The Sixteenth Century
Part XXI
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PART: 21
SCHOOLBOY CONVERSATIONS
BOUND IN A CONTEMPORARY FLEMISH SIGNED PANEL STAMPED BINDING
1. BARLANDUS, Hadrian (Adriaan van Baerland, 1486-1538). Dialogi XLII. Ad
profligandam è scholis barbariem utilissimi. 8vo. (40) leaves. Title within an ornamental
woodcut border including the printer’s device.
Louvain, Pieter Martens van Alst, March, 1524. – Bound with:
CHAMPIER, Symphorien (ca. 1474-1539). Duellum epistolare: Gallie & Italiæ antiquitates summatis complectens. Trophæum Christianissimi galliarum regis Francisci
huius nominis primi. Item complures illustrium virorum epistolae ad dominu(m) Symphorianu(m) Camperiu(m). 8vo. (96) leaves. Title printed in red and black and a full-page
woodcut at the end showing the author with his patron and his wife kneeling in prayer. Contemporary blind stamped calf with lettering on the panels, a bit rubbed, a few small repairs,
but a very fine genuine copy (see detailed description below) with several old entries of
ownership on the title-page, among them that of the Order of the Friars Minor Recollect of Ypres (Belgium).
(Lyon), Jean Phiroben & Jean Divineur for Jacques François Giunta, October 10, 1519.
(I:) VERY RARE FIRST EDITION of this
collection of 42 short dialogues covering a wide
range of topics and conversational situations
mainly centered on student life and written in a
distinctly humanist classical Latin. The work
has an immediate success and only five months
later a second edition appeared with thirteen
new dialogues. It was mostly used in Northern
European schools and was reprinted many
times at Antwerp, Cologne, Paris and Lyon until the middle of the century (cf. E. Daxhelet,
Adrien Barlandus, humaniste belge, 1486-1538. Sa
vie, son oeuvre, sa personnalité, Louvain, 1938, pp.
169-180). In the dedicatory letter to his pupil
Charles de Croy (1507-1564, later bishop of
Turnai), he pays reverent tribute to Erasmus
and Mosellanus as his literary models.
The early sixteenth century brought the
beginning of serious humanist engagement
both with Latinity and pedagogy and the first
two decades of the century had seen the
appearance of the most influential colloquy collections as Erasmus’ Colloquia familiaria (1518),
Mosellanus’ Paedologia (1518), Hegendorf’s Dialogi pueriles (1520) and Barlandus’ Dialogi. The
possibility of the dialogue genre led Barlandus
to use the colloquies increasingly as a vehicle for the critical and often satirical and polemical discussion of the major preoccupations of his age, moral and religious topics far beyond the horizon of the
schoolroom. His Dialogi are of great interest not only as examples of the Latin used in the schools, and
the methods of teaching it, but also as a source of information concerning school and university life in
the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (e.g. the alehouse was an undesirable place for schoolboys: one who spends an evening drinking is threatened with expulsion for a repeat offence). The Dialogi are historical documents of great value to those who would picture not only the various aspects of
student life at that time, but of culture generally (cf. T. Brüggeman & O. Brunken, Handbuch zur Kinderund Jugendliteratur. Vom Beginn des Buchdrucks bis 1570, Stuttgart, 1987, cols. 919-920).
“Avec Barland, la simplicité du genre s’altère. Le nouveau venu veut paraître capable de mettre
de l’agrément et de l’esprit dans nos dialogues, soit parce que l’exemple d’Erasme avait porté des
fruits, soit plutôt parce que la Flandre était plus polie et d’une civilisation plus brillante” (L. Massebieau, Les colloques scolaires du seizième siècles et leurs auteurs, 1480-1570, Paris, 1878, pp. 131-132 and further
pp. 133-157).
“In Barlandus Gesprächen lebt etwas von dem Geiste des Erasmus, den er ja auch neben Mosellanus als sein Vorbild bezeichnet und dessen Dialoge er gegen die Angriffe der Feinde in Schutz
nimmt. Dieser erasmianische Zug offenbart sich namentlich in der Neigung zu satirischen Ausfällen,
welcher in einer grossen Zahl von Dialogen, die sich von ihrem Zwecke einer Verbesserung des Unterrichts weit entfernen, nachgegeben ist. Gegen zwei Stände trug Barlandus einen unversöhnlichen
Hass in seiner Brust, gegen den Adel und gegen die unwürdige Geistlichkeit” (A. Bömer, Die lateinischen
Schülergespräche der Humanisten, Berlin, 1897-1899, II, pp. 126-127).
Adrianus Barlandus, a native of Baarland on Zuid-Beveland (Netherlands), became a pupil of
Pieter de Schot at Ghent at the age of eleven. He continued his studies at the University of Louvain,
probably in 1501. Having studied at the College of the Pig, Barlandus received the degree of Master of
Arts in 1505 and began teaching Latin. In 1509 he was appointed professor of philosophy. In June
1510 he was elected procurator of the Dutch nation, a position he hold again in 1516, 1530, 1532, and
1538. He also served terms as quodlibetarius in 1512 and 1520 and as dean of the faculty of arts in 1518
and 1531. He became one of the most ardent supporters of Erasmus and the new learning at the University of Louvain. In autumn 1516 he composed a catalogue of Erasmus’ writings for his Brother
Cornelius. In 1518 he was offered the chair of Latin in the new Collegium Trilingue, but resigned in
November 1519, partly because the friction with the faculty of arts, of which he was still a member. In
1526 he was appointed to the chair of eloquence, a post he held until his death. For the use of his students he composed a Compendiosae institutions artis oratoriae (1535) and De amplification oratoria (1536).
Barlandus was a prolific writer and published a collection of elegant sayings in 1524, several historical
works, among them De Hollandiae principibus (1519), De rerum gestarum a Brabantiae ducibus historia (1526),
numerous paedagogical and moralistic works such as De ratione studii (1525) and Institutio christiani hominis (1526). His merits as a teacher and Latinist were especially recorded in Erasmus’ Ciceronianus (1528)
(cf. H. de Vocht, History of the Foundation and Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense, 1517-1550, Louvain, 1951-1955, I, pp. 267-271).
Biblioteca Belgica, B-262; Index Aureliensis 113.075; Universal STC, No. 37239 (two copies:
Ghent and Brugge); Nijhoff-Kronenberg, no. 2360; A. Bömer, op. cit., II, p. 114, no. 1; R. Adam & A.
Vanautgaerden, Thierry Martens et la figure le l’imprimeur humanistse, (Tournhout, 2009), p. 230, no. 256; E.
Daxelet, op. cit., p. 159; K. Heireman, Tentoonstelling Dirk Martens: 1473-1973, (Alost. 1973), M239; R.F.
Seybolt, Renaissance Student Life: the ‘Paedologia’ of Petrus Mosellanus, (Urbana, IL, 1927), p. XII.
II:) EXTREMELY RARE FIRST EDITION of Champier’s most interesting work, a significant
document for the development of cultural nationalism among Renaissance intellectuals. Champier was
in Italy three times: in 1506, in 1509 and in 1515. During his last travel he spent some time at Pavia,
where he was admitted to the ‘collegium artistarum et medicorum’. The speech by Pietro Antonio
Rustico, lecturer on logic and medicine, held on that occasion and printed toward the end of the volume, shows how proud Champier was about this honor. Rustico also alludes to Champier’s family-ties
in Italy, which he sees in the Campeggi families of Bologna and Pavia. At the end of the speech Rustico enumerates and praises the hitherto books published by Champier, important as an early biblio-
graphy. The main part of the volume consists of a
‘epistolary duel’ with Girolamo da Pavia, an Augustinian
monk from Asti, with whom he had for five years an intensive correspondence through the Lyonese publisher
Balthazar de Gabiano (cf. P. Jodogne, La correspondence de
Symphorien Champier avec Jérôme de Pavie dans le ‘Duellum epistolare’, in: “The Late Middle Ages and the Dawn of Humanism Outside of Italy”, G. Verneke & J. Ijsewijn, eds.,
Den Haag, 1972, pp. 44-56). In the Duellum Champier
defends the French culture against the pretended superiority of the Italian claimed by some scholars, namely Sabellico, Foresti and Battista Mantovano. He also sees in
many Italian writers detractors moved only by jealousy
and malice and mentions Valla, Merula, Poggio, Pico and
Girolamo Balbo. Fierce of his Lyonnais origins he praises
the antique origins of his native city on the authority of
Berosus, which however was rightly questioned by Girolamo da Pavia (cf. R. Cooper, Symphorien Champier et
l’Italie, in: “L’Aube de la Renaissance”, Genève, 1991, pp.
233-246). The volume contains furthermore various letters by Champier to others, e.g. a letter to Erasmus (Ep.
680a), in which Champier intervenes in his favor in the
latter’s dispute with Lefèvre d’Etaples over Psalm 8; a letter to Lefèvre d’Etaples followed by Champier’s commentary on the Definitiones Asclepii (first published with Lazzarelli’s translation in 1507), expressing his attitude to the Hermetic writings. But the book also contains letters addressed to Champier, mainly from other scholars and physicians, among them Alessandro Benedetti and Robert Cockburn, bishop of Ross (cf. A. Broadie, James Liddell on Concepts and Signs, in: “The Renaissance in Scotland: studies in literature, religion, history and culture”, A.A. MacDonald, et al. eds., Leiden, 1994, p.
82 and J. Durkan, Robert Cockburn, bishop of Ross and French humanism, in: “Innes Review”, IV, 1953, pp.
121-2.).
The volume closes with Catalogus preceptorum, patronorum, familarium et auditorum, in which Champier lists his teachers, patrons, friends and students.
The few libraries, which hold a copy of this work and the few scholars who mentions it in
their articles, all pretend the work to be printed either at Basel or at Venice. It was in fact printed at
Lyon, where the two printers Johann Froben and Jean Divineur were active for several Lyonese publishers such as (in the present volume) Luxembourg de Gabiano, Jacques Giunta and François Fradin.
They even printed another work containing letters by Champier Duellum epistolare (1519) (see J. Baudrier, Bibliographie lyonnaise, VI, Lyon, 1904, p. 98; XI, Lyon, 1914, pp. 89-90).
