{"title":"Philosophy \u0026 Theology","description":"\u003cp\u003ePhilosophical thought, religious belief, metaphysics, and ethics.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"bessarion-cardinal-johannes","title":"BESSARION, Cardinal Johannes","description":"\u003cp\u003ePart I comprises the second much expanded Aldine edition of Bessarion s great defense of Plato and Platonism, written in response to the translation of the  Laws  by George of Trebizond who had taken advantage of its publication to print a sharp criticism of Plato and exalt Aristotle. Bessarion, one of the great humanists and Hellenists of the mid C15 had studied philosophy under Gemistus Pletho and imbibed from him a love of Plato, happily shorn of Gemistius  hatred of Aristotle. Bessarion rather advocated a synthesis of the two systems of learning, perceiving and appreciating their many points of contact and in the present work (ch. 5) demolishes Trebizond s attack by the simple device of enumerating verbatim all the errors of his translation and faults in his commentaries. The second part of the present work, here printed for the first time, comprises Bessarion s own translation of Aristotle's metaphysics and book one of those of Themistius. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n It is said that Bessarion, the greatest scholar - statesman - diplomat - ecclesiastic of his age, had three aims in life: the reunion of the Latin and Eastern Church, the rescue of Greece from Moslem occupation and the triumph of classical literature and poetry, especially the Greek. He succeeded temporarily in the first, partially in the second , and beyond all expectation in the third - paving the way for the great revival that was to follow. In between his many extraordinary labours in the public field, organizing crusades, restoring the City and University of Bologna, dominating great international councils, he became patron of the very first Renaissance Accademia (actually founded in his house) and amassed an extraordinary library of more than eight hundred codices of ancient Greek ms. - which he gave to form the basis of the Marciana in Venice.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BESSARION, Cardinal Johannes","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816066097487,"sku":"L1198","price":15000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Bessarion-L1198-1.jpg?v=1781795331"},{"product_id":"hermogenes","title":"HERMOGENES","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare and important edition of the rhetorical works of Hermogenes complete with the separately paginated commentary which is often missing (see Brunet). This is the first edition of the translation of Gaspard Laurent, and of his extensive commentary. Laurent, a French Huguenot in origin, established himself at Geneva where he taught literature (1597) and in 1600 became Rector of Academy. He published principally on religious topics but he had a particular interest in public theological disputations and may well have been attracted to Hermogenes as a practical manual of reference. The especial importance of the volume however lies with the binding which is at once unusual, lovely and skilfully executed. It must be one of relatively few volumes in De Thou's extraordinary collection (Bibl. Thuanae part II, p.241) that he did not have rebound with his own arms - really the highest compliment. An early typed note in the book states that at W.H. Corfield's sale in 1904 the binding was described as French and there are common elements but there seems no reason to suppose that the volume travelled very far from the press before it was bound. Despite the unusual huntsman tool however we have been unable to find a comparable or identify the binder, so the only description we can offer is 'probably Geneva' 1614 or shortly thereafter.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HERMOGENES","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816067539279,"sku":"L1013","price":4750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_9052.jpg?v=1781795327"},{"product_id":"reisch-gregorius","title":"REISCH, Gregorius","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of Gallucci s translation of Gregorius Reich s celebrated and beautifully illustrated encyclopedia with additional material in this edition by Gallucci and including the revisions by the mathematician Oronce Fine from 1535, and some of the additions of the 1512 Strasbourg edition, such as Martin Waldseemüller's treatises on architecture and perspective, and Masha'allah's composition of the astrolabe. The Margarita philosophica (the Philosophic pearl) is a beautifully illustrated encyclopedia which was widely used as a university textbook in the early sixteenth century, particularly in Germany; it takes the form of a dialogue between master and pupil - the pupil asks elementary questions and the master answers them in depth. It gives us an intriguing insight into the university curriculum and state of learning and scientific knowledge at the start of the C16th and here in a much revised form in the late C16th. Its author, Gregor Reisch (c.1467-1525), a Carthusian monk and a friend of many of the most celebrated Humanists of his era including, Erasmus, Beatus and Rheananus, was prior of the Charterhouse of St John the Baptist near Freiburg-im-Breisgau from 1503 to 1525 and was confessor and counsellor to the Emperor Maximilian I. He was educated at the University of Freiburg where he received the degree of magister in 1489 and also taught there. The Margarita was conceived as a textbook for his students at Freiburg, among whom were many influential figures of the German Renaissance, notably the theologian Johann Eck. Reisch's text is divided into twelve chapters. The traditional subjects of the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy) each have a chapter devoted to them. Four of the five remaining chapters are concerned with natural philosophy and cover such things as the elements, meteorology, alchemy, the plant and animal kingdoms, optics and memory as well as heaven, hell and purgatory. The final chapter concerns moral philosophy. The additions in this edition are added at the end, a further 300 odd pages, each supplementing a chapter of the main work. The usefulness of the book as an educational tool is much enhanced by a detailed index and the liberal use of marvelous woodcut illustrations. There are two issues of this edition, with apparently no priority, one with Barezzi's imprint, and another with Somascho's which is more common institutionally. A very good copy of this wonderful and beautifully illustrated educational encyclopedia.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"REISCH, Gregorius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816068096335,"sku":"L1138","price":7250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L1138-1.jpg?v=1781795327"},{"product_id":"vergilius-maro-publius","title":"VERGILIUS MARO, Publius","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first collected edition of the works of Vergil in French, in the verse translation of Guillaume Michel de Tours for the Eclogues and Georgics and Octovien de Saint-Gelais for the Aeneid. The individual titles had been published in separate editions, all three of which are exceptionally rare; 'Les Eneydes' by Octovien de Saint-Gelais in 1509, 'Les Bucoliques' in 1516 and 'Les Georgicques' 1519 both by Guillaume Michel. This collection of the works was republished in 1532 and 1540. Both the translators were poets of some note, both Rhetoriqueurs, the name generally given to the group of poets active from approximately 1450 to 1530, between Villon and Clement Marot (including Chastellain, Meschonot, Molinet, Gringore, Cr étin, Jean Lemaire de Belges, Jean Marot, and Jean Bouchet, who was still writing in 1550). St.-Gelais and Michel shared an intense preoccupation with rhetoric; it was as 'l'art de seconde rh étorique' that they classified poetry. Both were prolific and extremely influential translators of classical texts. Octovien de Saint-Gelais had considerable, knowledge of the literature of antiquity, and an eagerness to display it, sometimes leading to an excessive use of Latinisms in pursuit of a high style. His work in general concentrates on purely formal devices, such as elaborate rhyme schemes (rimes l éonines, couronn ées, encha√Æn ées,  équivoqu ées), alliteration, puns, rebus, and other types of puzzles. All this is sometimes (inevitably) at the expense of clarity. The Rhetoriqueurs influence on Renaissance poetry, with all its formal experimentation, was considerable. Rabelais too, with his love of puns and lists, can be seen as a direct heir. There had been an earlier anonymous translation of The Aeneid published before Saint Gelais' but it was really a reworking of the text rather than a translation. \"Influenced by the philological impulse of the earlier Humanists, sixteenth-century translators are almost universally concerned to demonstrate the fidelity and accuracy of their versions. The prose 'remaniement' of Vergil, close to a romance, which appeared anonymously in 1483 was challenged in 1509 by the posthumous publication of Octavien de Saint-Gelais' verse translation composed with the intention 'to translate this book from its lofty distinguished Latin word-for-word and as closely as possible'.\" The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. The works of Vergil had been published numerous times in France but no edition was more influential on French Renaissance literature than this poetical translation that brought Vergil's work to a much wider audience. It was unequalled until Clement Marot's version was published in 1577.  Most, if not all, of the woodcuts used in this volume are incunable blocks from V érard's general stock, giving the work immense visual charm. The large and fine woodcut depicting an author at his desk that accompanies the prologue to the Aeneid had also been used by Couteau in 'La l égende des Flamens' in 1522. The present work is very rare, Renouard cites thirteen copies in public libraries worldwide (mostly in provincial France) but we have been able to locate far fewer and no copies at auction in the last thirty years. An important, rare and extremely influential work from the exceptional library of the Earls of Macclesfield.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"VERGILIUS MARO, Publius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816068325711,"sku":"L871","price":14500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_00112.jpg?v=1781795325"},{"product_id":"caviceo-jacomo","title":"CAVICEO, Jacomo","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare, beautifully printed and illustrated popular edition of Francois Dassi s French translation of Caviceo s  Libro del Peregrino , first published in the author s native Parma in 1508, and remarkably popular, both in Italy and France, where it went through more than twenty editions during the following fifty years, though it has not been reprinted in its entirety since 1559, perhaps due to its robust attitude to physical love. Caviceo introduces his romance with the appearance of Boccaccio s shade who praises the book s dedicatee, Lucrezia Borgia; unsurprisingly the Peregino is full of echoes of Boccaccio s writings, and is also imbued with the atmosphere of the Ferrarese court of Ercole I d Este which Caviceo knew well. He appears also to have used Colonna s Hyperotomachia as a model, as the Peregrino similarly contains a multiplicity of digressions on a diverse range of subjects in a Latinate prose full of classical allusions. As the title suggests much of the romance is concerned with travel, based on the author s own experiences, including voyages to the middle east, Mount Sinai and Cyprus. These adventures often serve as a pretext for a display of humanist erudition, courtly speeches, with disquisitions on natural philosophy and neo-platonic theories of love. A good deal of the work is comic, sometimes unsubtle, as in the episode when Peregrino steals, via a sewer, into what he believes is his ladies chamber only to discover, at a critical moment, that he entered a neighboring house and is in the wrong bed. All these disparate elements are woven into the story of Peregrino, an ardent lover, who after many trials on behalf of his love Ginevra, eventually wins her hand, only to witness her death shortly after the birth of her first child. The story is innovative firstly in its narrative technique, the entire story is told by the hero s shade and is in the first person, (much of the book is composed of dialogue) and secondly in its inclusion of a host of famous contemporaries in his fictional narrative, some recently dead, but most still living at publication. It is therefore quite surprising that the work was so popular in France where few of this gallery of local figures would have been known to its readers. The book was translated into French by Francois Dassi, a lawyer and secretary to Henri d Albert king of Navarre. The first French edition appeared in 1527, at a time when there was considerable interest in France for all things Italian. Dassi made no attempt to modify the passages of the original which deal with specifically Italian figures, and his translation is complete and faithful. Like the Fairfax Murray copy, this copy lacks the final leaf, 'probably blank'. This Paris edition appears to have been shared by many printers, P. Sargent (BL copy), F. Gilbert (Fairfax Murray copy), A. Lotrian (BNF copy) as well as Jean Petit, all of which are extremely rare; we have not found a copy of the Petit imprint recorded online.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CAVICEO, Jacomo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816070390095,"sku":"L1289","price":9750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L1289-2.jpg?v=1781795324"},{"product_id":"epistolae-graecae","title":"EPISTOLAE GRAECAE","description":"\u003cp\u003eA lovely copy of this rare Aldine incunable, the editio princeps of the majority of the letters it contains, including the editio princeps of the letters of Plato and the first printing of any of his writings in the original Greek, edited by Marcus Musursus, perhaps the most influential figure in the progress of the Aldine Greek Press, and beautifully printed by the incomparable Aldus Manutius. Musurus brought together 35 authors in his extensive collection, ranging from Plato, Isocrates and Aeschines from antiquity to 4th-century authors such as Gregory of Nazianzus and later to Procopius of Gaza. Also included are Synesius, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, St. Basil, Phalaridis Tyranni, Bruti Romani, Apollonius of Tyana, and Julian Apostate (Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus); other letters are spurious or of doubtful authorship, such as those by Hippocrates and Euripides. The book is printed in Aldus's second and better Greek type (2:114), designed by Francesco Griffo da Bologna. In his dedication to Antonio Urceo Codro (1446-1500) professor of Greek and Latin at Bologna, Aldus states that he has set up in type whatever letters he could procure of some thirty-five Greek writers. A total of twenty six authors were published in these vols. Those that do not appear in this edition he reserved for a later publication, which was never realised. Letter-writing was an art and study allied to rhetoric, which formed part of a humanistic education, and compendia of letters circulated as model precedents. The letters published in this volume however are of interest far beyond mere examples of letter-writing. An example is Plato s seventh letter, the longest and most important. It is addressed to the associates and companions of Dion, most likely after his assassination in 353 BCE, in the form of an open letter, and contains a defence of Plato s political activities in Syracuse as well as a long digression concerning the nature of philosophy, the theory of the forms, and the problems inherent to teaching. Toward the end of the letter he gives an explanation of the perfect circle as an existing, unchanging, and eternal form, and explains how any reproduction of a circle is impossible. He suggests that the form of a perfect circle cannot even be discussed, because language and definition are inadequate. This collection was of great influence; Copernicus taught himself Greek using this work with the help of a Greek-Latin dictionary; the manuscript of his De Revolutionibus contains a suppressed passage from Lysis s letter to Hipparchus found in this collection. Introducing the text of the letter Copernicus mentions  Philolaus believed in the earth s motion.. (and) Aristarchus of Samos too held the same view . From 1493, Musurus was associated with Aldus Manutius and belonged to the Neacademia (Aldine Academy of Hellenists), a society founded by Manutius and other learned men for the promotion of Greek studies. Many of the Aldine classics were published under Musurus' supervision, and he is credited with the first editions of the scholia of Aristophanes (1498), Athenaeus (1514), Hesychius of Alexandria (1514) and Pausanias (1516). Musuros' handwriting reportedly formed the model of Aldus' Greek type. Works printed by Aldus Manutius have become synonymous with all that is best with  late fifteenth century and early sixteenth-century book production, particularly with typographical elegance and editorial quality and this rare and beautifully produced incunable is no exception. The Aldine Epistolae Graecae 'was not replaced by an equally useful collection until 1873, the date of R. Hercher's Epistolographi graeci' (Wilson, Byzantium to Italy, p.150). \u003cbr\u003e\n A fine copy with tremendous provenance; Bound for the 1st Duke of Sutherland (1758-1833), described by Charles Greville as a \"leviathan of wealth\" and \"...the richest individual who ever died\". Then in the collection of the great bibliophile Martin Bodmer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"EPISTOLAE GRAECAE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816070422863,"sku":"L1344","price":35000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_8227.jpg?v=1781795323"},{"product_id":"lomazzo-paolo","title":"LOMAZZO, Paolo","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition, second issue with a new title page, of this seminal work of art theory by the Italian painter and writer Lomazzo.  