Symphorien Champier, was born into a bourgeois family at Saint-Symphorien-sur-Croise, near
Lyon and studied at the University of Paris before 1495, when he matriculated at the medical school
of Montpellier, which granted him his doctorate in 1504. He taught liberal arts in Grenoble and took a
doctorate in theology in 1502. In 1509 he was appointed physician to Antoine Duke of Lorraine, who
brought him to Nancy. Champier followed the duke several time to Italy, where he was involved in
the battles of Agnadello (1509) and Marignano (1515). During his stays in Italy he won recognition as
an academic teacher from the University of Pavia. In 1519 he became an alderman in Lyon, and for
the last twenty years of his life he was at the center of the cultural Renaissance of that city, while simultaneously promoting the study of medicine by helping to found the College of the Holy Trinity
and sponsoring translations of, and writing commentaries on, the works of Hippocrates and Galen. In
the 1530s he was involved in a controversy on the merits of Greek and Arab medicine with the German physician Lorenz Fries and also with the botanist Leonhard Fuchs. Michael Servetus, who was
his student, wrote a defense of Champier against Fuchs, In Leonardum Fuchsium Apologia. Defensio pro
Symphoriano Campeggio (1536). Champier became more and more hostile to Arabic medicine and in Clysteriorum campi contra Arabum (this work was ironically put by Rabelais in his library of Saint-Victor), he
even goes so far to advise his readers to refrain from reading the Arabs. With over fifty titles to his
credit, Champier was a very prolific author, editor and compiler. His most important writings were in
medicine, pharmacy, philosophy, and occultism, but he also worked in theology, history, biography,
genealogy, poetry, patristics, and many other fields. The famous scholar printer Etienne Dolet remarked in his Commentariorum linguae latinae (Lyon, 1536): ‘From the schools of the physicians these
rushed to the battle: Symphorien Champier, Jacques Dubois, Jean Ruelle, Jean Cop, François Rabelais,
Charles Paludan. From all sides this serried band of doctors made such inroads into the camp of the
barbarian that, wherever they stood, no place was left to the enemy’ (cf. B.P. Copenhaver, Symphorien
Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France, The Hague, 1978, pp. 45-86; and
R. Cooper, Les derniers année de Symphorien Champier, in: “Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance”, 47, 1998,
pp. 25-50).
Adams, C-1323; Index Aurelienis 135.510 ; Universal STC, no. 145128; P. Allut, Etude biographique sur Symphorien Champier, (Lyon, 1859), pp. 201, no. XXVII (“un des livres les plus rares de
Champier”); J. Baudrier, Bibliographie Lyonnaise, vol. VI, (Lyon & Paris, 1904), p. 98 ; A. Pettegrew &
M. Walsby, Books Published in France before 1601 in Latin and Languages other than French, Leiden, 2011, p.
385, no. 60685.
The two works are bound together in a blind stamped calf binding made by the Flemish Jacob
Clercx de Geel from Antwerp active from about 1510 to 1537. He was succeeded by his son Gheert
who was married with Abraham Ortelius’ sister Anna. Gheert used the same panel with the first name
of his father erased. In the same period, Jan Tys from Mechelen used a panel with the same design
and the same text border but with his own name (cf. Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Exposition de
reliures du XIIe siècle à la fin du XVIe: 5 avril - 28 juin 1930, Bruxelles, 1930, no. 192; S. Fogelmark, Flemish and Related Panel-Stamped Bindings. Evidence and Principles, New York, 1990, pp. 145
-151, and J.B. Oldham, Blind Panels of English Binders, Cambridge, 1958, p. 16, AM.7,
plate VII). On each cover there are two
impressions of a panel divided into two
rectangles each occupied by three animals
(above: dragon, rabbit, dog; below: cattle,
eagle, deer) enclosed within the curves of a
vine branch. These are surrounded by a
frame with the inscription: “Ligat[us] per
man[us] / jacobi  clercx  qui  petit  a 
malis  / erui  et semper / protegi  per 
manus  domini” and at each angle a fleurde-lys (see for a similar binding with the
same panels, E.P. Goldschmidt, Gothic and
Renaissance Bookbindings, London, 1928), I,
p. 209, no. 104). Between these two panels
is another panel figuring dancing peasants
and a piper (cf. P. Verheyden, De Boerendans
op Vlaamsche Boekbanden, in: “De Gulden
Passer”, 20, 1942, pp. 209-237). This seems
to be the only surviving specimen of the
two panels in combination with the frieze
of dancers signed by Jacob Clerx (see also
L. Indestege, Boekbanden iut vijf eeuven. Catalogus van de tentoonstelling, Gent, 1961, no.
141).
“Jacques Le Clerc, relieur en 1513,
décorait ses reliures avec des plaques à
froid, composées de rinceaux fleuris, ren-
fermant des animaux chimériques accompagnés de filets, et d’une légende dans laquelle il faisait figurer son nom gravé dans le métal. Ce genre, très spécial à l’époque, fut adopté par beaucoup de relieurs
en même temps; et s’il y a parfois dans les détails de l’ornementation quelque différence, le parti-pris
reste toujours le même. Ces plaques étaient généralement répétées deux fois sur le même plat et reliées
entre elles par des motifs gravés séparément. On lit sur cette reliure de Jacques Le Clerc : Ligat’ Per
Man’ Jacobi Clerici Qui Petit A Malis Erui Et Semper Protegi Per Manus Domini. Ce qui se traduit
ainsi : Relié par les mains de Jacques Le Clerc qui demande à être protégé des méchants à présent et
toujours par les mains du Seigneur” (L. Gruel, Conférences sur la reliure et la dorure des livres. Paris, 1896, p.
40).
€ 13,600.- / CHF 15,000.- / $ 15,150.-
WITH VERSES OF ISABELLA ANDREINI
2. BORGOGNI, Gherardo (1526-1605). Le muse toscane di diversi nobilissimi inge-
gni… novamente raccolte, e poste in luce. 4to. (8 + 2, a bifolium containing the poem
‘In morte di Monsignor Panigarola’, is added after the index, which, apparently, is not
present in any other copy), 64, 72 leaves. With a woodcut portrait of the author on the titlepage. 18th century half calf (spine partly restored), panels covered with marbled paper,
red edges with manuscript title on the lower edge, title-page lightly stained, lower margin of leaf a2 and outer corner of leaf G2 repaired, some quires a bit browned, tiny
wormholes on the blank margin of about 15 leaves not affecting the text, but all in all a
good, wide-margined copy.
Bergamo, Comino Ventura, 1594.
RARE FIRST EDITION, issue with the title-page reset and with a dedication (dated Milan, October
7, 1594) to the painter Giovanni Ambrogio Figino (1548/51-1608) instead of Giovanni Antonio
Nicolini.
This important anthology contains verses by the major Italian poets of the late sixteenth century, e.g. Angelo Grillo, Camillo Camilli, Cesare Cremonini, Giovanni Battista Guarini, Ercole & Torquato Tasso, Stefano Guazzo, Lodovoco & Nicolò degli Oddi, Giuliano Goselini, Muzio Manfredi.
Included are also numerous poems by the major Friulan poet of the time, Erasmo da Valvasone, published by Borgogni here for the first time (cf. M. Favaro, Su alcuni componimenti sconosciuti di Erasmo da
Valvasone, in: “Nuova rivista di letteratura italiana”, 8/1-2, 2005, p. 222).
Borgogni’s anthology is also important for the history of Lombard painting because it contains
references to the painters Giuseppe Arcimboldo, and Giovanni Ambrogio Figino (cf. S. Albonico, ‘Sul
Tesin piantāro laureti’: poesia e vita letteraria nella Lombardia spagnola, 1535-1706, Pavia, 2002, passim and p.
498). On the title-page is printed the author’s woodcut portrait (already printed in Borgogni’s Nuova
scielta di rime, 1592) by the woman artist Fede Galizia (the original oil painting is preserved in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan), a very desirable portrait painter in her time (cf. F. Frangi & A. Morandotti, Il ritratto in Lombardia: da Moroni a Ceruti, Milano, 2002, p. 130, no. 47 and, G. Berra, Alcune puntualizzazioni sulla pittrice Fede Galizia attraverso le testimonianze del letterato Gherardo Borgogni, in: “Paragone”,
XL, 1989, 469, p. 25).
Andreini first appeared in print with a poem in the fourth volume of Tasso’s poems published
by Borgogni in 1586. More poems were published in various anthologies until the publication of
Andreini’s first collection of verses, Rime, (Milano, 1601). She contributed to the present anthology
three sonnets and three madrigals (cf. C. Cedrati, Isabella Andreini: la vicenda delle ‘Rime’, in: “ACME.
Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Milano”, LX/2, 2007, p. 118).
“The only female poet to attempt this fashionable model of poetry was Isabella Andreini,
who stood a little outside the ‘respectable’ mainstream of women’s poetry by virtue of her professio-
nal status as an actress. Andreini handled the
delicate problem of decorum by the ingenious expedient of adopting both male and female voices in her love poetry and allocating
most of the more sensual of her poems to a
male voice” (V. Cox, Lyric Poetry by Women of
the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore, MD, 2013, p.
32)
Isabella Andreini, born in Padua to Venetian parents, would become the most celebrated commedia dell'arte actress of her century. Praised by contemporaries such as Tasso,
Marino, and Chiabrera and famed in France
as well as Italy, Andreini was renowned both
for the prima donna innamorata role she played
on the stage and for the erudition she displayed in her written works. These included a
pastoral play, Mirtilla (1588), two volumes of
poetry (1601, 1605), a collection of Lettere,
and a compilation of Fragmenti; the last two
works published posthumously by her husband. Her verse was second only to that of
Tasso in a poetic contest sponsored by Cardinal Giorgio Cinthio Aldobrandini in Rome.
She was one of few women to be admitted
into a literary academy in Renaissance Italy:
the Accademia degli Intenti of Pavia, which she
joined with the name ‘Accesa’. She died in
childbirth in Lyons, following an acting tour
in France. After her death at age forty-two,
not only was Andreini's legacy felt in the realms of theater and literature, but a number of her madrigals and other poetic compositions were set
to music (cf. R. Kerr, Isabella Andreini, Comica Gelosa 1562-1604: Petrarchism for the Theatre Public Theatre,
in: “Quaderni d'Italianistica”, 27/2, 2006, pp. 71-92, and N. Dersofi, Isabella Andreini, in: “Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook”, R. Russell, ed., Westport, CT, 1994, pp. 18-25).
Gherardo Borgogni was born in Alba (Monferrato). He lived for short periods in Spain, made
longer travels through southern Italy, and then settled at Alba. Here he made friends numerous local
cultural and political personalities, among them the writer Stefano Guazzo, and Girolamo Vida, bishop of Alba. Around 1572 he settled in Milan, where he lived for the rest of his life, and where he
found in the then very successful painter, Giovanni Antonio Figino, a patron and friend. Around 1585
he started a Platonic and lyrical relationship with the actress Isabella Andreini, to whom he addressed
numerous of his verses. At the same time he initiated a correspondence with Torquato Tasso, of
whom he also edited the forth volume of Rime e prose (1586). He was a member of the Accademia degli
Illustrati of Casale and of the Accademia degli Intenti of Pavia, and became one of the earliest members of the newly founded Accademia degli Inqueti (1594), founded by Muzio Sforza Colonna, marquis of Caravaggio. He edited several poetical anthologies and in 1598, La fonte del diporto, a collection
of his novellas and poetry, which is still considered an important source for the artistic and literary life
in Lombardy at the end of the sixteenth century ((cf. V. A. Arullani, Di Gherardo Borgogni letterato albese,
e delle relazioni di lui con alcuni poeti suoi contemporanei, Alba 1910, passim).
Edit 16, CNCE 7148; Universal STC, no. 816408; Albonico, op.cit., p. 159; Isabella Andreini,
Selected poems, A. MacNeil & J. Wyatt Cook, eds., (Lanham, MD, 2005, p. 9), H. Vaganay, Le sonnet en
Italie et en France au XVIe siècle, (Lyon, 1902), p. 443, no. 4.
€ 1,800.- / CHF 2,000.- / $ 2,020.-
3. CASTELLETTI, Sebastiano (fl. 2nd half of the 16th cent.) La trionfatrice Cecilia
vergine, e martire romana… Con gli argomenti del p. f. Raffaello delle Colombe. 4to.
(8), 72, (8) pp. (the last leaf is a blank). With Giunta’s woodcut device on the title-page and at
the end. Boards, some light marginal foxing, small stamp of the Galletti library on the
title-page, a very good copy with wide margins.
Firenze, Filippo Giunti, 1594.
FIRST EDITION (a second edition, corrected and augmented by the author, appeared in Rome in
1598, which was reprinted by the Stamperia Vaticana in 1724). This heroic poem by the Dominican
Sebastiano Castelletti was edited by Davide de’ Casoli, who dedicated it to Faustina Orsini (Florence,
December 13, 1594) (cf. M. Cicala, Lettura intertestuale del Castelletti lirico, Napoli, 1994), p. 126).
Within the preliminary leaves is an encomiastic sonnet by Torquato Tasso: “Cigno gentil, che
tra le schiere ardenti” (T. Tasso, Opere, B. Maier, ed., Milano, 1964, II, p. 329). The commentary to
Castelletti’s poems was written by Raffaello delle Colombe, Aristotelian philosopher and an antagonist
of Galileo (cf. L. Guerrini, Raffaello delle Colombe et les origines de la polémique anti-galiléenne à Florence, 16101615, in: “Il processo a Galileo Galilei e la questione galileiana”, G.M. Bravo & V. Ferrone, eds., Firenze, 2010, pp. 186-195).
Saint Cecilia, virgin and martyr, was a young Roman lady of noble birth, who, being educated
in the Christian faith, vowed to lead a celibate life and to devote herself to the service of religion. She
was, however, compelled by her parents to marry Valerianus, a young Roman noble and a Pagan, with
whom she prevailed so much as not only to induce him to respect her vow, but, with his brother, to
embrace the Christian faith. Seized and brought before the Pagan authorities, and refusing to abjure
their faith, they were condemned to death, the brothers being decapitated, and the virgin-wife placed
in a dry bath with fire beneath, which failing to terminate her existence as rapidly as her persecutors
desired, they sent an executioner to dispatch her by severing her head from her body. These events
occurred at Rome about 229, under Alexander Severus. Her house at Rome, where she was put to
death, was converted into a church, or a church was built over it, to which in 821 her remains, with
those of her husband and brother and other martyrs were translated. This church was repaired and
sumptuously embellished in 1599, and a monument of the saint erected. St. Cecilia has long been regarded as the tutelary saint of music and musicians.
“Der anspruchsvolle Rahmen, der so dem Unternehmen vorgegeben ist, wird zusätzlich unterstrichen durch das Widmungssonett, das kein geringerer als Torquato Tasso kurz vor seinem Tode an
den Verfasser, Fra Bastiano Castelletti, adressiert hat. Der Dichterfürst legitimiert damit gewissermassen die neuartige, auch von ihm vorangetriebene Verbindung der unterschiedlichen Qualitäten des
Autors und die Erhabenheit des Lobes der Heiligen hinaus auch die Kunst selbst, die Musik, die hier
zum Klingen gebracht wird… Castellettis Werk bietet mit dieser Textorganisation ein aufschlussreiches Beispiel für die Anverwandlung eines religiösen Stoffes an zeitgenössische Formen und Argumentationsmuster, die in den Texten des ‘teatro sacro’ ihre Entsprechung und Weiterführung finden.
Dazu zählt auch, als weitere Kombination mit dem entsprechenden Werk Petrarcas, die Idee des Triumphes, wie sie im Titel programmatisch erscheint” (K. Ley, ed., Caecilia-Tosca-Carmen. Brüche und Kontinuität im Verhältnis von Musik und Welterleben, Tübingen, 2006, pp. 36-37).
“[Felice] Passero’s attentiveness to reader’s demand for ‘delight’ is matched by other religious
narrative poets of the period: the index of Castelletti’s La trionfatrice Cecilia (1594) for example, flags
such poetic pleasures as a ‘beautifully described steed’, as well as descriptions of dawn and of night
adorned with ‘most beautiful metaphors” (V. Cox, The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writing in CounterReformation Italy, Baltimore, MD, 2011, p. 40)
Edit 16, CNCE 10018; Universal STC, no. 819431; D. Decia & L.S. Camerini, eds., I Giunti
tipografi editori a Firenze, (Firenze, 1978), no. 219; H. Vaganay, Essai de bibliographie des sonnets relatifs aux
saints, in: “Analecta Bollandiana”, 19, (1900), p. 387; G. Zarri, ed., Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana. Studi e testi a stampa, (Roma, 1996), p. 480, no. 640.
€ 750.- / CHF 830.- / $ 840.-
4. CERVONI, Isabella (fl. 1575-1600). Tre canzoni… in laude de’ christianiss. re, e
regina di Francia e di Navarra, Enrico quarto, e madama Maria de’ Medici. 4to; (16) leaves (including the last blank). With the woodcut arms of Henry IV on the title-page. Boards,
light waterstains and foxing throughout, but a good copy.
Firenze, Giorgio Marescotti, 1600.
RARE FIRST EDITION of these poems celebrating the marriage of Henry IV, King of France to
Maria de’ Medici, daughter of Francesco de’ Medici, Gran Duke of Tuscany. The wedding ceremonies
were celebrated in Lyon in December, 1600. Isabella’s father, Giovanni Cervoni, an esteemed man of
letters at the Medici court, had composed an oration addressed to the new Queen of France, dedicated
to Girolamo Gondi (dated from Pisa, August 8, 1600), a prominent member of the queen’s entourage
and a skilled diplomat. In this oration he asks Gondi to handle it to the King: “... questo Discorso sopra le Laudi de la Cristianissima Regina Maria de’ Medici, quale per cagion d’honore io le dedico, volentieri, qualunche egli si sia, supplicandola, chè, poi che l’avrà letto, e giudicatolo degno (se pur ne
farà questo giudizio), si compiaccia presentarlo in nome nostro insieme con le tre Canzoni de l’Isabella
mia figliuola al Re Christianissimo” (leaf A2r).
“The first of the three canzoni is devoted to the couple, the second to Henri, and the third to
Maria. The extracts given are the first stanza, in which Cervoni, presenting herself in her characteristic
guise as a verginella, promises Maria a tribute of praise that will be heard throughout the universe and
trumpets the novelty of her verse... In the fourth stanza, the third of four devoted to Maria’s physical
and spiritual beauty, Cervoni praises her in Neoplatonic terms as a reflection of divine beauty who
leads onlookers to contemplate the beauty and good of heaven. Interesting here is the way in which
the Neoplatonic notion of the lady’s salvific function with regard to her lover is generalized to an entire community, in keeping with the political context. The four stanzas devoted to Maria’s virtues draw
on classical examples of famous women as points of comparison... Cervoni uses the historical erudition she also amply displays in her 1598 Oration to Pope Clement VIII to propose examples of consorts
who positively influenced their husbands in government, privileging especially those who tempered
their husbands’ severity or effected their
religious conversion... The moral, that women equal men in intelligence and judgement, is spelled out at the end of stanza 9...
The congedo of the canzone ends, typically
for Cervoni, with a request for patronage:
less secure than a noblewoman like Maddalena Salvetti, she clearly hopes to make a
living, as well as a name, through her
pen” (V. Cox, Lyric Poetry by Women of the
Italian Renaissance, Baltimore, MD, 2013, p.
302).
Isabella, was the daughter of the poet
Giovanni Cervoni (1508-after 1600), who
wrote frequently for the Medici court and
published with Giorgio Marescotti in Florence. Like her father, in her early work
Cervoni concentrated on praise of the Medici family. Her first poem on record is the
Canzone . . . sopra ’l felicissimo Natale del Ser
[enissi]mo Prencipe di Toscana (1590), which
can be found in manuscript form in the
National Central Library of Florence. The
poem, written when she could not have
been older than fifteen, is addressed to
Christina of Lorraine on the birth of her
son, Cosimo II de' Medici. She first published in 1592, with a second canzone to Lorraine on the occasion of Cosimo II's baptism. Her subject matter shifted in the middle of the 1590s,
when she began to focus less on the familial milestones of the Medici family, and more on the political
and religious upheavals of the period. This is evident in her canzoni dedicated to Henry IV of France
and Pope Clement VIII in 1597, both of which celebrated the French king's conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. Her most unusual publication, which was printed in 1598 by Giovanni Battista
Bellagamba in Bologna, is Orazione della Signora Isabella Cervoni da Colle al santissimo, e beatissimo padre, e
Signor Nostro, Papa Clemente Ottavo, Sopra l’impresa di Ferrarra, con una canzone della medesima, a[‘] Prencipi
Cristiani. The piece, addressed to Pope Clement VIII, includes a lengthy oration praising the pope for
his peaceful takeover of the city of Ferrara earlier that year, and a canzone that forcefully criticizes
both Henry IV of France and Philip II of Spain for their continuous fighting. Cervoni finishes her
poem with a call for the princes of Europe to put down their arms and form a league in support of
Clement's ambitions to fight again the Ottoman Empire. Cervoni was also inducted into the prestigious Accademia degli Affidati in Pavia, most likely between 1598 and 1600—a rarity for women writers of any age in the period. It is not known when Cervoni died; there is no information available on
her after 1600 (cf. R. Russell, The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature, Westport, CN, 1997, p. 296).
Edit 16, CNCE10930; Universal STC, no. 821737; P.L. Ferri, Biblioteca femminile italiana,
(Padova, 1852), p. 113; G. Guarducci, Annali dei Marescotti, (Firenze, 2001), p. 158, no. 354.
€ 1,800.- / CHF 2,000.- / $ 2,020.THE CLEMENTINE INDEX AND THE NEW PONTIFICALE
5. CLEMENT VIII (1536-1605). Constitutio super Novi Pontificalis Editione. Broadsheet, folio (456x326mm).
Roma, Apud Impressores Camerales, 1596. – And:
CLEMENT VIII (1536-1605). Literae... super editione Indicis Librorum Prohibitorum. Broadsheet, folio (457x325mm). Both with the woodcut coat-of-arms of Pope Clemens
VIII and a large decorated initial. Unbound, traces of folding, some marginal foxing, a few
wormholes in the inner margin slightly touching the woodcut initial, otherwise very well
preserved.
Roma, Apud Impressores Camerales, 1596.
(I) ORIGINAL EDITION of Apostolic
Constitution "Ex quo in Ecclesia Dei", in
which Pope Clement VIII declared this
Pontifical obligatory, forbade the use of any
other and prohibited any modification or
addition to it without papal permission. Urban VIII and Benedict XIV had it revised
and made some additions to it, and finally
Leo XIII caused a new typical edition to be
published in 1888.