Lomazzo, the Milanese painter (1538-1600), wished to give in his theoretical writings the final and conclusive argument for the nobility of painting. By demonstrating that the painter s primary and most important activity was intellectual, and that that his manual activity was in all cases simply an execution of ideas mentally conceived, he extended to painters the dignity hitherto enjoyed by poets and rhetoricians. By supplying rules for the seven parts of painting that he had logically deduced from careful definition, he  reduced painting to an art,  and elevated it to an academic subject. These demonstrations were to result in a single and complete treatise that covered theory, technique, and subject matter. ... Lomazzo s publications were not motivated simply by his vanity as a painter or his ambition as a writer. During the century and a half previous to his career, enormous changes had taken place in the art of painting, which made his arguments for the higher station of painting both necessary and valid. Painters had developed techniques and rules that could be systematized and taught like those of the liberal arts, and they had increased the range and seriousness of the thematic matter of the art in a way to rival literature. The technical accomplishments of the Renaissance painters are still admired and studied in an age that abjures their employment, and the full extent of the intellectual content of Renaissance painting will remain a matter for inquiry, discovery and synthesis through many more years of iconographical studies.  Gerald Ackerman. The Art Bulletin Vol. 49, No. 4 (Dec., 1967).  It is the summa of late Renaissance theory of art, a book Schlosser called the  bible of Mannerism . ..Lomazzo s art theory reached many readers... Still in the sixteenth century a translation of the Trattato appeared in Oxford,  englished by Richard Haydock, student of Physick  (1598). A treatise by the English miniature painter Richard Hilliard is so closely related to the Trattato that it has been considered a paraphrase of Lomazzo s text. Here was finally the longed -for, articulate, complete system of painting - and Lomazzo constructed a system perfectly fitting the intellectual and emotional atmosphere prevailing among the public he addressed. His claim to providing a system rests, to begin with , on what he believes to be a complete enumeration of the constituents, or  parts  of paintings. The art of producing images consists of seven parts, and to each of them a book of the Trattato is devoted.  Moshe Barasch.  Theories of Art: From Plato to Winckelmann . The book is also full of first-hand information about Milanese artists, quoting extensively from lost sources. The seventh and final book includes a veritable dictionary of the iconography of the period. A lovely copy of this important first edition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LOMAZZO, Paolo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816082252111,"sku":"L1426","price":3950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Screenshot-2024-08-06-at-12.06.23.webp?v=1781795319"},{"product_id":"manutius-paulus","title":"MANUTIUS, Paulus","description":"\u003cp\u003eExpanded edition, revised and corrected of Manutius' celebrated commentary on the 16 books of Cicero's letters to his closest friend T. Pomponius Atticus and the starting point of all modern editions of the text. Written over the course of many years from 65BC onwards and compiled by Cicero's personal secretary Marcus Tullius Tiro, the letters are frequently written in a subtle code to mask their political content. In his impressively detailed commentary Manutius is clearly aware of this, discussing the implications of certain names and places thoroughly, explaining their relationships to each other and explaining historical and social significance as appropriate. A valuable edition in a fine copy. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n \"Perhaps the most valuable of Cicero's surviving works are the letters, such a vivid commentary on the last years of the Roman Republic as we have of no other period of ancient times. Here alone, devoid of formality, the character of Cicero can be seen.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MANUTIUS, Paulus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816107417935,"sku":"L802","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/2013-11-27-23.11.42.jpg?v=1781795310"},{"product_id":"venusti-antonio-maria","title":"VENUSTI, Antonio Maria","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of Venusti's work about generation, birth and brevity of life. There are two lists of contents: the first lists the headings of the 139 chapters into which the text is divided, the second lists the most interesting topics. Included are abortion, why the good die young and teeth can't be destroyed by fire; the definition of the hermaphrodite, famous dwarfs of that time in Milan, Turkish men having more wives and why lust is especially characteristic of the hairy and the lame. The author starts from the viewpoint of the dignity of marriage, describing the relationship of husband and wife and the treatment of moral, social and sexual behaviour. He moves on to pregnancy - medical prescriptions and superstitions -, birth and children - how to cure, care and educate them-, often referring to the opinions of Avicenna, Aristotle, Averroes, Cicero, Plato, Homer and to the Bible. The result is a mixture of medicine and philosophy. The last section is about natural and unnatural ways of dying and time, its division into years, days and hours, the origins of this division and some philosophical speculations on it.  Oratius Luccesinus was a member of a family prominent in Lucca in the first half of eighteenth century belonging to the noblesse de la robe of the city. The decoration of the binding is unusual combining the Renaissance and the beginnings of Neoclassicism.  Antonio Maria Venusti (1529 - 1585) was a doctor from Grosio, a village near the city of Sondrio. He descended from a poor branch of the Venosta family, the Earls of Tirolo, which in the CXIV ruled that region. He lived in Milan at the court of Dadda family who undertook his education since his father had died during his boyhood and Venusti dedicated this work to the ten sons of Erasmo Dadda. Their motto, NEC VI NEC SPONTO, on p. b2v, is represented in the centre of a chain made up of ten diamond rings, compared in verse by Giovanni Battista Porro to the valour and strength of the Dadda family.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"VENUSTI, Antonio Maria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816115642703,"sku":"L659","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L659.jpg?v=1781795308"},{"product_id":"pontano-giovanni-gioviano","title":"PONTANO, Giovanni Gioviano","description":"First Aldine edition of the astrological writings of Johannes Jovianus Pontanus (Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, 1429-1503), humanist, diplomat, scholar and poet who became the driving force behind the Neapolitan Academy and its official leader after 1471, as well as Naples' Secretary of State. His was considered by contemporaries as good as, or superior to, his Classical models. Pontanus' career provides an excellent illustration of the power and prestige which might be attained by men of letters in fifteenth-century Italy.\r \r The present volume consists of Pontanos' scientific (or proto-scientific and astrological) works: a translation and commentary on the Centum Ptolemaei sententiae, and other, briefer treatises, including De luna and De rebus coelestibus.\r \r The pseudo-Ptolemaic Centum Sententiae, or Centiloquy, is a collection of astrological aphorisms, once thought to have been the work of Claudius Ptolemaeus - from whose work it differs in many key respects. Seventeenth-century English scholars such as Joseph Moxon and William Lilly noted that some ascribed it to the mythical Hermes Trismegistus. More recent speculation has centred around the figure of Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Yusuf Ibn Daya (d. c.941), who wrote extensive glosses to the work, and translated it into Hebrew and Latin. While some of the sententiae demonstrate typical astrological vagueness (III: a person skilled in a particular field will have been born under the relevant star; VI, XI: the day and time for a particular activity should be chosen carefully, with reference to one's horoscope), others are extremely specific (XX: 'Do not pierce not with iron that part of the body which may be governed by the sign occupied by the Moon'; XXII: 'Do not either put on or lay aside any garment for the first time, when the Moon is located in Leo'). Pontanus' commentary is notable for its concern with proving the superiority of astrology over much contemporary 'science', and for the socio-psychological rather than theological nature of its speculations. It was immensely influential in contemporary and later astrological and prophetic writing: Nostradamus quotes with approval his first proposition 'Soli numine divino afflati praesagiunt \u0026amp; spiritu prophetico particularia' ('Only those inspired by the divine godhead can prophesy, and only those inspired by the spirit of prophecy can prophesy detailed events').","brand":"PONTANO, Giovanni Gioviano","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816117707087,"sku":"L593","price":3950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/frontcover_6d949577-4acb-4edf-a998-12eee4563161.png?v=1781795303"},{"product_id":"tabourot-etienne","title":"TABOUROT, Étienne","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn early edition of this compilation of the complete works of the 'Rabelais of Bourgogne', which \"eut un grand success, qu'il dut surtout √† l'originalit é de son auteur, incarnation vigeureuse de la gaiet é franche et de la na√Øvet é maliciuese du vieil esprit gaulois\". Tabourot (known as Le Seigneur des Accords), a talented lawyer, friend of Montaigne and Pasquier, and 'juge ch√¢telain de la baronnie de Verdun en Bourgogne', spent ten years before his appointment broadening his mind at the University in Paris and in traveling. He published a number of works, among them a revised edition of his uncle Jehan Le Fèvre's works. He started work early on the present collection of works, a playful smorgasbord of popular folk-tales and fables, satirical pieces, rhymes, basic numerology and codemaking, sorcerers and impostors, the invetion of many anagrams and above all amusing nothings, which at the same time are frequently instructive, but also include \"des obscenit és grossières et immondes\". However, unlike most surviving works of the period, it provides us with a rare view of the literature of the people and the tastes of ordinary readers, especially of Dijon and Burgogne. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The first edition of this collection of Tabourot's works was J. Richer's in Paris in 1603 (on which the present edition is based). However, some of the works had been published separately in the 16th century, most notably the Touches (first published 1585-88 - \"les exemplaires complets des editions originales de cet ouvrage sont si rare qu'on chercherait vainement\"), which suffered at the hands of 16th-century editors, and are conventionally much reduced in collected editions. Nevertheless, what remains is an amusing and unusual testimony to the playful side of the post-Renaissance, afforded a signal charm by the na√Øf woodcuts illustrating the text.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TABOUROT, Étienne","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816118722895,"sku":"L468","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0016.jpg?v=1781795301"},{"product_id":"campanus-johannes-antonius","title":"CAMPANUS, Johannes Antonius","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond edition of the collected works of Johannes Antonius Campanus (Giovanni Antonio Campano; c. 1429-1477). Campanus, churchman, humanist and orator, led a varied career which took him to appointments in Naples and Perugia (as a teacher of rhetoric), before his election as Bishop of Crotone in 1463. From 1472-74 he was Papal Governor of Todi. A prominent figure of the day, Campanus was the subject of a Latin epitaph by Poliziano. The present edition reproduces the introduction by Michael Fernus from the first, Roman edition of 1495.  The essays in the present volume demonstrate Campanus' rhetorical and theological expertise to the full, and are comprehensively indexed. They include orations on the Holy Spirit and St. Stephan; we are not told the occasions on which these were delivered - if, indeed, they were anything more than exercises in composition. Other instructive essays include 'De dignitate martrimonii' and 'Contra Turchos ad principes germanos'; biographies of Thomas Aquinas, Pope Pius and Archbishop John of Benevento also appear. The present volume is, however, dominated by a lengthier biographic work, Campanus' six book life of the famous condottiere Andrea Braccio Fortebracci, conte di Montone (1368-1424), who was fatally wounded by his fellow soldier of fortune Francesco Sforza near L'Aquila, northeast of Rome. The work concludes with eight book of Latin epigrams, on religious and secular subjects.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CAMPANUS, Johannes Antonius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816119017807,"sku":"L649","price":3950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_00161.jpg?v=1781795300"},{"product_id":"de-billon-francois","title":"DE BILLON, François","description":"\u003cp\u003eFIRST EDITION of the “most enthusiastic and passionate panegyric [on the rights and merits of women] to have been written between 1450 and 1550” (Albistur \u0026amp; Armogathe, Histoire du feminisme du Moyen-Age à nos jours), Billon’s strenuous early defence of the equality of the ‘second sex’. Another edition was apparently published with the same date and different title but without giving the printer’s name – either a shared or pirated issue. Little is known about his life, but Billon was born in Paris, the nephew of Artus Billon, Bishop of Senlis. He was an author ‘in the Italian style’, and accompanied Cardinal Bellay to Rome as his secretary in the mid-1550s, where he wrote the present treatise, dedicated to Catherine de Medici. Billon died around 1566, and was one of the principal theorists of feminism in the 16thC, and the work forms part of the literary canon of the ‘Women’s Quarrel’ (‘La Querelle des Femmes’), which was a Europe-wide literary battle that raged for over 300 years between various authors attacking, and defending women (hence the martial imagery), reflecting the sometimes serious and sometimes jocular nature of scholarly argument from 1500-1800; these texts were often reliant on theological sources. The work appeared again in 1564, with a slightly different title.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBuilt up as an ‘impregnable fort’ of separate ‘bastions’ (chapters), the work is a robust defence of the role of women, peppered with allegorical references, but arguing strenuously for improvements in female education, encouraging women to abandon home and convent for traditionally male-dominated professions, including politics and the military. Billon also advocates the dissolution of arranged marriages and the ending of a woman’s legal subjugation to her husband. He notes that in Europe, where he says women are held in the greatest subjugation, men are also more subjugated; and argues for the qualities (such as honesty, magnanimity, piety and devotion) and achievements (arguing, i.a., that women make better singers -the ‘angelic sweetness’ of the female voice) of women throughout the ages, even disputing with the Bible. The book also includes the first appearance of the word ‘atheism’ (in the context of a people’s lack of belief) and contains probably the first bio-bibliography of female writers and inventors.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"DE BILLON, François","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816119279951,"sku":"L646","price":9500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_00492.jpg?v=1781795298"},{"product_id":"middleton-richard-of","title":"MIDDLETON, Richard of","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare edition by Benzonus of Middleton's commentary on the fourth book of Peter Lombard's great 'Sentences,' accompanied by 'Quodlibeta,' related disputations. It was one of very few works by an Englishman of sufficient reputation to be internationally printed in the incunable and post-incunable periods. The fourth book covers 'the sacraments in general, the seven sacraments in particular, and the four last things, death, judgement, hell, and heaven.' (Catholic Encyclopaedia). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The Quodlibeta were answers to scholarly questions posed by pupils or by interested parties. They address many and varied topics, religious and scientific, including one of the earliest discussions of hypnotism, auto-suggestion and telepathy. The possibility of resurrection, the nature of the human intellect, whether Peter sinned when he denied Christ, the meaning of 'good luck', if one has sinned having done something through direst necessity, and the morality of the marriage of two persons of wildly differing years i.a. are discussed. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The standard theological textbook of the medieval university, the Sentences ia a compilation of extracts from the Bible, religious Fathers (especially Augustine), and other sources of authority, and covers the whole body of theological doctrine to form the basis for virtually the entire field of Christian theology and its scholastic interpretation. It represented the first effort to bring together commentaries on the full range of theological issues on a systematic basis, and present different views on complex theological points. A commentary on the Sentences was required of every aspiring master of theology, making it the predominant non-Biblical work most commented on up to the 16th C and Middleton's was regarded as a leader in the field. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Richard of Middleton (c. 1249 - 1302) was a Franciscan friar, theologian and philosopher. His works pioneer the move away from a strict Augustinian theology to a more scholastic one. Known as 'doctor solidus et fundatissimus,' he was a friend of Duns Scotus, who also composed a commentary on the Sentences. Perhaps the most famous argument Middleton advances in this commentary (first published in 1489) is his fierce opposition to the ordination of women. As well as the more conventional objections to the weak and emotional character and submissive nature of women rendering them wholly unfit for office, he also advances the compelling argument that women cannot be ordained, as the tonsure which is required for minor orders would not be suitably becoming to females. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This edition, published as part of a 4 volume series between 1507 and 1509, is significantly expanded from the Gregorii editions of 1489 and 1499, and is the most complete Mediavilla commentary on the final, and arguably most theologically significant, section of the Sentences.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MIDDLETON, Richard of","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816120131919,"sku":"L884","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L884-2.jpg?v=1781795296"},{"product_id":"plutarch","title":"PLUTARCH","description":"\u003cp\u003eA very handsome copy of this most influential translation of Plutarch’s Morals by the great French translator Jacques Amyot, from the exceptional library of the English diarist John Evelyn. The Moralia of the 1st-century Greek scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea is an eclectic collection of 78 essays and transcribed speeches, that give tremendous insight into Roman and Greek life, but often are also timeless observations in their own right. They include such disparate subjects as ‘On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great” an important adjunct to his Life of the great general “On the Worship of Isis and Osiris”, and ‘On the Malice of Herodotus’ along with more philosophical treatises, such as ‘On the Decline of the Oracles’, ‘On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance’, ‘On Peace of Mind’ and lighter fare, such as ‘Odysseus and Gryllus’, a humorous dialog between Homer’s Odysseus and one of Circe’s enchanted pigs. The work also includes ten books on the customs of the table, with much on food and wine.\u003cbr\u003e\nJacques Amyot (1513-1594), was tutor to the sons of Henry II (the future Charles IX and Henri III), later a professor at the University of Bourges, ‘Grand Aumonier de France’ and then Bishop of Auxerre,which he turned into an important centre for humanism. He translated the works of Plutarch on the recommendation of Francis I. These translations had considerable impact, not only for their rediscovery of antiquity and of Plutarch, but on the French language itself. Montaigne wrote of these works “Nous autres, ignorants, étions perdus si ce livre ne nous eût relevés du bourbier… C’est notre bréviaire”. He was not just a able translator but his goal was different to the writers of the Pleiade in that he was concerned with reaching a wide, non scholarly audience, and not with hellenistic turns of phrase. He brought French translation into a new era. The works were very successful, appearing in at least five editions within ten years of the first printing, and had huge influence, particularly on Montaigne. Montaigne started working on his ‘Essais’ at roughly the same time as the first edition of Amyot’s translation appeared. Montaigne most often cited his sources, though not always; the first four lines of his Essai “Coutumes de l’île de Cea” open with four sentences copied exactly from Amyot’s translation. Of all the authors of antiquity the one that most palpably influenced Montaigne was Plutarch and in this translation by Amyot. This edition also had a direct influence on the final monumental edition of Montaigne’s Essais edited by Madame de Gournay, copying its format and layout.\u003cbr\u003e\nFrom the library of the famous diarist John Evelyn, 1620-1706 (his sale, Christie’s, 16 March 1978, lot 1197). Evelyn was a scholar, connoisseur, bibliophile and horticulturalist, as well as a writer and thinker of sometimes startlingly current relevance. By his death his library is known to have comprised 3,859 books and 822 pamphlets, the major part of which was dispersed at Christie’s in eight sales in 1977 and 1978. Evelyn (1620-1706) was a central figure of English intellectual life for some half a century and his diaries are one of the greatest resources for the period. His breadth of scholarly interests was reflected in his fine and extensive library.\u003cbr\u003e\nThe acquisition note at the head of pastedown maybe that of John Evelyn’s father, Richard the gunpowder magnate of Wotton Surrey.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PLUTARCH","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816126095695,"sku":"L1856","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0105.jpg?v=1781795278"},{"product_id":"rhodiginus-caelius","title":"RHODIGINUS, Caelius","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of these massive and learned commentaries of the Italian Renaissance in sixteen books. Caelius Rhodiginus is the humanist nickname of Ludovico Ricchieri (1469-1525), a respected professor of Latin and Greek in Rovigo. In 1511, Rhodiginus moved to Milan to take over the lectureship of Demetrios Chalcondyles, under the auspices of the city treasurer and renowned book collector Jean Grolier. The Antiquae lectiones are dedicated to Grolier, with a remembrance of Aldus Manutius, recently dead. The work gathers together a considerable number of short essays and notes on Latin and Greek antiquity, ranging from literature, philology and science to philosophy, history, anthropology and morality. Remarkable considerations on ancient music are to be found in book five, chapters XX-XXIX. The somewhat confusing encyclopaedic structure was modelled after Gellio s Noctes Atticae and Erasmus s Adagia. The book was very well received and was frequently reprinted up to 1666. Despite some initials charges of plagiarism, even Erasmus ended up to value Ricchieri s work. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n In his Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries (London 1869, I, p. 272), Henry Hallam defines it as  by far the best and most extensive collection hitherto made from the stores of antiquity. It is now hardly remembered; but obtained almost universal praise, even from severe critics, for the deep erudition of its author, who, in a somewhat rude style, pours forth explanations of obscure and emendations of corrupted passages, with profuse display of knowledge in the customs and even philosophy of the ancients, but more especially in medicine and botany.  This copy was annotated by a contemporary reader mainly interested in the philosophical passages, while the owner inscribing the head of the title-page commented on two musical essays at pp. 231-233.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RHODIGINUS, Caelius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816127537487,"sku":"L1764","price":5750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Last-Import-12_a9eeeffe-642c-4401-8518-6877f99995a2.jpg?v=1781795273"},{"product_id":"egnatius-giovanni-battista","title":"EGNATIUS, Giovanni Battista","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond edition of this curious collection of exemplary episodes, issued in Paris some months after the princeps of Venice the same year. Giovanni Battista Cipelli (1478-1553), better known by his humanist nickname Egnatius, was a prominent scholar in Renaissance Venice and a trusted collaborator of Aldus Manutius. Very knowledgeable in Latin and Greek, he taught in the School of St Marcus and was appointed official orator of the Venetian Republic. On account of his philological, editorial and teaching skills, he was held in high esteem by Pietro Bembo, Marco Musuro, Marco Antonio Sabellico and even Wilibald Pirckheimer and Erasmus. His most successful work was De Caesaribus, a learned overview of the lives of the Roman, Byzantine, Frankish and German emperors, up to Maximilian I of Augsburg. An extract of the second book circulated independently as an essay on the origins of the Turks. Following the model of Valerius Maximus, Egnatius assembled a vast number of edifying stories from the lives of Venetians and other illustrious personalities of the past and present. It is divided into nine books and each of the numerous chapters is devoted to a topic (either virtue or vice). Book 8 includes a note on the invention of printing (f. 300rv) and a praise of Columbus (f. 301v). Muslims and Ottomans are also frequently mentioned, with several examples drawn especially from the life of Saladin (ff. 172r, 237rv, 242v, 265v, 326r). ). The work was published posthumously by Marco Molin, the son of Egnatius s heir and friend. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This is a copy of the first of the eighteen books published in Paris by Bernardo Torresano on behalf of the Aldine Press over the 1550s and 1560s. Bernardo was the grandson of Andrea Torresano, father-in-law and business partner of Aldus Manutius. The Aldine enterprise tried several times to set up a branch or at least have a trusted dealer in Paris, but the attempts were all quite short-lasting and little fruitful.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"EGNATIUS, Giovanni Battista","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816128553295,"sku":"L2015","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2015-Egnatius-1.jpg?v=1781795268"},{"product_id":"ketham-johannes-de","title":"KETHAM, Johannes de","description":"\u003cp\u003eEarly edition of a masterpiece of the Renaissance art of the book, revised and expanded after the princeps of 1491. Little, if anything, is known about Kentham, who has been identified as Johannes von Kirchheim, a professor from Swabia teaching medicine in Vienna around 1460. Rather than the author of this influential collection of medical essays, he appears to be the owner of the manuscript used by the printer of the first edition who mistakenly took him for the compiler. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The work enjoyed great success and was soon translated into Italian, German and Spanish. This imprint includes Mondino de Luzzi s Anatomia and the treatise on venoms of his pupil and commentator, Alessandro Achillini; most importantly, it retains all the superb apparatus of illustrations designed for the Italian translation of the Fasciculus published in Venice in 1493 by the de Gregorii brothers, incorporating also the minor changes introduced in the later reprints of 1500 and 1513. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  The typography and artistic qualities of this edition [Venice, 1493] of the Fasciculus make it of interest far beyond the world of medicine. It was the first printed medical book to be illustrated with a series of realistic figures: these include a Zodiac man, bloodletting man, planet man, an urinoscopic consultation, a pregnant woman and notably a dissection scene which is one of the first and finest representation of this operation to appear in any book (...) Most of these figures have medieval prototypes, but they are here designed by an artist of the first rank. His identity has never been discovered; it has been suggested   wrongly   that he was the Polifilo master; but he was certainly an artist close to the Bellini school.  PMM, p. 20.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KETHAM, Johannes de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816130486607,"sku":"K32","price":29500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/K32-1.jpg?v=1781795265"},{"product_id":"more-st-thomas","title":"MORE, St. Thomas","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of the first French translation of Sir Thomas More s  Utopia,  by Jean Le Blond d Evreux, lawyer, poet, and champion of the French language. Le Blond s one great chance, as he recognized, was to bring himself to the attention of the elite of the French-speaking world; it did not succeed and Le Blond is only gradually being rediscovered. His translation includes also the prefatory address from Bud é to Thomas Lupet. \u003cbr\u003e\n By far the most important of More's Latin works was the Utopia, the pre-eminent humanistic dialogue, appealing for the application of wisdom in the life and government of men and at the same time a delightful work of entertainment and irony. The origin of a new word in the English language (and subsequently in many others), the work was the model or source for innumerable 'Utopias' or 'distopias', from Bacon's 'New Atlantis' in the C17, to Swift in the C18, to Huxley and Orwell in the C20. It was More's greatest literary work, achieving immediate international success, probably the most significant and enduring by any Englishman of the age. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n \"It was written, like Gulliver's Travels (...) as a tract for the times to rub in the lesson of Erasmus; it inveighs against the new statesmanship of an all-powerful autocracy and the new economics of large enclosures and the destruction of the old common-field agriculture, just as it pleads for religious tolerance and universal education. (...) Utopia is not, as often imagined, More's ideal state; it exemplifies only the virtues of wisdom, fortitude, temperance and justice. It reflects the moral poverty of the states which More knew, whose Christian rulers should possess also the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. (...) [More] is both a saint to the Catholic and a predecessor of Marx to the Communist. His manifesto is and will be required reading for both, and for all shades of opinion between.\" Printing and the Mind of Man 47, on the first edition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MORE, St. Thomas","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816130519375,"sku":"K40","price":29500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/K40-More-2.1.jpg?v=1781795264"},{"product_id":"boccaccio-giovanni-1","title":"BOCCACCIO, Giovanni","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe elegant binding provides a good example, unusual in shape, of the essential Venetian style of the second quarter of the sixteenth century (gilt external panel with apple leaves at internal or external corners, central title in capitals), which was brought to perfection by the so-called Mendoza Binder, recently identified as Andrea di Lorenzo. Though not his work, this was executed by a capable binder, probably pre-dating Andrea by a few years. The gilt initials on the rear cover appear to be those of the owner, perhaps pointing towards a member of the Venetian noble families of Mocenigo or Morosini, bearing the traditional names of Marco or Michele.  Early and accurate imprint of Boccaccio s Corbaccio (or Labirinto d amore) and his epistle to Pino de  Rossi, both first published in 1487 in Florence. With Petrarch, Boccaccio laid the foundations for the humanism of the Renaissance and raised vernacular literature to the level and status of the classics of antiquity. His vivid prose was taken as a model by the sixteenth-century Renaissance scholars in their attempts to create a common written language for the Italian peninsula. Corbaccio (The Crow) recounts the dream of a young man, suffering from his unrequited love for a widow. It is essentially a misogynist invective, contradicting Boccaccio s sympathies for the fairer sex expressed in many others works.   It is still not clear whether Corbaccio should be read as autobiographical or as a literary exercise adopting the anti-feminist point of view but ultimately dealing with torment of love. Written after the political crisis of 1360 in the Commune of Florence, the letter of consolation to Pino de  Rossi, an exiled Florentine statesman, reflects Boccaccio s disillusion with politics and his faith in the rise of a new cultural era opened up by Petrarch s studies of classical literature. The preface by the publisher Bernardo Giunta is of particular interest. It addresses  gli amatori della Lingua Toscana,  i.e. the humanists writing in Italian vernacular, who were praised for their constant effort to re-establish this style as a literary language, as it used to be in the time of Boccaccio.