The Pontificale Romanum, as a distinct liturgical book, is of comparatively recent origin.
During many centuries the matter, which
forms its text was scattered in different sacramentaries and ordines. It was in the eleventh
century that the formularies used at episcopal functions were first collected in a separate volume, and the first printed edition of
the Pontificale appeared in 1485 during the
pontificate of Innocent VIII, its editor being
the famous liturgist, Burchard. For the sake
of uniformity throughout the Latin Church,
not only as regards the Office and Mass but
likewise in respect to episcopal functions.
The new Pontificale Romanum had been
printed in Rome by Giacomo Luna and Leonardo Pierasole in a folio-volume in 1595
(M.Sodi & A.M Triacca, eds., Pontificale
Romanum: editio princeps 1596, in:
“Monumenta liturgia Concilii Tridentini”,
Roma, 1997, I, passim, and A.A. King, Liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, London, 1957, pp. 178
-179; M. Klöckner, Die Konstitution ‘Ex quo in Ecclesia Dei’ Papts Clemens’ VIII, 10.2.1596 zur
Promulgation des Pontificale Romanum, in: “Archiv für Liturgiegeschichte”, 54, 2012, pp. 127-146)
The document is signed by the papal secretary Marcello Vestri Barbiani on February 10, 1596.
Edit 16, CNCE 40191; Universal STC, no. 823157.
(II:) ORIGINAL EDITION of this apostolic letters on the edition of Clement VIII’s Index of Prohibited Books, printed in the same year by the Stamperia Camerale in various sizes, and then immediately reprinted in various Italian towns.
When Sixtus V died in 1590, the new pope, Clement VIII, instructed the Congregation of the
Index to continue with its preparation of a replacement of the Tridentine Index. A first draft appeared
in 1593 and after a substantial revision, the final Index was published in 1596. It was unique in that it
concentrated as devotedly on the works of Catholic authors as on those of Protestant heretics. As
such it reached a larger audience than any previous index (cf. J.M. de Bujanda & al., eds. Index de Rome,
1590, 1593, 1596, Sherbrook, 1994, pp. 286-299).
The document is signed by the papal secretary Marcello Vestri Barbiani on October 17, 1596.
Edit 16, CNCE 45254; Universal STC, no. 823165.
€ 1,500.- / CHF 1,650.- / $ 1,670.-
6. DE ROSSI, Bastiano (1556-after 1626). Lettera… A Flamminio Mannelli nobil fiorentino: nella quale si ragiona di Torquato Tasso, del dialogo dell’epica poesia di messer
Cammillo Pellegrino, della risposta fattagli dagli accademici della Crusca: e delle famiglie, e degli huomini della città di Firenze. 8vo. 72 pp. With the woodcut emblem of the Accademia della Crusca on the title-page. Modern vellum, a very good copy.
Firenze, A stanza degli Accademici della Crusca, 1585.
FIRST EDITION. The ‘greatest polemic of the sixteenth century’ as it had been called, was sparked
off by the publication, in 1584, of a dialogue by Camillo Pellegrino of Capua entitled Il Carafa ovvero
dell’epica poesia, which claimed to prove the immeasurable superiority, on the grounds of more faithful
adherence to Aristotelian precepts of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata over the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto.
In 1585 the fledgling Accademia della Crusca produced a reply to Pellegrino (written in fact by one of
its founding members, Leonardo Salviati) in favor of Ariosto. The polemic lasted until the first decades of the seventeenth century and involved Tasso himself, who responded with an Apologia (July,
1585) and later with the treatise Discorsi dell arte poetica (1587), revised and enlarged as Discorsi del poema
eroico (1594) (cf. B. Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaisance, Chicago, IL, 1961, II
pp. 954-1073, and M. Plaisance, I dibattiti intorno ai poemi dell’Ariosto e del Tasso nelle Accademie Fiorentine,
1882-1586, in: “L’arme e gli amori. Ariosto, Tasso e Guarini in Late Renaissance Florence. Acts of an
International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, June 27-29, 2001”, M. Rossi & F. Gioffredi Superbi,
eds., Firenze, 2004, pp. 119-134).
“In 1585 Bastiano de’ Rossi, the Inferigno Accademico dell Crusca, and secretary of the Academy,
published his Lettera…, dedicated to Don Pietro de’ Medici. In this work the Crusca’s criticism of the
Liberata (criticism which Mannelli had alleged to have roused indignation in many people, especially in Rome) are justified as reprisals for Tasso’s slighting references to the Medici in his Dialogo
del piacere onesto, published shortly before, in which Vincenzo Martelli, the Florentine exile, is made to repeat the anti-Medicean sentiments already expressed in his letters published in 1653” (P.M.
Brown, The Historical Significance of the Polemics over Tasso’s
‘Gerusalemme Liberata’, in: “Studi Secenteschi”, XI, 1970, p. 5).
Bastiano de’ Rossi was one of the founders of the Accademia della Crusca and its first secretary. He was involved in the
polemic against Torquato Tasso and collaborated to the Dante
edition published by the Crusca (1595) and to the first two editions of the vocabulary of the Crusca. He also was the Italian
teacher to Duke Ludwig of Anhalt-Köthen, who became the first
German member of the Accademia della Crusca. De Rossi also
wrote the account of the wedding (1585) of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici’s half-sister Virginia and Cesare d’Este (cf. C.
Molinari, Delle nozze medicee e dei loro cronisti, in: “Quaderni di
teatro”, II/7, 1980, pp. 29-30).
Edit 16, CNCE 46906; Universal STC, no. 825749; B.
Gamba, Serie dei testi di lingua italiana, (Venezia, 1828), p. 328, no.
1369.
€ 550.- / CHF 600.- / $ 610.-
WOMEN AGAINST SUMPTUARY LAWS
– AN EARLY FEMMINIST MANIFESTO
DECLAMATIONE delle gentildonne di Cesena intorno alle pompe. Al molto illustre
e reverendiss. Monsig. Lattantio Presidente di Romagna. 4to. (8) leaves (including the
last blank). Old wrappers, a fine copy.
Cesena, Bartolomeo Raverio, 1575.
FIRST EDITION of this astonishing document of great significance for the early history of feminism.
This pamphlet written by the women of Cesena (episcopal see of Emilia-Romagna, between
Bologna and Rimini, picturesquely situated at the foot of the slopes of the Apennines) is directed
against a strict sumptuary law issued by Monsignore Lattanzi, president of the Romagna. With great
erudition the women of Cesena fight for their right to wear magnificent clothes and rich jewelry. The
not only discuss similar prohibitions in the past, but also draw upon authorities like Homer, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Hesiod, Dante, Petrarch and Ariosto to defend their cause (cf. E. Tosi
Brandi, Cesena, in: “La legislazione suntuaria secoli XII-XVI. Emilia Romagna”, M.G. Muzzarelli, ed.,
Roma, 2000, p. 345).
“Nel 1575 usciva a stampa a Cesena, per i tipi di Bartolomeo Raveri, un opuscolo di otto pagine
indirizzato al Presidente della Romagna, monsignore Lattanzi. Proveniva da un gruppo di
‘Gentildonne di Cesena’, come loro stesse si definivano, e conteneva una netta confutazione delle motivazioni che avevano prodotto la rigida proibizione alle donne di portare gioie, strascichi e abiti sontuosi, emessa in quello stesso anno. Assumendosi il ruolo di ‘nuove Diotime’, come la maestra aveva
insegnato al sommo Socrate ‘qual spirto muova il mondo, onde venga la vita agli animali, e quali sieno
le cagioni delle cose’, e sdegnando come false le
opinioni di Tucidide sulle donne, così le dame si
rivolgevano all’alto prelato e con ragionamenti
filosofici facevano emergere la legittimità della
bellezza e degli ornamenti del corpo. Ma soprattutto queste donne ponevano in campo una questione prettamente politica: ‘non possono esserci
legittimamente interdetti i panni, i drappi, ivai e
gli altri ornamenti e tanto di più, reverendissimo
monsignore, quanto che a noi, che siamo cacciate
da tutti gli uffici pubblici, spogliate da tutti li magistrati e finalmente d’ogni grande e picciola dignità del tutto prive, furo per sollevamento di
tanta miseria concessi questo culto e questi ornamenti. Questi ci sono (oh huomini) invece delle
vostre dignità, delli vostri magistrati e delli vostri
uffici’ ” (T. Plebani, Scritture di donne nel Rinascimento italiano, in: “Umanesimo ed educazione”, G.
Belloni & R. Drusi, eds., Treviso, 2007, p. 243).
Edit 16, CNCE 49262; Universal STC, no.
805206; F. Fioravanti, Annali della tipografia cesenate
(1495-1800), (Manziana, 1997), p. 21; A.M. Mambelli, Il Settecento è donna: indagine sulla condizione femminile, (Ravenna, 1985), pp. 248, 388; J. Stevenson, Woman Latin Poets: Language, Gender and Authority from Antiquity to the Eigthteenth Century,
(Oxford, 2005), p. 147.
€ 1,800.- / CHF 2,000.- / $ 2,020.-
8. DELLA BARBA, Simone (fl. mid 16th cent.). Nuova spositione del sonetto che
comincia In nobil sangue vita humile, e queta ne la quale si dichiara qual sia stata la vera
nobiltà di madonna Laura. 8vo. 44, (4 blank) pp. With the Medici’s coat-of-arms on the titlepage. Boards, some old underlining and annotations in the margin (partly faded or washed out), a very good untrimmed copy.
Firenze, [Lorenzo Torrentino], 1554.
FIRST EDITION of this exposition of a sonnet by Petrarch,
in which Della Barba tries to show the real nobility of Laura
by means of Platonic ideas. The work is dedicated to Giulio
de’ Medici.
“Ein wenig bekannter Petrarca-Exeget ist der Jurist und
Cicero-Übersetzer Simone Della Barba da Pescia. Der Abdruck seiner 1554 ebenfalls vor der Accademia Fiorentina
vorgetragenen Rede zur Frage der ‘nobilta` di Madonna
Laura’ am Beispiel des Sonettes Nr. 215: In nobil sangue vita
humile et queta rechtfertigt sich vor allem durch die dort vorgetragene Erkenntnis, dass Petrarca nicht nur der Philosophie
Platos, sondern im gleichen Maße auch der des Aristoteles
verpflichtet ist” (B. Huss, et al., eds., Lezioni sul Petrarca: die
‘Rerum vulgarium fragmenta’ in Akademievorträgen des 16.
Jahrhunderts, Münster, 2004, p. 20 and more detailed on pp.
121-126).
Simone Della Barba, a native of Pescia, was a member
of the Accademia Fiorentina, to which he was introduced by
his more famous brother, Pompeo, physician to Pope Pius
IV and men of letters. Simone also translated Cicero’s Topics
(1556) (cf. G. Ansaldi, Cenni biografici dei personaggi illustri della
città di Pescia e suoi dintorni, Pescia, 1872, pp. 289-295).
Edit 16, CNCE 16458; Universal STC, no. 826228; L.
Collarile, Nel libro di Laura: Petrarcas Liebesgedichte in der Renaissance, (Basel, 2004), p. 110; R. Kelso, Doctrine of the Lady in the Renaissance, (Urbana, IL, 1959), p. 399,
no. 648; D. Moreni, Annali della tipografia fiorentina di Lorenzo Torrentino impressore ducale, (Firenze, 1819),
pp. 239-240
€ 500.- / CHF 550.- / $ 510.-
9. DOLCE, Lodovico (1508-1568). Dialogo... della institution delle donne... 8vo. 80
leaves. With the printer’s device on the title-page.
Venezia, Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1545. – Bound with:
- - -. I quattro libri delle osservationi… Di nuovo da lui medesimo ricoretti, et ampliati,
con le apostille. Sesta editione. 8vo. 240 pp. With the printer’s device on the title-page. 17th
century vellum over boards, manuscript title on the spine, blue edges, entry of ownership on the title-page of the second work: ‘Degli Sampericoli’, which had been thoroughly annotated by a contemporary hand (these annotations contain corrections and remarks on the Italian language and are slightly shaved), first title-page a bit stained, some
foxing, but a very good, genuine copy.
Venezia, Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1560.
(I:) RARE FIRST EDITION of this treatise of conduct for women, which aimed to define the nature
of women, their role in society and their behavior in everyday life. It adopts the tripartite division used
since the Middle Ages by preachers in their sermons ad status: unmarried girls, married women and
widows (cf. H. Sanson, Introduction, in: “Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della institutione delle donne”,
Cambridge, 2015, pp. 1-68).
“In 1545, Giolito published the Dialogo lella institution delle donne, by the poligrafo Lodovico Dolce,
a close collaborator; it was republished in 1547, 1553, and 1560. Actually, it was a close adaptation of
the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives’s well-known De institutione feminae Christianae (1524), one of the
first works exclusively treating women’s education and proper conduct. Vives’s treatise quickly became very popular throughout Europe, being translated into English, Dutch, French, German, and Italian (an original Italian translation by Pietro Lauro was published by Vincenzo Valgrisi in 1546). Although not directly dealing with the woman question, Vives rebutted the broadly held view that women were unable to engage in letters, but still drew a sharp division between women’s and men’s educational needs, stressing that women’s education aims at the safekeeping if their chastity and not a
public life. Following most of Vives’s arguments and structure (three parts treating virginity, married
life and widowhood respectively, Dolce transformed the treatise into a popular Italian genre of dialogue (between two fictional characters, Flaminio and Dorothea) and enriched it with specific Italian
references and current events, such as a debate on marriage which is supposed to have taken place in
Pietro Aretino’s house among Aretino, Fortunio Spira, Paolo Stresio, and the author. However, the
most interesting difference between Vives and Dolce is found in their views on the appropriate reading for the young woman. Vives’s strong rejection of vernacular literature as immoral and lascivious
could not have been adopted by Dolce, - who approves non-lascivious vernacular literature, especially
Petrarch and Dante. Dolce’s main concern as a poligrafo and collaborator of Giolito was to maximize
the demand for vernacular literature by both men and women. It is probably within this context that
Dolce omitted the term ‘Christian’ from the title in order to have greater latitude for initiative” (A.
Dialeti, The Debate about Women in Sixteenth Century Italy, in: “Renaissance and Reformation”,
XXVIII/4, 2004, pp. 11-12).
“Nell’assumere gran parte del materiale dall’opera
latina del Vives, Lodovico Dolce innova anzitutto
l’aspetto formale, sostituendo alla forma non dialogica
e grezzamente espositiva una forma dialogica mimetica vivace e scorrevole. Nella ‘summa’ pedante ed erudita, sovraccarica di materiali farraginosi ed aridi qual
è il De institutione del Vives, l’intervento dolciano non
si esaurisce nella pedissequa ripetizione. Egli seleziona
sfrondando il testo dalle eccedenze, sintetizzando le
parti prolisse e soprattutto integrando ed aggiornando
il repertorio degli exempla. Un intervento intelligente,
capace di ricreare il testo conferendogli una struttura
agile, di più facile lettura e colmando gli spazi lasciati
scoperti dal Vives” (A. Chemello, L’‘Instituzione delle
Donne’ di Lodovico Dolce ossia l’‘insegnar virtù et honesti costumi alla donna’, in: “Trattati scientifici nel Veneto fra il
XV e il XVI secolo”, Venezia, 1985, pp. 103-134).
Lodovico Dolce, a native of Venice, belonged to a
family of honorable tradition but decadent fortune.
He received a good education, and early undertook
the task of maintaining himself by the pen. He offers
a good example of a new profession made possible by
the invention of printing, that of the ‘polygraph’ (poligrafo), in other words, the man of letters
who made a living by working for a publisher, editing,
translating and plagiarizing the works of others as well
as producing some of his own. Thus Dolce for over thirty years worked as corrector and editor for the
Giolito press. Translations from the Greek and Latin epics, satires, histories, plays (Il Ragazzo, 1541; Il
Capitano, 1545; Il Marito, 1560; Il Ruffiano, 1560) and treatises on language (Osservazioni sulla lingua volgare, 1550) and art (Dialogo della Pittura, 1557) followed each other in rapid succession. But he is today
mainly remembered as the author of Marianna (1565), a tragedy from the life of Herod (cf. R.H. Terpening, Lodovico Dolce. Renaissance Man of Letters, Toronto, 1997, pp. 2-24).
Edit 16, CNCE 17330; Universal STC, no. 827061; S. Bongi, Annali di Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari
da Trino di Monferrato stampatore in Venezia, Roma, 1890-1895, I, pp. 100-102, R. Kelso, Doctrine for the
Lady of the Renaissance, Urbana, 1956, no. 295; G. Passano, I novellieri italiani in prosa, Torino, 1878, I, p.
243; H. Sanson, op.cit., pp. 69-70.
(II:) “SIXTH EDITION” (but in fact the fifth). Dolce’s grammar of the vernacular was first published in 1550 as Osservazioni nella volgar lingua and then reprinted in 1552, 1556, 1558, 1560. Dolce aligned himself with the tradition established by grammarians of Northern Italy, beginning with Gian Giorgio Trissino and Rinaldo Corso. His goal was not to establish an abstract work but rather, through
the description of the expressive value of specific form in context, to arrive at a series of grammatical
notions. Dolce also accepted the current opinion to use as the standard the Tuscan used by the great
authors of the fourteenth century. However, Dolce recognized that the languages live and grow and
adapt themselves to contemporary circumstances. He therefore accepted as inevitable that Italian
would be continually modified by the innovations of the men of letters from every region of the peninsula (D. Pastrina, La grammatica di Lodovico Dolce, in: “Sondaggi sulla riscrittura del Cinquecento”, P.
Cherchi, ed., Ravenna, 1998, pp. 63-73).
Edit 16, CNCE 17365; Universal STC, no. 827098; Bongi, op. cit., II, p. 89 (exact reprint of the
1558 edition).
€ 1,600.- / CHF 1,760.- / $ 1,780.-
THE FIRST ITALIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY
10. DONI, Anton Francesco (1513-1574). La libraria… Nella quale sono scritti tutti
gl’autori vulgari con cento discorsi sopra quelli. Tutte le traduttioni fatte dall’altre lingue, nella nostra & una tavola generalmente come si costuma fra librari. Di novo ristampata, corretta, & molte cose aggiunte che mancavano. 12mo. 72 leaves. With the
printer’s device on the title-page and on leaf F12v.
Venezia, Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1550. – Bound with:
MACHIAVELLI’S BELFAGOR
- - -. La seconda libraria…Al s. Ferrante Caraffa. 12mo. 112, (8) leaves. Scoto’s device on the
title-page and Marcolini’s device at leaf K11v. Contemporary vellum with manuscript title on
the spine, ties lacking, lightly darkened, on the front pastedown is printed the bookplate
of the lawyer Francesco Bubani, two manuscript entries in the text at leaf A9v-r and a
note on the back fly-leaf (“giulii de la moneta di Pisa”, the initials “MFB” are stamped
on the lower blank margin of the title-page, first title a bit worn, some light dampstains,
but still a genuine copy in good condition.
Venezia, [Gualtiero Scoto], 1551 (At the end:) Venezia, Francesco Marcolini, June 1551.
(I:) SECOND ENLARGED AND REVIDED EDITION printed by Giolito in the same year of the
first edition. The main differences between the first and this second edition are: in the title-page
‘all’altre lingue’ was changed to ‘dall’altre lingue’; the entries were augmented from 158 to 170 (what
obliged the printer to add several more lines in a page to maintain the same collation); the name of
Ludovico Domenichi was suppressed in the catalogue of the authors; at the end of a notice (l. 43v of
the first edition, l. 44 of the second) is added a short note clearly addressed against Domenichi, even
though his name is not explicitly mentioned; the last two leaves, blank in the first edition, contain in
the second Doni’s so-called ‘Saying of the Mule’ (‘La diceria della Mula’), already printed in his Lettere
of 1547 (cf.
With the ‘first’ Libraria, Doni tried to create a catalogue of all books in Italian issued from the
times of Gutenberg to his time. The work is generally credited to be the first bibliography of Italian
literature and also as the first catalogue of Italian ‘books-in-print’ (cf. A. Quondam, Dal libro manoscritto
all’editoria di massa, in: “Letteratura italiana. Produzione e consume”, Torino, 1983, pp. 622-631).
“Non stupisce, pertanto, che un tale entusiasta del ‘secreto’ di ‘Giovanni da Magonza’, oltretutto
dotato di una appuntita sensibilità nell’intuire le grandi risorse dell’editoria moderna, abbia potuto concepire e realizzare l’impresa della Libraria, anzi delle ‘Librerie’, ovvero l’ambizioso progetto di ‘dar cognizione di tutti i libri stampati vulgari’, ... La crescita tumultuosa dell’attività editoriale, così ben
espressa dalle parole dello Sbandito appena riportate, per cui si moltiplica a dismisura l’offerta e la disponibilità di libri sul mercato, induce lo scrittore fiorentino, già editore in proprio e stretto collaboratore di editori importanti, a concepire un’opera di frontiera, che si pone, almeno a tutta prima, come
un tentativo di ‘ordinare il disordine’, ma che è anche una riflessione sul modo e del senso del ‘fare
letteratura’ nell’età in cui la stampa ne ha del tutto rivoluzionato i meccanismi della produzione, della
diffusione e della fruizione… Nel 1550, giunto da un paio d’anni a Venezia, Doni pubblica presso il
suo primo editore veneziano di riferimento, Gabriele Giolito, la Libraria, seguita, forse nello stesso
anno, forse nel 1551, da una nuova edizione, per il medesimo Giolito e fratelli. Le ‘Librarie’ Giolitine
son, per l’appunto, un catalogo di
autori e libri in volgare
(comprensivi di traduzioni dal latino, pubblicati fra la fine del Quattrocento e gli anni Cinquanta del
Cinquecento. Questo fu il vero, e
circoscritto, scopo iniziale, per il
quale non si prevedeva un seguito,
se non nei termini di successivi
aggiornamenti al passo con la produzione di nuove stampe; insomma; insomma, non mi sembra del
tutto inappropriato di definire la
Libraria del 1550 come una sorta
di moderno ‘catalogo dei libri in
commercio’ ” (P. Pellizzari, “Per
dar cognizione di tutti i libri stampati
vulgari”: la ‘Libraria’ del Doni, in
Nascita della storiografia e organizzazione dei saperi, a c. di E. Mattioda,
Firenze, 2010, pp. 43-45; see also
G. Castellani, ‘Non tutto ma di tutto’:
‘La Libraria’ del Doni, : “La Bibliofilia”, 114/3, 2012, pp. 327352).