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOCCACCIO, Giovanni","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816131928399,"sku":"L2001","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2001-Boccaccio-1-e1449160600969.jpg?v=1781795259"},{"product_id":"flittner-johann","title":"FLITTNER, Johann","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of the Latin versification of Thomas Murner's ruthless satire Der Schelmen Zunft ( The League of Rogues ), published in 1512. Not to be confused with the contemporary Evangelic pastor and prominent hymn-writer, Johann Flittner was born in Schleusingen, became  Gerichts-Procurator  in Frankfurt, and was appointed poet laureate of the Holy Roman Empire around 1620. This Latin translation after Murner   the early sixteenth-century master of satiric pamphlets who penned, i.a., a harsh parody of Luther   was Flittner s most relevant and successful achievement.   It consists of a series of 33 erudite jokes in the form of illustrated verses against personal vice. Everything is taken and represented in its literal meaning, creating some funny emblems like the one depicting strict censors as people who  go around sifting excrement.  Very fittingly, the work opens with a dedicatory epigram to Momus, the Greek god of mockery, which illustrates the meaning of the title ( Rascal of Rascals: A Teasing Reproach of Contemporary Idleness ).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"FLITTNER, Johann","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816132419919,"sku":"L2143","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2143-Flittner-1.jpg?v=1781795256"},{"product_id":"tornamira-francisco-vicente-de","title":"TORNAMIRA, Francisco Vicente de","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of a wide-ranging astronomical, cosmographical and historical book, one of the first of its kind to be directly written in Spanish. Little is known of the life of Francisco Vicente de Tornamira (1534   1597), born in Tudela, Navarre. Chronographia was the most influential work of this prominent Spanish astronomer, illustrating in 162 chapters the creation of the universe, the various branches of philosophy, the movement of planets, the constellations and the Zodiac, the universal chronology realm by realm, a series of calendars, almanacs and weather forecasts. All the subjects were elucidated further with a large number of illustrations, including, most notably, a traditional depiction of the Armillary Sphere and other globes, the Astronomical Man and the Roman gods on their chariots representing the planets named after them. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A fervent supporter of Ptolemaic vision of the universe against the heliocentric theory, Tornamira comes up with convoluted explanations to bridge the gap between mathematical calculation and the traditional model of planetary movement. A most interesting part is devoted to the solar calendar and the recent reform introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, discussing the exact days of the year in which Lent, Corpus Domini and Easter should be celebrated. Tornamira expanded on this topic in his subsequent work, the Spanish translation of the new Gregorian calendar (1591). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  On p. 40 there is a reference to the Magellan circumnavigation; on p. 497 a list of the midsummer s days of the New World; on p. 538-539 locations of New World cities.  Alden 585\/67.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TORNAMIRA, Francisco Vicente de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816133173583,"sku":"L2100","price":5250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/titlepage_58d321ef-f136-42e3-94ac-f02255bd5756.png?v=1781795254"},{"product_id":"manuzio-paolo-ed","title":"MANUZIO, Paolo (ed.)","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare second edition (first in France) of a very successful collection of letters to or from illustrious personalities of the Italian Renaissance. On account of the success encountered in France by Aldine editions, Bernardo Torresani, grandson of Aldus s partner Andrea, established a separate branch of the press in Paris in 1554. This collection, brought together by Paolo Manuzio, is comprised of epistles written within the thriving intellectual milieu of Padua and Venice as well as the heterodox religious circle following Juan de Vald és s teaching. Amongst the correspondents are: Jacopo Sadoleto, Reginal Pole, Lazzaro Bonamico, Pietro Bembo, Paul III, Benedetto Ramberti, Gasparo Contarini, Pietro Carnesecchi, Gian Battista Ramusio, Pierre Bunel, Gian Battista Egnazio and Paolo Manuzio himself. One letter is addressed to Aldus from the humanist Janus Parrhasius.  Gilding and hand-colouring the Aldine device was a rather common practice in eighteenth-century France amongst wealthy collectors. For instance, the Marquise of Pompidou (1721-1764), the powerful chief mistress of Louis XV and bibliophile, had  her Aldine edition of the Cortegiano 1528 painted in pink, blue and silver (BL: 674.k.15), casting on the anchor and dolphin an unexpectedly fashionable aura.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MANUZIO, Paolo (ed.)","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816134222159,"sku":"L2266","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0732-rotated.jpg?v=1781795216"},{"product_id":"erasmus-desiderius","title":"ERASMUS, Desiderius","description":"\u003cp\u003eEarly and accurate edition of a Renaissance bestseller for letter-writing, first printed in 1522. Erasmus (1466-1536) was by far the most influential humanist of his time, especially as regards education in classics. De conscribendis epistolis was Erasmus s second most famous rhetorical textbook after De copia verborum, appearing in ninety editions. Written in Cambridge between 1509 and 1511, a unauthorised edition of the text came out in 1521 upon the initiative of a former student. This prompted Erasmus to publish in Basel his own full edition. Simon de Colines (c.1480 -1546) was a highly skilled printer, who was trained by Henry Estienne, led the Estienne workshop until Robert entered the business in 1526 and then became an independent and distinguished publisher in Paris. He was renowned for the beauty of his Roman, Greek and Italic fonts. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This handsome binding, made in Leuven about 1545, shows a distinctive central plate illustrating a personification of Hope standing on a plinth (representing Faith as a solid ground) and looking up towards a cross (named as  Christ s service  for mankind) in the sky. This iconography appears to be influenced by the pietism of the Brethren of the Common Life, a religious movement flourished in the Netherlands from mid-fourteenth century on. According to Foot (vol. II, p. 359),  there are four variants of this Spes panel: two are signed I P, one with and one without the word  charitas , and two signed I B, also one with and one without  charitas   (see also S. Fogelmark, Flemish and Related Panel-Stamped Bindings: Evidence and Principles, 1990, pp. 157-169). The present one, signed by I P, is without the mention of charity, i.e. the third theological virtue along with hope and faith. The surrounding quotations from the Psalms are written in Roman capitals and, very exceptionally for blind-tooled inscriptions on bindings, in Italic.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ERASMUS, Desiderius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816134517071,"sku":"L2168","price":9500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0876-e1516207039518.jpg?v=1781795213"},{"product_id":"freig-johannes-thomas","title":"FREIG, Johannes Thomas","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this interesting and popular early school book, intended as  an introduction to all the subjects of humanist education.  German philosopher and jurist, the Calvinist Johannes Thomas Freig (1543-1583) was a pupil and the first biographer of the famous teacher and educational reformer Pierre de La Ram ée (Ramus). Freig was professor of logic and rhetoric in Freiburg and Basel, later becoming rector of the school at Altdorf. He studied Cicero s works and extensively wrote on philosophy. He also was responsible for the influential  Latina grammatica pro schola Altorfina Noribergensium  (1580).  Freig was inspired by the Ramist logical method according to which discourse is founded on arguments or commonplaces. The  Paedagogus  summarises the ideal curriculum focused on classical learning and religious education in the biblical languages (Greek, Hebrew and Latin), by means of dichotomous tables and an analysis expounded in the form of question and answer. The work starts with Freig s dedicatory letter to the prince of Marche (Italy) Giovanni Martino Amelio, providing information on the work s contents and recalling the friendship between the noble Amelio and his father, Nicholas Freig. Then, after a classification of the liberal arts, including a reference list of the most important authors - mainly classical - and a Latin epigram by the French poet Bartelon Pantale√≥n from Ravières (Bourgogne), the work is divided into 24 chapters each dealing with a different subject. They concern Latin, Greek and Hebrew grammar, with particular attention to classical and biblical (Psalms) texts; French conversation on various cultural topics (wine,  food, places of the house); rhetoric (figures of speech); poetics; logic; geometry (the axis and its use in astronomy and measuring of land; coining); architecture (materials, buildings and their arrangement, with a paragraph on the library); physics, based on Tolomeus  model; then ethics, economics, politics, military activities (armies, armour, encampment); history; law and medicine (diseases and their symptoms, with a section on the plague).  The chapter on music is the largest and highlights the distance between theory and musical practice. It especially concerns vocal music together with vernacular psalmody and Latin hymns. Recommended books are Boethius s and Heinrich Glarean s Dodecachordon (1547).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"FREIG, Johannes Thomas","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816136089935,"sku":"L2504","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_5002-e1504965343566.jpg?v=1781795208"},{"product_id":"clement-of-alexandria","title":"CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA","description":"\u003cp\u003eA very good, crisp copy on thick paper of the editio princeps of Clement of Alexandria’s complete extant works, edited by the humanist Pietro Vettori. A Church Father and saint, Clement (c.150-215) converted to Christianity in his youth and studied at the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where he became professor. His thought was imbued with Greek philosophy and he had an excellent knowledge of pre-Christian cults. The ‘Protrepticus’ (‘ ’) is an exhortation to the Greeks to convert to Christianity in which Clement displays his mastery of their theology and mythology. The ‘Pedagogus’ (‘ ’) illustrates how to live according to a Christian ethics and in imitation of Christ. The ‘Stromata’ (‘ ’) is an eclectic work in three books, concerned with Greek philosophy, faith, asceticism, martyrdom, Greek poetry and prophetic biblical books.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLorenzo Torrentino (1499-1563) was appointed printer to Cosimo de’ Medici in 1547. Thanks to the handsome rounded types from his Brabant press, he overcame competitors like the Giunti, and produced for the Medici Press over 250 editions in two decades. Among those who convinced Cosimo to hire an official printer was Pietro Vettori (1499-1585), who planned to publish editiones principes of Greek texts to ‘rescue them from the ruins of time’. In his dedication to Cardinal Marcello Cervino, Vettori calls this edition a ‘monument to a saint and a very learned mind’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe remarkable provenance is traced to Abraham Ortelius (1527-98), Flemish cartographer and the father of the modern atlas. Published in over 25 editions before 1600, his ‘Theatrum orbis terrarum’ (1570) introduced maps into the everyday life of the early modern middle classes and changed the way European civilisation understood world geography. As stated in the 1606 English edition, Ortelius’s library was ‘well-stocked with all kinds of books, so that his house might truly be called a shop of all manners of learning’. This copy sheds light on Ortelius’s interest in Greek texts; until now only one—Suidas’s ‘Lexicon’ (Basle, 1544)—has been assigned to his library, which bears a similar casemark (G\/ckb\/) to this copy (F\/ck\/). Ortelius discussed Greek editions with the humanist Isaac Casaubon and Bonaventura Vulcanius, professor of Greek and Latin at Cologne and Leiden.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe C14 mss in the pastedown are taken from ‘Sermones dominicales Parisienses’ and ‘Summae virtutum ac vitiorum’ by Guillaume Perault (1190-1271), a Dominican preacher and writer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816139923791,"sku":"K113","price":20000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/K113.jpg?v=1781795185"},{"product_id":"hertel-jacob","title":"[HERTEL, Jacob]","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare second edition of this collection of quotations of about 50 ancient Greek authors, such as Menander, Philemon, Apollodorus, Eupolides, Cratinus and many others, with facing Latin text, edited by Hertel. The date appears in the preface. Jacob Hertel (1536-1564) was a deacon and teacher in Basel and died at 28 of plague. He wrote Lutheran works. His collection of sentences was banned in 1783. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This copy probably belonged to the erudite writer Tommaso Garzoni (1549-1589). No record of his handwriting has survived neither autographs or manuscripts. Garzoni studied law at Ferrara and Siena, and then entered the monastery of Santa Maria del Porto in Ravenna (1566). He travelled across Italy and was in contact with many intellectuals of the time, such as Alvise Groto and Torquato Tasso. His works reflected his encyclopaedic culture dealing sometimes with unorthodox topics. Among them  Il teatro de  vari e diversi cervelli mondani  (1583) and especially  La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (1585), both published in Venice. They are compilations of anecdotes and fragments from classical and modern authors. Garzoni was inspired by ancient and contemporary collections of sentences and probably read Hertel s Sentences for the purpose of his writing. He read many other condemned works, particularly by Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The interest in the study of proverbs can be traced back to the philosophical writings of Aristotle. It inspired the work of many Renaissance scholars, from Erasmus onward, who found wisdom in aphorisms from the Classical and Hellenist age. Hertel s work includes fragments from those which did not survive and were passed on by indirect sources. A long preface explains the cultural importance of the proverb and the key role played by printing in the survival of classical texts. It also contains a defence of the author s interest in pagan culture reconciling it with the Christian tradition. There follows a section of Platonic fragments concerning the origin of ancient comedy (Aristophanes, Cratinus and Eupolides). The work is divided into parts each dedicated to a different author including his biography and list of plays, which precedes the catalogue of the sentences itself arranged in alphabetical order and according to political, moral or philosophical topics. Most interesting is the chapter on Menander s sentences which contains information on aspects of life in Athens between IV and III century B.C. (economic crisis, rebellions, famine and war) especially focusing on moral, social and political topics (justice, peace, government, differences between classes, marriage, misogyny). Sentences by other authors feature references to agriculture, conviviality, historical personalities and religion.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"[HERTEL, Jacob]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816140284239,"sku":"L2387","price":7500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2387.jpg?v=1781795184"},{"product_id":"widawski-walenty","title":"WIDAWSKI, Walenty","description":"\u003cp\u003eA very good copy, tall, crisp and clean, of this most uncommon C16 reference text on the controversial question of indulgences. Walenty Widawski (Valentinus Laurentius Vidaviensis) (1537-1601) was a theologian, philologist and professor at the Jagellonian University in Cracow. His  Generalis Controversia de Indulgentiis  is a masterful summa of the meaning, function, regulations and theology of papal indulgences. In the letter to the reader, Widawski attacks heretics who  fearlessly, stupidly, and impiously deny, desecrate, attack and persecute holy indulgences . The fundamental point of the work is that with strong faith in confession a Catholic can request an indulgence from God and be granted absolution. The  Controversia  is divided into questions, conclusions, corollaries, and examples concerning issues like the necessity of indulgences for justification, Lutheran polemics, the theological tradition of indulgences and their typological counterparts in the Old Testament, the benefits of prayer, fasting, and alms for the penitent, and the notorious tenet that  indulgences are worth as much as they sound , depending on the authority, intention and willingness of the guarantor rather than solely on the piety of the receiver and the just cause for which they were requested. The last part contains an oration in which Widawski defends Scholastic theology not only from the attacks of the Protestants but also from Catholics like Erasmus, even though Scholasticism had successfully survived in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe alike. The volume is concluded by a beautiful funeral oration composed by Widawski for his late teacher, Marcin Glicius, in which theological and academic arguments are mellowed by Horace s mournful and gentle reflections on death in  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori .   Jan Januszowski was the son and successor to the renowned Polish printer  azarz Andrysowicz (d. 1577). Their Drukarnia  azarzowa in Cracow, the most important printing centre in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, produced hundreds of high-quality books, of which half in Polish. Jan Januszowski devised the earliest Polish typefaces.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WIDAWSKI, Walenty","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816140644687,"sku":"L2756","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2756.jpg?v=1781795182"},{"product_id":"castlemaine-roger-palmer-earl-of","title":"CASTLEMAINE, Roger Palmer, Earl of","description":"\u003cp\u003eA largely expanded edition of \"A reply to the answer of the Catholique apology, originally published in 1668; the work is a reply to \"The late apology in behalf of the papists,\" \"A seasonable discourse shewing the necessity of maintaining the established religion, in opposition to popery\" and \"A reasonable defence of the Seasonable discourse\", all by William Lloyd. It also contains a reply to \"A vindication of the sincerity of the Protestant religion in the point of obedience to sovereigns\" by Peter Du Moulin and \"A sermon preached November V. 1673. at St. Margarets Westminst.\" by Edward Stillingfleet. Roger Palmer  in the course of a turbulent career, during which he was imprisoned in the Tower of London at least five times, .. tenaciously continued to speak out on behalf of English Catholics and to argue for religious toleration. When not engaged in polemics, he had time to invent a new type of globe, whose description, amply illustrated, was published in 1679 by Joseph Moxon, the royal hydrographer.  Castlemaine s authorial career began in 1666 with a short treatise which later became known as  The Catholique Apology.  In its original form, it appeared anonymously under the long title  To all the Royalists that suffered for his Majesty, and to the rest of the good people of England. The humble apology of the English Catholicks.  This was an appeal for recognition of Catholic loyalty during the Civil War. It finishes with a  Bloudy Catalogue,  flamboyantly printed in red ink, of those Catholics who died in the war. Somewhat intemperate and theatrical, the pamphlet earned for Castlemaine the epithet  the Apologist.  It was answered, rebutted, and refuted several times, until in its last edition of 1674 the whole set of interchanges had swollen enormously in size from a mere 14 to 608 pages. Lord Castlemaine continued his pro-Catholic writings with The Compendium (of the Popish Plot trials, 1679) and The Earl of Castlemain s Manifesto (1681).  Charlotte E. Erwin.  Bookish Plots.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  The Earl of Castlemaine, one of the chief spokesmen for Catholics from 1666 to 1688, heartily agreed that persecution was counterproductive. In France, he observed, the Huguenots had never had fewer converts than when they were secure under the laws. Expressing his horror of England's 24 penal laws for religion, he declared:  I abominate for my own part the very thought of blood and persecution upon a religious account . He had good reason: under the 1585 statute, for one, a Catholic priest could be hanged and quartered as a traitor only for being a priest in England, nothing more. In the summer of 1679, eight priests were executed under this statute, one of them ninety years of age. Castlemaine urged two grounds for granting freedom of worship to religious minorities: large numbers and long continuance. First, it had been recognised by the Edict of Nantes in 1598 that when a religion had grown large in numbers, only prayers, preaching, and books might be used against it, not legal coercion. This ground would have justified giving English Puritans at least the freedom to meet in conventicles. Second, it had been recognized since the days of Constantine and Ethelbert that those following an ancient form of worship, one of long, uninterrupted continuance in the land, had a right to be tolerated by those setting up a new religion. This ground would have justified giving Catholics at least the freedom to worship privately. Ironically, although they were only one per cent of the population, Catholics of that time were denied a privilege that even the Ottoman Turks granted their co-religionists in Eastern Europe, namely, the liberty to worship in the privacy of their homes. Besides that, they were under legal penalties in England for not participating in the state-appointed worship.  Anne Barbeau Gardiner  Catholic Authors and Liberty of Conscience: 1649-1771  \u003cbr\u003e\n The work includes a most interesting bibliography as it contains  A catalogue of all the authors mentioned in this treatise, with the year when, and the place where they were printed  giving a very interesting snap shot of the controversial works available to the author. Also of great interest is the  catalogue of those Catholicks that died and suffered for their loyalty  in England, printed in red at the end of the volume, which continues with a list of the  Names of such Catholiks, whose Estates (both real and Personal) were sold, in pursuance of an act made by the Rump, July 16, 1651, for their pretended Delinquency.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CASTLEMAINE, Roger Palmer, Earl of","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816140775759,"sku":"L2700","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2700-1-1.jpg?v=1781795180"},{"product_id":"le-roy-louis","title":"LE ROY, Louis","description":"\u003cp\u003eGood first edition of Louis Le Roy s much admired and curious work on the mutability of the universe, in its Italian translation by the humanist Ercole Cato. Le Roy (1510?-77) was a humanist, political writer and historian renowned for his translations of Greek authors, including Aristotle and Plato, into French.  De la vicissitudine , first published in French in 1575, was his last work and a definitive compendium of his prismatic ideas on history, politics, letters and philosophy. The main subject of the work are  the variety and vicissitudes of men, peoples, cities, republics, kingdoms and empires . A blend of the classical and Christian traditions inspired by the cultural syncretism of Italian humanism, it concentrates on change inspired by the Renaissance concepts of  mutability  and  variety  as the principle responsible for all historical mutations, from migrations to wars, the history of civilisations, the making and unmaking of the physical world through interactions between the four elements. These mutations, Le Roy argued, are kept together by divine providence which prevents such balance of contraries from turning into chaos. In the section where Le Roy explains the simultaneous creation and eventual end of the Heavens and Stars, the owner of this copy concealed with a pasted slip:  when the Universe will have dissolved, returning to the ancient Chaos and original darkness . Le Roy was especially attracted by the birth, development and ruin of civilisations, which he explored through the medieval model of universal history embracing the origins of man to the present. The work ends in a sombre tone, with a prophetical message based on the warnings of the past, that the climax of European civilisation might soon be undone by new invading peoples, plagues and wars.     Niccol√≤ Manassi (fl. 1590), a scholar and author of the preface, was entrusted with the Venetian Aldine press from 1585, when Aldus the Younger moved to Rome to run the Vatican press.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LE ROY, Louis","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816141300047,"sku":"L2717","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2717.jpg?v=1781795178"},{"product_id":"reserved-6","title":"RESERVED","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of the Latin works of St. Thomas More, a collection of five works and 13 letters, containing the Utopia, the Epigrammata, the translation of Lucian and the epistle to Dionysius, finely printed by Froben, including a beautiful full page woodcut of the island of  Utopia . The Utopia, based on Froben s edition of 1518, includes the prefatory letters of Erasmus to Johannes Froben, Guillaume Bud é to Thomas Lupset, Pierre Gillis to Jerome Busleyden, Thomas More to Peter Gillis and Jerome Busleyden to Thomas More. It also includes the annotations by Erasmus. The Epigrammata is based on the revised first separate edition, also printed by Froben, in 1520, including the dedicatory letter to the German humanist Willibald Pirckheimer by Beatus Rhenanus (a well known editor of classical texts, an associate of Froben, and a friend of both Erassmus and Pirckheimer) in which he writes glowingly about More and his epigrams praising his wit, language, style, learning and ability as both translator and composer. By far the most important of More's Latin works was the Utopia, the pre-eminent humanistic dialogue, appealing for the application of wisdom in the life and government of men, but at the same time a delightful work of entertainment and irony. The origin of a new word in the English language (and subsequently in many others), the work was the model or source for innumerable 'Utopias' or 'distopias', from Bacon's 'New Atlantis' in the C17, through Swift in the C18, to Huxley and Orwell in the C20. It was More's greatest literary work, achieving immediate international success, and probably the most significant and enduring by any Englishman of the age. \"It was written, like Gulliver's Travels ... as a tract for the times to rub in the lesson of Erasmus; it inveighs against the new statesmanship of an all-powerful autocracy and the new economics of large enclosures and the destruction of the old common-field agriculture, just as it pleads for religious tolerance and universal education ... Utopia is not, as often imagined, More's ideal state; it exemplifies only the virtues of wisdom, fortitude, temperance and justice. It reflects the moral poverty of the states which More knew, whose Christian rulers should possess also the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity ... [More] is both a saint to the Catholic and a predecessor of Marx to the Communist. His manifesto is and will be required reading for both, and for all shades of opinion between\" Printing and the Mind of Man 47, on the 1st edn. \u003cbr\u003e\n This copy is particularly interesting as it is preserved in a contemporary English binding showing the work was imported to the UK shortly after its publication, despite Thomas More s then status in England as a  traitor . John Venn in his Biographical History of Gonville and Caius College records a donation made by a  Thomas Thruston MD, fellow commoner , who left all his medical books and ¬£50 to the college circa 1700, most probably the same Thomas Thruston who once owned this work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RESERVED","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816141463887,"sku":"K81","price":9750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/K81-7.jpg?v=1781795176"},{"product_id":"anderton-lawrence","title":"ANDERTON, Lawrence","description":"Extremely rare first edition of this controversial Catholic work clandestinely printed in England, probably at a secret press in Lancashire connected with William Wrench. Brerely was a pseudonym, and the true author is supposed to be the seminary priest Lawrence Anderton, though the text is sometimes attributed to James Anderton. It represents the beginnings of a new sort of controversial literature that aimed to refute its opponents using his, or his supporters', own words. This work aimed to establish Catholic claims \"by the testimonies of the learned Protestants themselves\". This first edition proved \"something of a sensation\" on publication and was \"frequently praised and imitated by subsequent Catholic apologists\" (Milward). The work is particularly interesting for its accounts of the earlier reformation movements of Huss, Wyclif, Waldo and others and their distinction from Lutheran Protestantism, as well as its historical appeal to Englishmen that they and their kings lived and died in the Catholic faith, with numerous examples. A short but valuable bibliography of Protestant writers and their works precedes the text.\r   Bereley  was a seasoned controversialist. As early in James s reign as 1604, Bereley s  Apologie of the Romane Church  had set out to prove  the continuance of the Catholike Romane Religion ever since the Apostles time , that  the Protestantes Religion was not so much as in being, at or before Luthers first appearing , and that  Catholickes are no less Loyall and dutiful to their Soveraigne then Protestantes . All the above theses were announced on the title page of the book that had no author s name on it, but was decorated with a cartouche containing the monogram of Jesus s name, IHS, which had been adapted as a Jesuit insignia, and  Printed with licence  probably at a secret English press.  Kathleen Lynch.  Protestant Autobiography in the Seventeenth-Century Anglophone World. \r The Anderton family were associated with the printing of many clandestine Catholic works in England, a very dangerous occupation.  In the  Catalogue of Popish Books  printed in his Foot out of the Snare, 1624, the gossipy but sometimes remarkably well-informed John Gee has the following entry:  The reformed Protestant, by Brerely. There was a printing house supprest some three yeers since in Lancashire, where all Brerely his workes, with many other Popish Pamphlets, were printed.  The  printing-house  in Lancashire  is undoubtedly the secret press associated with the Anderton family of Birchley Hall, near Wigan. A \u0026amp; R list sixteen books from this press, all printed between 1615 and 1621, including two by the unidentified author who used the pseudonym John Brereley, sometimes thought to be Lawrence Anderton.  A. F. Allison.  Brereley's Reformed Protestant. \r An extremely rare first edition.","brand":"ANDERTON, Lawrence","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816141529423,"sku":"L2691","price":5250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2691-2-2.jpg?v=1781795175"},{"product_id":"anderton-lawrence-1","title":"ANDERTON, Lawrence","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition thus, a much expanded version of Brerely's 1604 'Apologie of the Roman Church'. Brerely was a pseudonym, and the true author is supposed to be the seminary priest Lawrence Anderton, though the text is sometimes attributed to James Anderton. It represents the beginnings of a new sort of controversial literature that aimed to refute its opponents using his, or his supporters', own words. This work aimed to establish Catholic claims \"by the testimonies of the learned Protestants themselves\". The original version proved \"something of a sensation\" on publication and was \"frequently praised and imitated by subsequent Catholic apologists\" (Milward). The work is particularly interesting for its accounts of the earlier reformation movements of Huss, Wyclif, Waldo and others and their distinction from Lutheran Protestantism, as well as its historical appeal to Englishmen that they and their kings lived and died in the Catholic faith, with numerous examples. A short but valuable bibliography of Protestant writers and their works precedes the text. The 1608 edition appears in two issues. The present copy contains both the original first issue title page, and the reprinted one with new preliminary leaves which comprises the second issue. These additional leaves form an attack on Thomas Morton who had answered the first edition. This work was printed in small numbers at St. Omer in France by the English College for export to the English market where such works were actively suppressed. Copies in good condition are particularly rare.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ANDERTON, Lawrence","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816141758799,"sku":"L2692","price":3750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2692.jpg?v=1781795175"},{"product_id":"aretino-pietro","title":"ARETINO, Pietro","description":"\u003cp\u003eA very lovely copy, beautifully bound for Charles de Valois, the son of King Charles IX of France, of these rare editions of Aretino printed clandestinely by John Wolfe in London. These English editions of Aretino s work, particularly the comedies, pose the question as to whether Shakespeare had read Aretino in this form.  