Very important is also the
sixth section of the Libraria, entirely devoted to music. Doni was
thus among the first to publish a list with printed music. The section opens with a dedicatory letter to
the Franco-Flemish composer and organist, whom Doni asks to obtain from some French musician a
listb of music printed in France (cf. J. Haar, The ‘Libraria’ of Antonfrancesco Doni, in: “Musica
Disciplina”, 24, 1970, pp. 101-123).
Edit 16, CNCE17683; Universal STC, no. 827609; S. Bongi, Annali di Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari
da Trino di Monferrato stampatore in Venezia, (Roma, 1890-1895), I, pp.297-298; G. Castellani, op. cit., pp.
335-337; C. Ricottini Marsili-Libelli, Anton Francesco Doni, scrittore e stampatore, (Firenze, 1960),
no. 22.
(II:) FIRST EDITION. In the Seconda Libraria Doni lists Italian manuscripts that he has personally
examined (cf. P. Pellizzari, La novella come cornice: la ‘Seconda libraria’ del Doni, in: “In Verbis”, I/2, 2011;
pp. 101-122 and J. Bradbury, Anton Francesco Doni and his ‘Librarie’: Bibliographical Friend or Fiend?, in:
“Forum for Modern Language Studies”, 45, 2009, 90-107).
Of great interest in the Seconda Libraria is the description of the contemporary Italian academies
(leaves 106-113). “... è con Marcolini che Doni può realizzare le sue opere più originali e meno canoniche, stravolgendo il sistema dei generi letterari in contrasto con l’affermazione di una più rigida normativa di matrice aristotelica. Questa nuova fase è inaugurata proprio dalla Seconda Libraria, apparsa
nel 1551 e riedita nel 1555, che registra i manoscritti di opere in volgare, per i quali, pertanto, il lettore
non ha alcuna garanzia della loro esistenza se non quella offerta dal redattore. E infatti.. l’infiltrazione
di opere e di autori del tutto inventati è assai alta, benché non assoluta. Una parte della Seconda Libraria, poi, contiene una sorta di censimento delle Accademie italiane, in cui, con la consueta perspicacia,
Doni mostra di aver colto la nuova portata e consistenza di questa istituzione” (P. Pellizzari, op. cit., p.
45).
Another interesting issue is his ‘fedele’ version of Machiavelli’s novella Belfagor Arcidiovolo, also known
under the title and Il demonio che prese moglie, of which he pretended to have had ‘l’originale in mano’ (cf.
B. Moriconi, Le metamorfosi di un arcidiavolo. Evoluzione e trasformazione del personaggio di Belfagor da Machiavelli a oggi, Diss., Roma, 2012, pp. 58-59).
Edit 16, CNCE 17686; Universal STC, no. 827616; S. Casali, Gli annali della tipografia veneziana
di Francesco Marcolini, (Forlì, 1861), pp. 191-202, no. 83; G. Castellani, op.cit., pp. 337-340; C. Ricottini
Marsili-Libelli, op. cit., no. 32.
Anton Francesco Doni was born in Florence, the son of a scissors-maker and second hand
dealer. The first extant reliable information on him is that after 1535 he joined the religious order of
the Servi di Maria in the Florentine convent of the Santissima Annunziata, taking the name of brother
Valerio. During his stay there Doni became a friend of the sculptor Giovannangelo Montorsoli, a
disciple of Michelangelo. In 1540 they both left Florence and the convent and moved to Genoa; the
following year Doni transferred to Alessandria, where he stayed with Antonio Trotti and Isabella Guasco. In 1542 he spent shorter periods in Pavia and Milan, and then moved to Piacenza to begin studying law. Very soon, however, he gave up juridical studies and followed his inclination for literature.
In Piacenza Doni joined the Accademia degli Ortolani, a group of intellectuals with whom he shared a
very polemical, anti-classical attitude. Among its most prominent members were Giuseppe Betussi,
Girolamo Parabosco, and Lodovico Domenichi. To Domenichi in particular Doni was bound by a
very close friendship, following him to Venice, where he was introduced to Pietro Aretino and where
he published the first book of his Lettere as well as the Dialogo della Musica (1544). Soon afterwards Doni travelled back to Florence, where he began to take part in the meetings of the Accademia degli Umidi. In 1546 he became secretary of the Accademia Fiorentina and, with the aid of Cosimo I de’ Medici, duke of Florence, tried to establish a printing house of his own. The business turned out to be disastrous, however, and lasted only from 1546 to 1548. In this period Doni published approximately
twenty texts closely connected with the activities of the Accademia Fiorentina. In 1548, after the failure of his printing house, Doni broke off his relations with the Florentine milieu leaving Florence once
and for all and, after a violent quarrel whose reasons remain obscure, ending his personal relationship
with Domenichi. Back in Venice, Doni edited the first Italian version of Thomas More’s Utopia, translated by Ortensio Lando (1548). Healso had begun a close collaboration with the printer Gabriele Giolito with the publication of the Disegno (1549), a book concerned with the primacy of figurative art. In
1550 Giolito published three further volumes by Doni: Fortuna di Cesare, Prima Libraria, and Medaglie.
In his writings from 1549 onwards Doni often mentions the Accademia Pellegrina. However, this is neither the name of an existing institution (as it was believed until recently), nor the designation of a project for the creation of a new community of intellectuals; Doni’s Accademia Pellegrina is simply a literary fiction and an important element of the setting of his works. Doni’s most productive period coincided with the years 1551-1553, when he was a collaborator of the printer Francesco Marcolini, who
during this triennium printed many of Doni’s major works: the Seconda Libraria (1551), the Zucca (1551
-52), the Moral Filosofia (1552), the Marmi (1552-53), the diptych Mondi-Inferni (1552-53), the Pistolotti
amorosi (1552). In 1555 Doni suddenly left Venice and went to Urbino, where he wanted to obtain the
patronage of Duke Guidobaldo II della Rovere with the aid of Pietro Aretino. Aretino, however, refused, and to take revenge for what he considered a betrayal, in 1556 Doni wrote a very aggressive book,
the Terremoto (Earthquake), in which he predicted that his former friend would die before the end of
the year – exactly as happened. Between 1557 and 1558 Doni stayed in Ancona, where he tried to open a new printing house, but he was soon compelled to leave because of an edict of Pope Paul IV
which ruled that all those who had left the priesthood should return to their convents. There is no
clarity regarding the details of the following three years of Doni’s life. However, between 1562 and
1563 he was certainly in Arquà, where he planned a monument in honour of Petrarch, which was never built. In 1562 Giolito printed Il Cancellieri dell’Eloquenza, Il Cancellieri della Memoria, the Dichiarazione
sopra il XIII cap. dell’Apocalisse, and the second revised edition of the diptych Mondi-Inferni with the new
title Mondi terrestri, celesti e infernali. In 1564, Le Pitture was published in Padua by the printer Grazioso
Percaccino. This work collects the invenzioni, or allegorical descriptions of love, fortune, time, sleep,
and death, which Doni had created to adorn the projected monument dedicated to Petrarch. In 1567
Doni and his son Silvio moved to Monselice, near Padua. In the same year he composed the Lumiera,
a short poem that takes up themes from the main works of the 1550s. The following year, Giorgio de’
Cavalli printed an updated edition of the Mondi in Venice, the last before Doni’s death. Doni’s works
enjoyed great success throughout Europe and were soon translated into other major European languages: Spanish (Zucca en español, 1552), English (The Moral Philosophy of Doni, 1570), and French (Les Mondes célestes, terrestres et infernaux, 1578, 1580, 1583). In July 1574 Doni returned to Venice, where he offered Henry III of Valois the precious manuscript of a poem in ottava rima, the Guerra di Cipro. This is
the last known fact of Doni’s life. He died soon after, in September 1574 – still in Venice, according
to some sources, or back in Monselice, according to other (cf. P. Pelizzari, Nota biografica, in: “Doni, I
Mondi e gli Inferni, Torino, 1994, pp. LXIX-LXXXIV).
€ 3,600.- / CHF 4,000.- / $ 4,040.-
11. [FERRO, Marcello (fl. mid 16th cent.)]. Narratione dell’apparato per l’illustriss.
sig. card. Colonna, legato apostolico della Marca in Macerata. 4to. (10) leaves. Title-page
printed in red and black with the woodcut coat-of-arms of Cardinal Antonio Colonna. Boards, sober margins, but a good copy.
Macerata, Sebastiano Martellini, 1581.
ORIGINAL EDITION of the description of the festivities held in Macerta at the entry of newly elected governor of the Marche, Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna (1523-1597) (cf. R. Paci,ed., Scritti storici in
memoria di Enzo Piscitelli, Roma, 1982, p. 229, P. Cartechini, ed., La Marca e le sue istitutioni al tempo di Sisto V, Roma, 1991, p. 368).
Marco Antonio was born in Rome in, the son of the Roman nobles Camillo and Vittoria Colonna. He was the grand-nephew of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna and studied philosophy and theology
under Felice Peretti (who later became Pope
Sixtus V). In 1560 he was elected to be Archbishop of Taranto and was active in the
Council of Trent during 1562-63. Pope Pius
IV made him a cardinal priest in the consistory of March 12, 1565. He received the red hat
and the titular church of Santi Apostoli on
May 15, 1565. He participated in the papal
conclave of 1565-66 that elected Pope Pius V.
On 13 October 1568 he was transferred to
the metropolitan see of Salerno. In 1572 he
participated in the papal conclave that elected
Pope Gregory XIII. He resigned the government of the Archdiocese of Salerno sometime
before 25 June 1574. During the Jubilee of
1575, he opened the holy door of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. He was the Camerlengo of the Sacred College of Cardinals from
8 January 1579 to 8 January 1580. On 5 December 1580 he opted for the titular church
of San Pietro in Vincoli. He was named papal
legate in the Marche on October, 25, 1581.
He participated in the papal conclave of 1585
that elected Pope Sixtus V. On October 13,
1586 he opted for the titular church of San
Lorenzo in Lucina and became cardinal pro-
topriest. Under Pope Sixtus V, he was a prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Index. On May 11,
1587 he opted for the order of cardinal bishops, taking the suburbicarian see of Palestrina. He was
named papal legate to the Campagne and Maritime Province on May 13, 1587. He was a participant in
the first papal conclave of 1590 that elected Pope Urban VII; the second papal conclave of 1590 that
elected Pope Gregory XIV; the papal conclave of 1591 that elected Pope Innocent IX; and the papal
conclave of 1592 that elected Pope Clement VIII. He also was the Librarian of the Vatican Library
from 1591 to 1597. He died in Zagarolo on March 13, 1597 and was buried in the Franciscan church
there (cf. G. Crisci, Il cammino della Chiesa salernitana. Napoli & Roma 1976, I, pp. 585-598; and C. Weber, Legati e governatori dello Stato Pontificio: 1550-1809, Roma, 1994, pp. 181, 286 and 588-589).