All of the four comedies provide significant cues for Shakespeare s plays especially for the plot construction of such works as the Taming of the Shrew, the Comedy of Errors, and Twelfth Night, where we find some unique solutions in the comedic structure which were anticipated by Aretino s innovative theatre.  Michele Marrapodi.  Shakespeare and the Italian Renaissance:.  It is certain that Arteino was of great influence on other contemporary English writers who borrowed heavily from his works, particularly Jonson and Middleton.  One of the more versatile and prolific writers in the Italian vernacular, Peter Aretino made a significant impact on the literary, political, social, and artistic world of 16th century Italy. .. At the court of Rome, Aretino developed his skill at political and clerical gossip in the form of pasquinades and lampoons. During his stay there, Aretino also drafted La Cortigiana (The Courtesan) in which he satirized the papal court and Baldesar Castiglione s manual for courtly behaviour, Il Cortegiano (the Courtier). While Aretino is frequently described as an anti-classical, anti-humanistic, and scurrilous author who proudly posted of never having studied Latin, La Cortigiana reveals a rich heritage of sources, includingVirgil, and Erasmus, and the contemporary humanistic treatise . In 1534 Aretino published the first part of I Ragionamenti, a series of dialogues in which prostitutes vividly discuss their profession. Like many of his other works, this play interweaves literary and historical plots with a satirical target as it parodies the literary form of the dialogue and Neoplatonic theories then in vogue as embodied in Pietro Bembo s  Gli Asolani . Jo Eldridge Carney  Renaissance and Reformation, 1500-1620: A Biographical Dictionary.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  The printer John Wolfe worked for some years in Florence, and was active in London between 1579 and 1601. In the early1580 s he decided to print, though surreptitiously, Machiavelli s two most controversial works as well as Aretino s Ragionamenti in Italian. His work did not have an outright clandestine nature, but by inserting fictitious Italian cities as places of publication on the frontispiece he was able to avoid the control of the Stationers  Company  In practice, Wolfe was printing for three different categories of readers. English people who could read Italian; the Italian community in England; and the foreign market. Evidence of the latter is offered by his involvement in the Frankfurt book fair in which books in the English language were not normally present; the two former categories indicate an intellectual elite.  Giuliana Iannaccaro.  Enforcing and Eluding Censorship: British and Anglo-Italian Perspectives.   by printing in foreign vernaculars, and using a fictitious imprint, (Wolfe) could evade the restrictions imposed on his business by the monopolist printers Wolfe became the recognized leader of the whole movement against privileges  Woodfield,  Surreptitious Printing in England . Another reason for his surreptitious printing was to circumvent the new papal Index which limited what could be printed by Italian firms \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Charles de Valois d Angouleme, (1573   1650) was the illegitimate son of Charles IX, king of France, and Marie Touchet. He was born at the Ch√¢teau de Fayet in Dauphin é in 1573. His father, dying in the following year, commended him to the care of his younger brother and successor, Henry III who faithfully fulfilled the charge, commending him in turn, on his deathbed, to Henry IV of France. He fought for Henry IV, then for Louis XIII at the siege of La Rochelle and in the wars of Languedoc, Germany and Flanders. His library, particularly rich in Italian and Spanish works, was bequeathed by his eldest son, Louis de Valois, Count of Alais, to the Monastery of Guiche, in the Charolais and was dispersed during the Revolution. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A beautiful, exceptionally preserved copy, of these rare and important editions of Aretino.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ARETINO, Pietro","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816142184783,"sku":"L2796","price":10500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2796-Aretino-1.jpg?v=1781795172"},{"product_id":"more-st-thomas-1","title":"MORE, St. Thomas","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond edition of the verses written by the champion of English Catholicism. Thomas More (1478-1535) was the most skilled and appreciated scholar of Henry VIII s reign prior to the latter s break with Rome. His refusal to join the king s reformation cost him his life. His visionary depiction of the perfect government on the island of Utopia inspired generations of thinkers and politicians. Despite More s hesitations, the Epigrammata first appeared into print as part of the collection issued by Froben in March 1518 under Erasmus  and Beatus Rhenanus  supervision, together with Utopia and Erasmus s poems. A few months later, between November and December, Froben published the same three-part collection, apparently after some revision by the author. Fairfax Murray points out that  more often than not the three parts (either edition) are found separately . Indeed, the BL has an independent copy of the Epigrammata of March (11409.g.47.). The book opens with a letter from Rhenanus to Willibald Pirckheimer, followed by the Progymnasmata, an erudite dialogue in Greek and Latin verses between More and the grammarian William Lily (c.1468-1522).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MORE, St. Thomas","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816145363279,"sku":"L2232","price":4750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2232-More-Thomas-1-e1541260156980.jpg?v=1781794946"},{"product_id":"rossi-girolamo","title":"ROSSI, Girolamo","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this important and extensive work in ten books on the civil, religious and artistic history of Ravenna, from its origins until the C16th, by Girolamo Rossi (1539-1607), member of an illustrious family from Parma and a well known historian and physician at Pope Clement VIII s court.   The work is unique in the historiography on cities gathering a number of literary sources from the classical to the early modern age, as well as of documents from the archives of Rome and Ravenna. Several centuries of history are embraced. Starting from the pre-Roman age, the book describes Ravenna as the capital of the Western Empire (402-476), the reigns of Odoacre and Teodorico, the Byzantine Exarchate, until the time of the city-state and aristocratic government under the Traversari and Da Polenta families, and eventually, Venetian (1441-1509) and ecclesiastical dominion.   The work is complex but well structured, with a rich paratext including a dedication to the cardinal Giulio Feltrio della Rovere (23 February 1571), which celebrates Ravenna Church and its relationship with Rome; then poems in Latin by contemporary scholars, particularly Orazio Toscanella, Natalino Conti and Vincenzio Carrari, praising Rossi s work and Ravenna s eternal fame; a letter to Ravenna where the author expresses his gratitude to the civil authorities for supporting him and his family. Then follows a detailed index of names, the text of the ten books and genealogical trees of the Traversari and Da Polenta families.  Each book methodically focuses on a period of Ravenna s history and is divided into different sections providing also information on topography, Christian culture and architecture. For instance, the first book concerns the mythic foundation of the city by descendants of Noah and the etymology of the name; the sixth regards numerous events across a wide range of time (Frederick Barbarossa s stay, support for the Crusaders, Frederick II s reign, Dante and the crisis of the aristocratic government); the eighth is on the period 1500-1513 and includes many pages on Cesare Borgia, Margherita da Rossi and Pope Giulio II; books nine and ten describe events from 1513 to the 1568, with references to Papal politics, Guicciardini and the author s public life; the tenth is mainly dedicated to the age of the archbishop Giulio della Rovere (1563-66).  The work is written in an elegant Latin and shows Rossi s encyclopaedic culture which ranges from law to hagiography, from medicine to astronomy, with a keen interest in architecture and urban planning. Rossi minutely describes famous religious buildings, such as the churches Basilica of San Vitale and San Giovanni Evangelista, giving valuable evidence of a series of monuments since destroyed.  Countless inscriptions, letters, biographies and legal acts are quoted (Mario Pierpaoli,  Girolamo Rossi, medico e storico ravennate , Ravenna 1996), as are classical, medieval, and contemporary authorities.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ROSSI, Girolamo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816145494351,"sku":"L2374","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_2390.jpg?v=1781794947"},{"product_id":"white-francis","title":"WHITE, Francis","description":"\u003cp\u003eA handsome, unsophisticated copy, of the first edition of the this interesting work by the Protestant controversialist Francis White, an account of his debates with the Jesuit theologian Fisher.  Early in 1622 he was employed by James I as a disputant against John Fisher (1569 1641), to stay the Roman catholic tendencies of Mary, countess of Buckingham. He held two  conferences;  the third (24 May 1622) was entrusted to William Laud. White s  Replie  to Fisher .. was dedicated to James I, whose copy is in the British Museum; it was reprinted by subscription, Dublin, 1824, 2 vols. 8vo. An account, from the other side, is in  Trve Relations of Svndry Conferences,  1626, 4to, by  A. C. . On 14 Sept. 1622 White was presented to the deanery of Carlisle. He took part, in conjunction with Daniel Featley or Fairclough, in another discussion with Fisher, opened on 27 June 1623, at the house of Sir Humphrey Lynde, in Sheer Lane, London; a report was published in  The Fisher catched in his owne Net,  1623, 4to; and more fully (by Featley) in  The Romish Fisher cavght and held in his owne Net,  1624, 4to.  DNB. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Among the emissaries whom the Romanists employed at this time in England, one of the most active and intelligent was a Jesuit of the name of Piersey, who has been better known under the assumed appellation of Fisher. He had obtained admission to the countess, mother of Villiers, who was afterwards duke of Buckingham, and had made some progress in converting her to the Romish faith, in the hope that through the influence of her son, she might be able to obtain further indulgences from the court in favour of the Roman catholics. The duke of Buckingham, anxious that justice should be done to the whole of the important argument, requested Dr. Francis White, who had obtained a reputation, from his sermons preached at St. Paul s, for skill in the Romish controversy, to meet the Jesuit, and maintain the cause of protestantism, in the presence of the countess, the lord keeper Williams, and himself. An occurrence of so much interest, connected so directly with the person of the favourite, was soon communicated to the king; and a second conference was accordingly arranged, at which the king himself was present, and many particular questions of theology were discussed.  Although a strict injunction had been given that no account of these conferences should be published, which had not been seen and approved by both the parties engaged in them, Fisher did not neglect the opportunity they afforded him of circulating a relation of what had past, and expressing himself to the great disadvantage of his opponents. This was in itself a sufficient reason with bishop Laud and Dr. White for setting forth, on their side, as faithful narratives as they could, of the three conferences.  Edward Cardwell.  Relation of the Conference between William Laud .. and Mr. Fisher The Jesuit.  Richard Baylies  account of the third conference, added at the end of the work, was in fact, as he later acknowledged, written by Laud himself.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WHITE, Francis","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816145756495,"sku":"L2707","price":6750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2707-2-3.jpg?v=1781794944"},{"product_id":"more-st-thomas-2","title":"MORE, St. Thomas","description":"\u003cp\u003eExceptionally important first edition of the works of St. Thomas More in English, edited by his nephew, William Rastell, arranged in chronological order with marginal notes and a dedication to Queen Mary; the first collected edition of any of More s works.  Thomas More was called by his contemporary John Colet  the one genius of Britain.  Coming as he did at the end of the Middle ages and at the beginning of the modern era, he was a great transitional figure, passionately devoted to the good things of medieval Europe and yet an enthusiastic partisan of the New Learning. He was the warm friend and supporter of Erasmus, and was in close touch with all the important figures in England of his time. With a style inherited, as R.W. Chambers points out, from the great English devotional writers, he immensely broadened the scope of English prose. Still his work, although it includes as often-reprinted classic in the Utopia, remains in large part inaccessible to the modern reader. The English writings have lain dormant in the black-letter of the 1557 folio, printed by his nephew William Rastell. Among the many items in that volume is an important text of the History of Richard III, based, according to Rastell, on a copy in More s own hand. (the text printed by Grafton in his edition of Hardyng s chronicle (1543) is corrupt.) The modern reader knows this History as it is reflected in Shakespeare s Richard III, which is based upon it.  David R. Watkins.  The St. Thomas More Project  The Yale University Library Gazette. Vol. 36, No. 4. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Given the conditions that More faced in the Tower of London during his last year it is all the more remarkable that he continued his writings. Towards the end, when paper and pen had been taken from him, he still managed to write letters in charcoal to the family. His Treatise on the Passion and the Latin version, Exposito passionis, give a vivid account of Christ s last hours before his death on the Cross, and his Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation is sometimes regarded as his finest work in English. On his death all his works and papers passed to his daughter Margaret (died 1544) and then to a nephew, William Rastell, who compiled the complete English Works in 1557. More s Latin works were collected and printed partly in Basel under the title Lucubriationes in 1563 and more fully in Louvain in 1565 66 under the title Opera omnia.  Keith Watson.  Sir Thomas More.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  More s witty and ironic presentation of Richard and his villainy seem to have been particularly influential, as were the parallels he drew between theatre and politics:  And so they said that these matters bee kynges games, as it were stage playes, and for the more part plaied upon scaffolds  (p. 66).  British Library. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Thomas More s brother-in-law, John Rastell, was one of England s earliest printers, and he became the printer and publisher of More s important work of religious controversy, the Dialogue Concerning Heresies, in 1529. After this, up to the time of More s death in 1535, John Rastell s son William carried on the work of printing and publishing More s voluminous works of controversy, in close association with the author. And so, appropriately, William Rastell became the editor and publisher of his uncle s collected English works, as he tells us in his dedication to Queen Mary, explaining that he  did diligently collect and gather together, as many of those his works, books, letters, and other writings, printed and unprinted in the English tongue, as I could come by, and the same (certain years in the evil world past, keeping in my hands, very surely and safely) now lately have caused to be imprinted in this one volume.  ... From the great series of last letters written from the Tower, preserved by More s family, and first published by William Rastell at the very end of his 1557 folio, we learn all we will ever know about the inner drama of that famous prisoner in his last days. The letters are numerous and long, except for the few brief and pathetic letters that More and Rastell tell us were  written with a coal  .. The greatest single contribution of the 1557 folio to history is, I believe, the arrangement, annotation, and publication of these letters, which gave to generations following the complex portrait of More that has come down to our own day  Louis L. Martz.  University of Rochester Library Bulletin: The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght. Volume XXXVI.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MORE, St. Thomas","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816146575695,"sku":"L2834","price":35000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2834-1.jpg?v=1781794941"},{"product_id":"barberini-maffeo-pope-urban-viii","title":"BARBERINI, Maffeo [POPE URBAN VIII]","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe beautifully gilt binding appears to borrow, with plainer intentions, the design and rhombus-shaped decorations on BL C108h12, produced c.1630s by the Rospigliosi bindery (i.e., Gregorio and Giovanni Andreoli) in Rome. Very good, crisp copy, in fine impression, of Maffeo Barberini s  Poemata . Born in Florence, Barberini (1568-1644) was educated by the Society of Jesus in Rome and earned a doctorate in law at Pisa. Thanks to his uncle, Pope Clement VIII, he was appointed papal legate at the French court. In 1623, he was elected Pope with the name of Urban VIII; during his pontificate, Galileo was called to Rome to disown his cosmological theories. A great patron of scholars and artists like Athanasius Kircher and Claude Lorraine, Barberini was himself a talented poet. First printed in Venice in 1628,  Poemata  gathers his most important compositions in Latin and Greek, from biblical paraphrases to reflections on virtues and vices, poems addressed to scholarly friends and relatives, odes to saints and even musings elicited by the sight of beautiful statues. The collection blends the versatile erudition of late humanism, the jovial nature of  alba amicorum  and the darker undertones of international politics. Three poems are devoted to the seminal studies on the  marvels  of the animal and botanical world written by Ulisse Aldrovandi,  guardian of Nature . Another celebrates the saintly death of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, beheaded in 1587; the darkness which has covered the earth is lit up not by the burning torches at her funeral but by the stars in the heavens.  De sole et ape  provides a key to the typographical iconography of the volume, decorated with shining suns and the bees of the Barberini. The explanation of the emblematic motifs is that bees  wax can survive the heat of fire, be used to make torches and, like the sun, can chase darkness away. This edition the second to be printed by the  Typographia Camerae Apostolicae  which had retained the privilege since 1631 was advertised as revised and re-set with new and more elegant types.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BARBERINI, Maffeo [POPE URBAN VIII]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816146739535,"sku":"L2705","price":3500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2705-1.jpg?v=1781794938"},{"product_id":"lactantius-with-tertullian","title":"LACTANTIUS  [with] TERTULLIAN","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe handsome binding was made in central-northern Italy. It resembles a Bolognese binding in de Marinis II, 1270 bis.  Very good, well-margined editions of these milestones of early Christian apologetics, edited by the monk and humanist Onorato Fascitello (1502-64). Born in Numidia, Lactantius (c.250-325AD) moved to Greece where he taught rhetoric and converted to Christianity. After resigning his post to escape Diocletian s religious persecutions, he lived in poverty until he became advisor to Emperor Constantine. The main focus of his works is the criticism of pagan cults and the formulation of a coherent Christian theology.  Institutiones divinae  was the first attempt at a large-scale theorisation of Christianity in Latin; it was later turned into an  Epitome . The owner of this copy was interested in Book I on  false  religions. He highlighted sections on pagan deities and demi-gods in Greek and Egyptian cults e.g., Mercury (or Thoth), the Sibyls, Hercules Africanus, Apollo and Jupiter and on Euhemeristic theories explaining why pagan gods were rather posthumously deified humans. Lactantius conceived  De opificio Dei  as a defence of Christian truth during Diocletian s persecutions, and wrote  De ira Dei  against Epicurean and Stoic beliefs. The poems  Phoenix ,  Carmen de Dominica Resurrectione  and  Carmen de Passione Domini  are no longer attributed to Lactantius; the first inspired the famous, namesake Anglo-Saxon poem. Tertullian (155-240AD), of whom little is known, was born in Carthage and was probably a lawyer and priest. He became one of the earliest defenders of Christianity against pagan cults like Gnosticism; he was also the first writer in Latin to use the word  trinity . Tertullian s  Apologeticus  discussed key theological questions like the nature of Christ and the devil, the kingdom of God, the Roman religion, and why pagan deities should not be considered  gods . This Aldine work only appeared, very appropriately, bound with Lactantius s critique of paganism. Unlike in the first Aldine edition of 1515, it is here recorded in the initial t-p and its pagination integrated in the register.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LACTANTIUS [with] TERTULLIAN","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816153129295,"sku":"L2714","price":3950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2714.jpg?v=1781794929"},{"product_id":"baudouin-francis","title":"BAUDOUIN, Francis","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn excellent copy of this sammelband of works by the French humanist Francois Baudouin, large copies, beautifully printed in Basle by Oporinus. Baudouin was an eminent French humanist jurist and theologian. Interested in the early history of Roman law, he emphasized the importance of history in the development of the law. The first volume is one of his principal legal works, De Legibus XII Tabularum, a study of the history and significance of the Twelve Tables. The last title addresses the legal status of the early Christian Church. Although a legal scholar Baudouin was, perhaps inevitably in mid C16th France, caught up in the religious conflicts of the period.  At first possessed of filial devotion to Calvin, François Baudouin, with his love of the Law and the tools necessary for legal study (grammar, philology, and history) developed a doctrine of the church wholly at odds with that of Calvin. While Baudouin s transformation occured over the course of years, his final break with Calvin came with a swift ferocity and a violent animosity. Francois Baudouin s early life mirrored Calvin s: both began their higher education in the study of law, both had the same legal and humanist influences, and both subsequently embraced the reformation, resulting in their exiles. The trajectory of Baudouin s Protestant pilgrimage reached its zenith in 1547, when he served as Calvin s secretary, living in Calvin s home. The denouement of Baudouin s journey,.., took him back to the Catholic church, informed far more by humanism than theology. .. the move also included a strong ecclesiological bent, one that produced rancorous diatribes between Baudouin and Geneva.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A most interesting early English provenance. The book was owned by the British classical scholar John Price, bought by him in Rouen in 1632. He was both an author and publisher and had an extensive library and published several works himself including commentaries on the New Testament. He was a Roman Catholic who described himself as  Anglo-Britannus . In 1635 he published the Apologia of Apuleius at Paris. From 1652 the Medicis employed him as their  keeper of coins . He was also appointed professor of Greek at Pisa. In 1661 he moved, under patronage of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, to Rome where he died in 1676. Rouen was an important centre for publishing outside of Paris.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BAUDOUIN, Francis","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816154308943,"sku":"L2632","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG-20190404-WA0030.jpg?v=1781794922"},{"product_id":"abravanel-juda-ben-isaac","title":"ABRAVANEL, Juda ben Isaac.","description":"\u003cp\u003eAbravanel s (1465   ca. 1535) important philosophical treatise on love, first published posthumously in 1535. The Dialoghi was exceedingly popular and went through at least five editions (four by Aldus) in twenty years, and was quickly translated into French, Hebrew and Latin. It is notably one of the first original philosophical compositions to be published in the vernacular.  Don Yehudah Abrabanel, the son of Rabbi Yitshak Abrabanel, has been one of the most extraordinary and fascinating personalities in Jewish philosophy on the threshold of modernity. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n His Dialoghi d Amore has become one of the most celebrated books of Renaissance literature and thought. Despite his personal afflictions   the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the abduction and forced conversion of his son by the King of Portugal (about which he wrote a moving poem  complaint on the times )   he has bequeathed to us one of the most outstanding philosophical books of the epoch. Dialoghi d Amore is one of the chief expressions of Italian Platonism, revived and flourishing at the time.  Ze ev Levy.Modeled on the Platonic dialogue, the Dialoghi d Amore examines the nature of spiritual and intellectual love, which is regarded by Abravanel as the principle dominating all existence, reaching its apotheosis in the love of God. He structured his three dialogues as a conversation between two  characters , Philo, representing love, and Sophia, representing science or wisdom. The first dialogue is a contemplation on the distinctions between love and desire, or the types of love and their true nature. The second postulates that love is the dominant principle of all life and describes how love operates in human beings  lives. The third and most lengthy is a discussion of God s love, how it encompasses all of existence, from the lowest creatures to the heavens. A discussion of beauty and the soul follows, with an analysis of Plato s ideas. The dialogues cover a huge range of subjects including beauty, the intellect, fascination, the influence of the planets, reproduction, nature, psychology, mans place in the universe, creation, reason, friendship, virtue, poetry and much more.  Abrabanel attempts (especially in the third dialogue of his book) to bring about a merger between Jewish-religious conceptions and Renaissance Platonism. To this purpose he welds together the Jewish concept of love of God with a religious-aesthetic idealization of the world. For the first time in the history of Jewish thought, there was a philosopher who awarded space to aesthetic reflections .. and who set out to explicate and define beauty.  Ze ev Levy. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Vivian de Sola Pinto (1895-1969) was a poet, professor, literary critic, translator and historian ??. A close friend of Siegfried Sassoon and his second in command on the western front, he appears in  Memoirs of an Infantry Officer  etc under the pseudonym Velmore. A leading authority on D.H. Lawrence, Pinto gave evidence for the defence in the 1960  Lady Chatterly s lover  obscenity trial. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n An unsophisticated copy of this important work, beautifully printed at the Aldine press.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ABRAVANEL, Juda ben Isaac.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816154702159,"sku":"L2931","price":2350.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_20190807_143913.jpg?v=1781794921"},{"product_id":"epiphanius-saint-bishop-of-constantia","title":"EPIPHANIUS Saint, Bishop of Constantia","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe beautifully printed first edition of the  Lives and deaths of the Prophets  by Epiphanus Bishop of Cyprus, with the first editions of writings by two other Greek Fathers, Gregorius of Nazianzus and Sophronius, beautifully bound for Jacques Auguste de Thou. The work was edited by with a Latin translation by Alban Thorer. (1489 - 1550), physician, philologist, rector of the University of Basel, and translator and publisher of various ancient medical works. He translated the work of his contemporary Andreas Vesalius  De humani corporis fabrica  into German. Thorer followed the Reformation in 1529 and taught with the lecturers Johannes Oekolampad, Bonifacius Amerbach and Oswald B√§r at the University of Basel. The university closed in 1529-1532. He left Basel and continued his studies in France, at Montpellier, where Nostradamus was a fellow student. Whilst in Montpellier Thorer discovered, on the island monastery of the Maguelone, near Montpellier, an Apicius manuscript, which he later published in 1541 at Basel.  the real object of the editor and translator Albanos Torinus (thorer), a medical doctor, was to assemble all the biblical Lives and make them available in a bilingual edition not so much to act as an exemplar, but to encourage young people to learn Greek.  Irena Backus  Life Writing in Reformation Europe.  The work also contains Jerome s  De viris illustribus  with the Greek translation of Sophronius and Erasmus  notes.  This copy was bound for the French statesman and historian,  maitre de la librairie du Roi  and great book collector Jacques-Auguste de Thou. It is a fine example of a book bound for De Thou as a bachelor with his first arms and monogram, executed before his marriage in 1587 to his first wife Marie de Barbançon de Cany. The celebrated Bibliotheca Thuana was bought en bloc in 1679\/80 by the Marquis de M énars, Jean-Jacques Charron; it later passed into the hands of the Rohan-Soubise family, and was sold off in 1789 at the auction of Charles de Rohan's collection.  The De Thou library had a reputation as the finest private collection of its day; it numbered about 6,600 volumes at his death, and was greatly increased by his children [...] Most of de Thou's books were quite simply bound, though often in high-quality morocco, with an arms block on the covers and cipher on the spine  P. Needham, Twelve Centuries of Bookbindings. This volume is listed in the sale catalogue of the Thuanus library among the theological books,  Liber de vitis Prophetarum G.L. Alb. Torino interpr. 4¬∞Bas. 1529  (Catalogus Bibliothecae Thuanae, Paris 1679 p. 28).  A fine copy of this work in a fine, very elegant De Thou binding, beautifully preserved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"EPIPHANIUS Saint, Bishop of Constantia","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816154734927,"sku":"L2922","price":8500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2922-front.jpg?v=1781794920"},{"product_id":"hall-joseph-3","title":"HALL, Joseph","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of some of the works of the celebrated theologian and author Joseph Hall, published four years after his death containing many as yet unpublished including two important pieces of autobiography, many of his unpublished sermons on a multitude of subjects, and several controversial writings. The two autobiographical works are  Observations of some Specialities of Divine Providence In the Life of Jos. Hall, Bishop of Norwich  and his tract  Hard Measure  which details the severe treatment to which himself and other prelates were subjected under Parliament during Charles  reign.  Hall is responsible for initiating several literary genres. In his own day, he was acknowledged as a  leader of literary fashion . Tom Fleming Kinloch describes him as a pioneer in more than one branch of literature. Hall has been regarded by scholars mainly as a master of satire. John Milton criticised Hall s writings [but] despite Milton s criticism there have been many voices praising Hall s contributions to English literature. Arnold Davenport quotes Pope, who found Hall s satirical works to be amongst the best poetry and authentic satire in the English language.  Damrau  The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany.   Several folio editions of his works were published by the bishop in his lifetime, in 1621, 1625, and 1634. The preface of the first folio has an extravagant laudation of King James, reprinted in the folio of 1634. A small quarto, with a collection of posthumous pieces called  The Shaking of the Olive Tree,  was published in 1660; in 1662 a more complete collection of the bishop s works.  DNB.  Joseph Hall (1574-1656), Bishop of Norwich, poet, moralist, satirist, controversialist (against Milton, i.a.), devotional writer, theological commentator, autobiographer and practical essayist, was one of the leading hommes de lettres of the Jacobean age. He was at the centre of public life under James I representing him at the Synod of Dort in 1618, assisting in his negotiations with the Scots and in Lord Doncaster s French embassy and was foremost among the defenders of the temporal and spiritual powers of the Bishops in the Puritan Parliament of 1640-41. However, it is as a writer that Hall is now remembered. Fuller called him  the English Seneca for his pure, plain, and full style . While Hall may not have been the first English satirist, as he claimed, he certainly introduced the Juvenalian satire into English.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HALL, Joseph","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816157618511,"sku":"L2223","price":2950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/20190403_183312.jpg?v=1781794902"},{"product_id":"rabelais-francois-2","title":"RABELAIS, Francois","description":"\u003cp\u003eA beautifully illustrated counterfeit edition of the major works of Rabelais, copying the celebrated Valence edition of 1547. The illustration is composed of a series of 167 vignettes in the Lyon-style, a very charming form of popular imagery, many of which appear to have been copied from the first edition. The quality of the printing is clearer than in the original; Brunet  Dans cette contrefaçon, les figures sont un peu plus nettes que dans l original . Many early edns. of the various parts of Rabelais  works do not state the printer or place of publication, or in a few cases give false information, owing to the ribald and in places anti-clerical subject-matter, which exposed his works to censorship: they had, for example, been on the papal Index since at least 1559. Due to the nature of their clandestine printing they were often cheaply and hastily printed and they were popular works, usually well read, so good copies such as this one are particularly rare. The editors here went to a good deal more trouble than in other counterfeit editions of the period, such as those printed by Fuet or Martin, with its very charming suite of illustration.  