Nearly nothing is known of Marcello Ferro, a man of letters from Macerata, who was also the
author of a pastoral play, Chlori, first printed at Venice in 1590 and reprinted in 1598. He also was a
member of the Accademia dei Catenati of Macerata founded in 1574 (cf. M. Maylander, Storia delle Accademie in Italia, Bologna, 1930, III, pp. 508-521)
Edit 16, CNCE 18882; Universal STC, no. 829357; F. Grimaldi, Sebastiano Martellini tipografo
maceratese, in: “Studi Maceratesi”, 22, 1989, p. 414.
€ 1,200.- / CHF 1,350.- / $ 1,370.EDITED BY A WOMAN
12. GONZAGA, Curzio (1536-1599). Il Fidamante. Poema eroico… ricorretto da lui,
et di nuovo ristampato, aggiuntivi gli argomenti dell’Illustre, & virtuosiss. Signora Maddalena Campiglia, & con le Moralità d’incerto Autore. 4to. (4), 235, (1) leaves. Title within
an elaborate woodcut border with the author’s portrait at the center and his emblem (an eagle flying towards the constellation of the Ursa Minor with the motto “E sole altro non haggio”) at the top (the
title border is the same as used in the first edition of the poem, published in Mantua by Giacomo Ruffinelli in 1582, with two differences: in the first edition the emblem is at the place of the portrait, while
in the upper oval are the Gonzaga’s coat-of-arms). Printer’s device at the end of the volume. Woodcut
capital letters at the beginning of each Canto. The ‘Argomenti’ are set within an ornamental woodcut
frame. 19th century half vellum over boards, manuscript title on the spine marginal stains
on some leaves, wormholes in the inner margin of about 8 leaves not affecting the text,
lower outer corner of the last 30 leaves skillfully repaired, wormhole repaired from leaves 189 to 191 in the lower margin with no loss, all in all a good copy, with the entry of
ownership of the Monastery of San Francesco di Lugnano in Teverina on the titlepage.
Venezia, all’insegna del Leone [Heirs of Curzio Troiano Navò], 1591.
SECOND EDITION, revised, of Il Fidamante, but the first edited by Maddalena Campiglia, who added brief verse summaries (Argomenti) of her own at the beginning of each Canto. This is one of the
very first books in which a woman played a leading editorial role. For Curzio Gonzaga, her friend and
relative by marriage, Campiglia also wrote the dedicatory letter to his comedy Gl’inganni (1592) (cf. V.
Cox, Women’s writing in Italy, 1400-1650, Baltimore, 2008, pp. 153-154).
In the undated dedication addressed by Antonio Amici to the duke of Sora, Giacomo Buoncompagni, is stated that at that time Curzio Gonzaga was still working on his poem and, although he
had already made significant corrections to the text of the first edition, he was not yet completely pleased with the results. In order to offer to the public the new corrected version of the poem, Amici
contacted Maddalena Campiglia, who was the keeper of all Gonzaga’s manuscripts. She agreed to edit
the publication and contributed with her Argomenti. While the poem was already under the press in
Venice, Gonzaga was brought to that town by some personal affairs and, although at first reluctant, he
finally accepted to supervise the printing process.
Il Fidamante, a heroic poem in 36 Canti in ottava rima, was written around 1575, but published
only in 1582. Gonzaga continued to work on it also after its second printing (cf. A.M. Razzoli Roio,
Introduzione, in: C. Gonzaga, “Il Fidamante”, E. Varini & I. Rocchi, eds, Rome, 2000).
“Il Fido Amante, composto dal Gonzaga tra il 1575 e il 1582, apparentemente si prefigge la celebrazione della dinastia di Mantova e delle famiglie ad essa imparentate, sui cui spicca la casa d’Austria. Ad un’attenta lettura, l’opera rivela tuttavia un più criptico messaggio rivolto alla cerchia dei Fedeli d’Amore: Gonzago, amante fedele che per amore di Vittoria supera prove iniziatiche sempre più
ardue, adombra infatti la proiezione virtuale dell’autore nella sua ascesa verso una perfezione morale
intesa come allegoria dell’impari lotta di un cattolico intransigente contro la parte più corrotta della
Chiesa, mentre Vittoria, simbolo della Croce di Cristo e delle sue sofferenze, oltre che della Chiesa
trionfante, assurge a punto di riferimento costante da cui Curzio-Gonzago trae forza e vitalità. Al di là
di tale interpretazione…, l’altro messaggio affidato dal Gonzaga al suo poema [è] la rappresentazione
di una corte perfetta in cui i cortigiani non solo si identificano con il signore, ma si uniformano sollecitamente al suo volere, fidando risoluti in un principe ritenuto summa di tutte le virtù. È dai tempi del
Cortegiano del Castiglione che il mondo della corte e il suo signore non ricevono un omaggio così manifesto… Nel Fido Amante il Gonzaga metterà a frutto le memorie di un’intera vita cantando le fortune
di una dinastia al colmo della potenza, di una città e della sua magnificenza artistico-culturale, di una
corte notoriamente raffinata… Mantova e i modelli della sua corte sono i protagonisti sottesi a tutto il
poema. La città costituisce lo sfondo da cui partono i cavalieri e l’eroe protagonista per vivere le ambasce di una guerra segnata da prove iniziatiche e armi emblematiche non tanto per l’immagine di forza evocata, ma per il loro intrinseco valore morale” (A.M. Razzoli Roio, Mantova e la corte dei Gonzaga
nel “Fido Amante”, in: “Cavalieri ed eroi alla corte di Mantova: il ‘Fido amante’ di Curzio Gonzaga”,
Rome, 2008, pp. 65 and 69-70).“Nonostante la straordinaria e immediata fortuna della Gerusalemme
Liberata abbia finito per oscurare il poema di Curzio Gonzaga, quando nel 1582 esce a Mantova la prima edizione del Fido Amante essa viene accolta con entusiasmo non solo dalla corte mantovana di Scipione Gonzaga, esaltata nell’opera, ma anche da altri signori non coinvolti direttamente, come Ercole
d’Este, e soprattutto da altri letterati quali lo Speroni e lo stesso Tasso… [L’opera] si configura come
una proiezione dei gusti tematici e stilistici dell’autore, ma la contempo rispecchia quelle che erano le
predilezioni letterarie del tempo: la varietà degli episodi, magistralmente concatenati tra loro,
comunque rispettosi delle regole aristoteliche, la fusione di elementi epici e romanzeschi, la presenza
della lotta fra bene e male, del tradizionale motivo encomiastico e di quello amoroso, la costante attenzione rivolta al carattere dei personaggi e per finire la scelta attenta di particolari artifici retorici… Nel
1591 il poema, divenuto nel frattempo Fidamante, viene stampato di nuovo a Venezia. Si tratta ormai di
un testo ben diverso dalla princeps; infatti l’autore ha inserito nuovi episodi e ne ha spostati o eliminati
altri” (I. Rocchi, Lo stile del “Fido Amante”, in: “Cavalieri ed eroi…”, op. cit., pp. 153-154).
Curzio Gonzaga belonged to a minor branch of the Gonzaga family, that of the marquises of
Palazzolo. In 1549 he undertook a military career. In 1556 he was imprisoned for one year for having
insulted a certain Raffaele Ghivizzano during a dinner at the table of the duke of Mantua. A protégé
of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, from 1557 on, he was charged with many diplomatic missions. He was
sent to the Farnese court during the war between the Spanish and the French army. In April 1559 he
represented the duchy of Mantua at Cateau-Cambrésis and soon after he met Emperor Charles V. In
September of the same year, he followed Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga to Rome to attend the conclave
after the death of Pope Paul IV. He then decided to settle in Rome, where he had made the acquaintance of many litterati and where he had been admitted to the Accademia delle Notte Vaticane,
which assembled in Cardinal Carlo Borromeo’s palace. He was obliged to return to Mantua at the end
of 1575. From then on he lived mainly between Mantua and Borgoforte, where he had a villa full of
statues and paintings, devoting himself to the writing of his long poem Il Fidamante. In those years he
hosted a literary circle in his villa and remained in epistolary exchange with his friends in Rome and
elsewhere. In 1585 he published a collection of Rime. He spent the years 1591 and 1592 in Venice. In
1595, duke Vincenzo I granted him the castle of Palazzolo in Monferrato and the title of marquis.
Gonzaga, who suffered of gout, continued however to reside in Borgoforte, devoting himself to the
study of theology. He died in Borgoforte in 1599 (cf. O. Grandi, Di Curzio Gonzaga e delle sue opere, in:
“Per Cesare Bozzetti. Studi di letteratura e filologia italiana”, S. Albonico et al., eds., Milano 1996, pp.
535-546; and P. Peretti, Curzio Gonzaga Marchese di Palazzolo, in: “Curzio Gonzaga fedele d’amore, letterato e politico, Atti del Convegno di Studi”, Torino, 1999, A. Villata, ed., Rome, 2000, pp. 147-148).
Maddalena Campiglia, born into a wealthy family of Vicenza, studied literature and music in
her youth. In 1576 she married Dionisio Colzé, from whom he separated in 1583. She then joined the
Third Order of St. Dominic. Her religious feelings are expressed in her first larger work, the Discorso
intorno all’Annunciatione della Vergine (1585). Becoming known as a writer, she made the acquaintance of
Torquato Tasso, who expressed himself positively on her pastoral play Flori (1588), which, like the
eclogue Calisa (1589), is dedicated to Curzio Gonzaga (G. De Marco, Maddalena Campiglia. La figura e
l’opera, Vicenza, 1988, passim).
Edit 16, CNCE 21439; P. Bertelli, Intorno a Curzio, per altre moderne carte, in: “Cavalieri ed
eroi alla corte di Mantova: ‘Il fido amante’ di Curzio Gonzaga”, A.M. Razzoli Roio, ed., (Cerrina,
2008), p. 42 ; V. Cox, The Prodigious Muse: Women's Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy,
(Baltimore, MD, 2011, p. 382 ; C. Perrone, ‘So che donna amo donna’. La ‘Calisa’ di Maddalena Campiglia, (Galatina, 1996), p. 36.
€ 1,600.- / CHF 1760.- / $ 1,780.ABORTION
13. GREGORY XIV (1502-1585). S.mi D.N.D. Gregorii divina providentia papae
XIIII Constitutio moderatoria bullae fel. rec. Sixti pp. V contra abortum quovis modo
procurantes. Folio (323 x 228 mm). (2) leaves. Large woodcut papal coat-of-arms on the titlepage. Unbound, some marginal foxing, but a good, uncut copy.