Rabelais was, for generations, read only in distorting editions which generated jokes of their own. All his Greek was turned into gibberish; careless arrangement of material by printers led Sterne to believe that Rabelais was sporting typographically with his reader by displacing a poem or by leaving blanks   hence the blanked-out chapter in Tristram Shandy. These editions   sometimes printed clandestinely in France   kept Rabelais alive but helped to create a  Rabelais legend  which had nothing to do with the works he wrote. Montaigne enjoyed Rabelais, finding him at least  simplement plaisant  ( straightforwardly delightful ). Molière assumed that his audience enjoyed him too. And they did. For many Frenchmen Rabelais embodies that Gaulois humour which they love to see as a permanent element in the national character.  M. A. Screech. London Review of Books. Vol. 6 No. 17 ¬∑ 20 September 1984. pages 11-13    With an immense erudition, representing almost the whole knowledge of his time, with an untiring faculty of invention, with the judgement of a philosopher and the common sense of a man of the world, with an observation which let no characteristic of the time pass unobserved and with a ten-fold portion of the special Gallic gift of good-humoured satire, Rabelais united a height of speculation and depth of insight and vein of poetical imagination rarely found in any writer  his work is the mirror of the C16th. in France, reflecting at once its comeliness and its uncomeliness, its high aspirations, its voluptuous tastes, its political and religious dimensions, its keen criticism, its eager appetite and hasty digestions of learning, its gleans of poetry and its ferocity of manners . Enc. Brit. 13th. ed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RABELAIS, Francois","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816159158607,"sku":"L3067","price":7500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Untitled-33-copy.jpg?v=1781794900"},{"product_id":"ames-william","title":"AMES, William","description":"\u003cp\u003eBeautifully printed edition, in a very fine minuscule Roman, in a stunning contemporary French red morocco binding by Mac é Ruette for Habert de Montmor, one of the greatest collectors of Elz évirs of the C17th. Henri Louis Habert de Montmor (c. 1600, Paris   1679, Paris) was a French scholar and homme de lettres. An avid supporter of Descartes, Habert wrote a poem on Cartesian physics entitled De rerum naturae and collected scientific instruments. He was a friend of Mersenne, who dedicated his Harmonie Universelle to Montmor, and a great friend of Pierre Gassendi, who dedicated to him his Life of Tycho Brahe. Gassendi also left him an astronomical telescope he had been left by Galileo. Three years after Gassendi s death, Habert edited his complete works in 6 volumes, writing its Latin preface. Besides Gassendi, he gathered a salon of savants and philosophers which included many of the great scholars of the day. He also initiated the bibliophilic tradition of collecting elz évirs, and amassed a remarkable collection of these little masterpieces of Dutch typography. Preserved during his lifetime in his hotel in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, the collection was dispersed in 1682. From 1620 to 1635, he acquired the volumes as and when they were published, and confided the binding to Mac é Ruette, one of the most renowned Parisian masters of his time. Six bindings with the same characteristic decoration are listed in the Catalog II of the Esmerian Library (Nos. 8 to 13). Interestingly this anti-catholic and particularly anti-Jesuit work was later at the Jesuit Seminary in Perpignan.   William Ames, (born 1576, Ipswich, Suffolk, Eng. died Nov. 14, 1633, Rotterdam), English Puritan theologian remembered for his writings on ethics and for debating and writing in favour of strict Calvinism in opposition to Arminianism.. .. He served as an observer at the Synod of Dort (1618 19), at which Arminianism was firmly denounced, and as professor of theology at Franeker, in Friesland (1622 33).  Encyclopaedia Britannica.  While at Franeker, Ames produced his major writings, the Medulla Theologiase and De Conscienta, et Etius Iure, vel Casibus. .. Together the two books, his major contribution to seventeenth century theology, show his conviction for pure doctrine and practical divinity. As a polemicist, Ames published in 1625 the first of his Bellarminus Enerevatus, initially begun also as student disputations. It was a thorough blast against the Roman Church and its great Jesuit champion, Saint Robert Bellarmine (1542 -1621). Many protestant writers had given battle to Bellarmine   Franciscus Junius, John Reynolds, William Whitaker, and James I to name a few   and now Ames was taking his turn, going out like David against Goliath of the Philistines,  who afflicts the forces of Israel, the army of the living God.   Keith L. Sprunger  The Learned Doctor William Ames .  By his first wife Ames had no family; but by his second marriage with the daughter of a gentleman named Sletcher he had a son and a daughter. He appears to have died in necessitous circumstances, for his family received assistance from the town council at Rotterdam, and eventually sailed for New England, taking with them his library, which was hailed as an acquisition of great value by the theological students of the youthful colony.  DNB.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"AMES, William","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816160469327,"sku":"L2829","price":3750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/1_66b17905-cf2e-4a81-811f-52b63ffd01bf.jpg?v=1781794898"},{"product_id":"council-of-finance","title":"[COUNCIL OF FINANCE]","description":"Rare first edition of this work issued after the meeting of the Spanish Council of Finance in March 1627 in an attempt by Phillip IV to regulate and control the exchange of currency across his empire. It is an official publication giving the set rates of exchange in the Spanish Netherlands for a vast number of foreign coins, all of which are illustrated. Philip IV of Spain had, from the beginning of his reign, clear intentions to try to control the Spanish currency, which had become increasingly unstable during the reign of his father and grandfather, but in practice, inflation soared. Partly this was because in 1627 Olivares the King s favourite had attempted to deal with the problem of Philip s Genoese bankers, who had proved uncooperative in recent years, by declaring a state bankruptcy. With the Genoese debt now removed, Olivares hoped to turn to indigenous bankers for renewed funds. Spain imported vast amounts of goods yet exported little. Her balance of trade deficit was large and had to be made good by the bringing in of more bullion. The fact that bullion imports were shrinking greatly hampered Spain. The fall in silver imports lead to the government minting copper coinage called vellon. 1599 to 1620 saw two decades of vellon production. This had a two-fold effect. First, it increased inflation. Secondly, it created a crisis in confidence. No-one valued the new coinage. Ironically, the copper to produce the vellon came from protestant Sweden, was purchased in Amsterdam and paid for with silver. In practice, the plan was a disaster. The Spanish treasure fleet of 1628 was captured by the Dutch, and Spain s ability to borrow and transfer money across Europe declined sharply.  The work establishes the  pris \u0026amp; valeur intrinsecque  of the currencies of Europe at the time and their exchange rates. It illustrates a vast repertory of coins including those of the Castille, Aragon, Portugal, Milan, Florence, Rome, Mantua, Savoie, Austria, Tyrol, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Denmark France etc. It also includes old coinage and as such provides an almost encyclopaedic overview of European coins at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Europe. Such a practical work would have been used to death by money lenders and copies of this work in reasonable condition are hard to come by. ","brand":"[COUNCIL OF FINANCE]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816161812815,"sku":"L2960","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/20190706_152445.jpg?v=1781794894"},{"product_id":"burton-henry","title":"BURTON, Henry","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fine, large margined, copy of this very rare work by the puritan Devine Henry Burton, a point by point rebuttal of the Papal bull issued by Urban VIII in 1626 in which he counselled English Catholics to abjure the Oath of Allegiance issued on the accession of Charles I. The work was particularly controversial for its virulent attack on Jesuits in the prefatory epistles to Charles I and to Buckingham which lead to the suppression of the work by the Bishop of London.  [The book contains the] usual indulgence in anti-Catholic vitriol   casting the Pope as Antichrist   but it was in the special epistle to the duke of Buckingham that Burton was most controversial. Burton suggested that as the king needed money so desperately, he should take it from the Jesuits in the country. Buckingham was entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the crown, church, and true religion, and he was charged with searching everywhere, including his own household, for Jesuits who should be treated as traitors. After licensing by Jeffrey, this book was entered to the printer William Jones in the Stationers Registers on 26th April 1627. In spite of the legal entry, the Bishop of London suppressed the sale and the publishing of  The baiting of the Pope s Bull ; as early as 20 May 1627 the masters and wardens of the Stationers Company were instructed to seize all copies.  Suellen Mutchow Towers  Control of Religious Printing in Early Stuart England.   Burton (1578   1648) Puritan divine, educated at St. John s College Cambridge, Clerke of the Closet to Prince Charles, was sacked for having presented Charles with a letter inveighing against the popish tendencies of Neile and Laud. He then conducted aggressive warfare against Episcopal practices from his pulpit, in St Mathews church on Friday street. His writings earned him a few short sojourns in the Fleet, but he was always released, until 1636, when he was imprisoned, tried for sedition, striped of his ministry and degrees, sentenced to the pillory, where he had his ears cropped. On his release, by order of Parliament in 1640, he was restored to his ministry, where, as Marsden put it  it was not in the power of malice to desire, or of ingenuity to suggest, a weekly spectacle so hurtful to the Royal cause as that of Burton preaching without his ears.   A fine copy of this rare work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BURTON, Henry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816161911119,"sku":"L2992","price":9500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_4869.jpg?v=1781794893"},{"product_id":"pontano-giovanni","title":"PONTANO, Giovanni","description":"\u003cp\u003eHandsome clean copy of the second edition of this most influential astrological work. Giovanni Pontano (or Giovanni Gioviano, 1426-1503) was a poet, humanist and diplomat who, after studying at Perugia, moved to Naples. There he became an influential figure at the Accademia Antoniana (later Pontaniana) and the court of Aragon; he has been celebrated as the intellectual who introduced the Renaissance to Naples. His work spanned philosophy, natural science, astrology and poetry, and in 1512 his  opera omnia  in six parts of which  De rebus coelestibus  was the sixth was published by the Giunti in Florence. This is the second Giunti edition of the collected works and the fourth of  De rebus  as a separate work. Written in the course of twenty years, it was begun in 1475 just after Pico della Mirandola published his attack on judicial astrology. Pontanus sought to distance himself from the latter to pursue instead a kind of astrology which could benefit man, so that, through this knowledge,  astrologers could assess the nature of human beings, hence their inclinations and eventually the ultimate unfolding of their lives  (Cantamessa III, 6256). Presenting a cosmos based on Ptolemaic doctrines, the first section is a study of the nature,  houses , qualities and  fines  (degrees) which govern the interactions between planets and signs; this is mandatory knowledge for the real astronomer who should seek to identify the complexities of human nature. The second part analyses the  mapping  of the age and life of man onto the celestial system and changes in the qualities of planets according to their position. Parts three to eight focus on the effects of planetary interactions on individuals born under specific conjunctures. The last few sections are mostly devoted to medical conditions (e.g., sterility, skin illnesses, limping, epilepsy, kidney stones, baldness, nervous and mental issues). Despite his attempt to detach himself from judicial astrology, following the credo of Neo-Platonists like Pico and their scepticism against astral causation, Pontano remained greatly attracted to astrology and alchemy as appears from his  Letter on the Philosophical Fire . He was in time celebrated as a protagonist of the hermetic scene in Naples hence the intriguing Masonic provenance of this copy, from the library of the Supreme Council 33, one of two main governing bodies of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the USA.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PONTANO, Giovanni","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816162468175,"sku":"L3109","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/20190409_175207.jpg?v=1781794892"},{"product_id":"cicero-marcus-tullius-lambin-denis","title":"CICERO, Marcus Tullius, [LAMBIN, Denis.]","description":"\u003cp\u003eVery good copy of two Aldine editions, intended as companion volumes, of Cicero s rhetorical works, here issued for the first time with a commentary by the humanist Denis Lambin. Despite the imprimatur  Ex Bibliotheca Aldina , these works were printed by the Torresani, heirs to Andrea, Aldus s  socerus  and associate; these were also their first Ciceronian editions. The Torresani editions have been praised as  handsome, almost all rare, and kept in much esteem  (Renouard,  Notice , 72). Due to their excellence, they were either attributed to Aldus and his heirs or mistaken for counterfeits even by notable bibliographers until the mid-C19 (Bernoni,  Dei Torresani , 128). One of the most influential figures of classical antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) put his legal skills to the service of politics with speeches which became landmarks of forensic oratory. Defined by Quintilian as  eloquence itself , his copious prose production occupied a fundamental place in medieval syllabi. Subsequent to the rediscovery of further texts, including the letters, by scholars like Petrarch, Cicero contributed to forging the Latin style of the Renaissance and its ideas on political theory (e.g., Republicanism), rhetoric (e.g., the principles of argument, eloquence and invention) and philosophy (e.g., Stoicism). The first work in this sammelband includes his greatly influential  ad Herennium , by then presented as probably spurious ( incerto auctore ), as well as  De inventione  and  Topica  (how to construct arguments in structure and content), and  De partitione oratoria  on oratory techniques. The second work begins with  De oratore , an immensely influential analysis of how a good orator should construct persuasive arguments which should however be driven by sound ethical principles. There follow  Orator , a description of the perfect orator integrating observations in previous works, and  De claris oratoribus , a history of eloquence through individual figures including Pericles and Solon. Denis Lambin s commentaries to  Rhetorica  and to the first book of  De oratore  appended to each part bear a separate t-p, pagination and collation, but were not intended for separate publication. Lambin (1520-72) was a French humanist who taught Latin and Greek at the Collège de France. He was praised for his philological precision but also criticised for being  too concerned with trivialities of language at the expense not only of philosophical issues but also of practical matters of politics and individual conduct  (Salmon,  Renaissance and Revolt , 50).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CICERO, Marcus Tullius, [LAMBIN, Denis.]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816162533711,"sku":"L3159","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/20190525_122819.jpg?v=1781794891"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/collections\/Screenshot_2026-06-18_at_6.40.52_PM.png?v=1781962390","url":"https:\/\/sokol-books-ltd.myshopify.com\/collections\/philosophy-theology.oembed","provider":"Sokol Books Ltd","version":"1.0","type":"link"}