Roma, Paolo Blado, 1591.
ORIGINAL EDITION (one of four variant issues). The bull was issued on May 31, 1591 and immediately reprinted at Florence and Madrid.
In 1140, Gratian compiled the first collection of canon law that was accepted as authoritative
within the church. Gratian's code included the canon Aliquando, which concluded that abortion was
homicide only when the fetus was formed. If the fetus was not yet a formed human being, abortion
was not homicide (cf. J.T. Noonan, ed., The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives,
Cambridge, MA, 1970, p.20). In 1588
Sixtus V issued a bull Against those who
Procure Abortion (October 29), often
referred to by its opening word Effraenatam (‘Without Restaint’). As an official piece of papal legislation, Sixtus’s
bull was unprecedented, also because
it was one of the first teachings issued
‘motu proprio’, i.e. without the advice
of the rest of the Curch. As God’s
vicar on earth, Sixtus sought to bring
justice to those ‘murderers’ who had
no fear ‘to kill most cruelly immature
foetuses within the maternal viscera’.
Sixtus believed abortion to be a common and socially accepted practice.
He sought to ‘eradicate’ it by unequivocally deeming all procured abortion homicide and its procurer and
any accomplice murderers, as defined
by canon and criminal law. In the bull,
Sixtus disregarded considerations of
formation and animation; his proclamations concerned both the animate
and inanimate, the formed and the
unformed unborn. From the moment
the bull was issued, these distinctions
in the unborn became inconsequential: all abortion was made actual homicide. As a papal bull, Effraenatam was both a theological statement as well as canon and criminal law. It
was not meant to analyze ambiguities and the mysteries of generation, but rather to set out doctrine
and procedures that were to be unquestionably followed (cf. A. Stensvold, A History of Pregnancy in
Christianity: From Original Sin to Contemporary Abortion Debates, New York, 2015, pp. 69-70). Effraenatam
is also useful for providing an idea of what types of abortifacients were used at this point in time. The
document lists ‘blows, poisons, medicines, potions, weights, burdens, work and labor imposed on a
pregnant woman, and even other unknown and extremely researched means’ as methods of procuring
abortions that were apparently in practice. Additionally, it is apparent that contraceptives and sterilization procedures were also in use, as the document condemns the use, design, or recommendation of
medicines and potions intended to prevent conception, to which Pope Sixtus V assigned the same punishments as for abortions. Almost immediately upon assuming the papacy, his successor, Pope Gregory XIV, with the present constitution (Sedes apostolica), revoked the decisions of Effraenatam and
reinstated the original punishment of excommunication for procured abortion only after the animation or ensoulment of the fetus. Additionally, he rescinded the legal classification of abortion as homicide (presumably because of the overwhelming number of cases the decision generated). Only in 1869,
however, Pope Pius IX restored the gravity of excommunication as punishment for any procured
abortion, once again dropping the distinction between the animated and unanimated fetus in his publication Apostolicae Sedis Moderationi. The Roman Catholic Church’s modern position on abortion also
acknowledges no variation in the value of life in the womb from the moment of conception onwards,
and thus views a procured abortion at any stage in pregnancy as a serious sin meriting immediate excommunication (cf. J. Cristopoulos, Abortion in Late-Renaissance Italy, Diss., Toronto, 2013, pp. 70-74).
Edit 16, CNCE 77453; Universal STC, no. 765033.
€ 1,100.- / CHF 1,200.- / $ 1,220.-
14. LÓPEZ DE ZÚNICA, Diego (Didacus Lopis Stunica, ca. 1470-1531). Assertio
ecclesiasticae translationis Novi Testamenti a solœcismis quos illi Erasmus Roterdamus
impegerat… 4to. (22) leaves (the last is a blank). Title within an elaborate woodcut border and
Zuniga’s coat of arms. Old boards, stamp on the right outer lower corner of the title-page,
some light spots and browning, but a genuine copy with very large margins.
Roma, [Marcello Silber, before July] 1524.
VERY RARE FIRST EDITION. Lopez de Zúñiga, a classical scholar from Alcalà, was one of the
editors of the Complutesian Polyglot Bible, which was still far from being completed, when copies of
Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum reached Alcalà sometime in summer of 1516. This event changed
Zúñiga's life. As soon as he had a copy at his disposal, he began to write Annotationes against Erasmus'
New Testament. He showed these to his patron, Cardinal Ximenes, the originator and stimulator of
the Polyglot project, who, however, restrained him to publish his notes. They were published only two
years after the cardinal's death, just before Zúñiga set out from Alacalà for Rome in summer 1520.
Erasmus opened the counter-offensive with the publishing of his Apologia ad annotationes Stunicae
(Louvain, September/October 1521). Sometime before a copy of Erasmus' apology reached Zúñiga at
Rome in December 1521, he had completed a new work, his Erasmi Roterodami blasphemiae et impietates,
which marks the first occasion on which anyone had publicly criticized the entire religious program of
Erasmus to prove that he was a radical heretic (cf. M. Bataillon, Erasmo y España: Estudios sobre la historia espiritual del siglo XVI, Mexico
City/Buenos Aires, 1966, pp. 9197, 115-133.
Zúñiga submitted a handwritten copy of the work to Pope
Leo X, who, however, forbade
him to publish anything which
might harm Erasmus' name. Leo
X died on December 1521. The
new Pope Adrian VI (Adriaan
Floriszoon) was elected in January 1522, but was not to arrive in
Rome until the end of August. In
the meantime Zúñiga prepared an
abridged version of his Erasmi
Roterodami blasphemiae et impietates.
Apparently the cardinals in Rome
prohibited him to publish his
work even in abridged form,
which nevertheless were in the
press on April 7 1522. It is, in any
case, an established fact that the
cardinals passed a resolution
which forbade the sale of the
pamphlet book in Rome. In his
new preface Zúñiga intimated to
the reader that by publishing these fragments from Erasmus'
works he wished to warn against
the dangers of the latter's publications to the faith and the church
and to point to the agreements
between the heretic ideas of Erasmus and Luther, suggesting that Luther had borrowed his heterodox
doctrines from Erasmus. A copy of Zúñiga's new attack reached Erasmus at Basel. He did not wait
very long to react and completed another apology in June. Zúñiga himself, however, persisted at Rome in his offensive against Erasmus. As long as Adrian VI hold the pontificate in Rome Zúñiga published nothing. After the pope's death (September 14, 1523) Zúñiga resumed the controversy with the
present work. “In this final stage the polemic returned to a thoroughly philological debate, even more
radically philological than it had been at the beginning. In his Assertio Zúñiga responded to the list of
linguistic flaws occurring in the Latin Vulgate which Erasmus had compiled and published in his Soloecismi, a section included in the preliminaries to his Novum Testamentum of 1519 and 1522. Now the discussion was again about how the Greek of the New Testament could best be translated into Latin.
Now both Erasmus and Zúñiga argued again on the basis of linguistic parallels in ancient literature.
They differed in their opinion about which ancient authors could be accepted as norm for correct Latin, but their discourse is about literary, linguistic and grammatical data, the right interpretation of
words and phrases, the most preferable reading in Latin and Greek, and on translation method. In
short, with Zúñiga’s Assertio (1524) and Erasmus’ Epistola Apologetica (1529), the polemic had returned
to a fully-fledged philological debate – apart of the insults the two opponents did not cease to hurl at
each other” (J.H. de Jonge, ‘General Introduction to’ Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, Leiden, 2015,
IX/8, pp. 3-4). Thus the polemic came to an end in 1529 with Erasmus' Epistola apologetica adversus
Stunicam, in form of a long letter to his younger friend, the physician Hubertus Barlandus. Zúñiga's
polemics can thus be regarded as a significant innovation in the field of theological debate. Reading
his theological attacks on Erasmus one realizes, that he had used his philological apparatus, too, for an
ultimately theological goal: the neutralization of Erasmus' criticism of church, theology and traditional
piety (cf. F.L. Lisi, La polémica entre Erasmo y los humanistas Españoles sobre su edición del Nuevo Testamento,
in: “Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae”, Series C - Historia Litterarum, 57/3, 2012, pp. 89-93).
“National pride was not, however, the main motive which led López de Zúñiga to embark on
his campaign against Erasmus. As early as 1511 he had taken offence at Eramus’ irreverent remarks in
the Praise of Folly. López de Zúñiga disdain for the Dutch humanist therefore predated the publication
of the Novum Instrumentum. Yet, as he declared in the opening paragraphs of his Annotationes, not only
was Erasmus’ new version of the Gospels unnecessary on philological grounds, but (and this was more worrisome) it undermined Christian orthodoxy... Erasmus’ assiduity in replying to López de Zúñiga
is a clear indication of the seriousness with which he regarded the Spaniard’s attacks on him” (A.
Coroleu, Anti-Erasmianism in Spain, in: “Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus”,
E. Rummel, ed., Leiden, 2008, pp. 77-78, 83).
Diego López de Zúñiga was born to an aristocratic family in Estremadura. His brother Juan
performed high diplomatic functions for Emperor Charles V. He toke a degree in theology at the University of Salamanca, where he also studied Greek under Aires Barbosa. From his works it is evident
that he was a competent scholar In Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He also knew Aramaic and Arabic. He
was called by Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros to join the team of editors of what would become the
Complutensian Polyglot Bible (1514-1517). In August 1520 he started a journey to Rome where he
arrived in February of the following year and published a vivid account of his travel entitled Itinerarium
ab Hispania usque ad urbem romanam. Here he enjoyed the protection of Cardinal Bernardino de Carvajal
and soon secured a teaching position in Greek at the University of La Sapienza. In July 1529 we find
Zúñiga together with his friend and compatriot Juan Gines de Sepulveda in the household of Cardinal
Francisco de Quiñones, the former general of the Franciscans and now ambassador of Pope Clement
VII to the King of Spain and the Emperor. He was in the entourage of the imperial court in the first
months of 1530, when Charles V was crowned in Bologna. Back in Rome he addressed a Consilium to
Clement VII, advising the pope on the peril of Lutheranism .He died during a visit to Naples in the
following year (cf. C. Chaparro Gomez, Erasmo de Rotterdam y Diego López de Zúñiga: una polémica áspera y
prolongada, in: “Ágora. Estudos Clássicos em Debate”, 16, 2014, pp. 157-187).
Edit 16, CNCE 48585 (three copies, to which the copy in the Andover Harvard Theological
Library must be added); Universal STC, no. 838604; J.H. de Jonge, op. cit., p. 3, no. 11; A. Tinto, Gli
annali tipografici di Eucario e Marcello Silber, (Firenze, 1968), p. 185.
$ 2,800.- / CHF 3,100.- / $ 3,400.-
15. MOLIN, Girolamo (1500-1569). Rime… Novamente venute in luce. Con Privilegij per anni
XXV. 8vo. (15, lacking the first blank leaf), 121 [i.e.126, leaves 54, 63, 64, 107 and 108 repeated in
numbering], (6) leaves. With a woodcut device on the title-page and at the end. Contemporary vellum, spine
covered with red paper with label and manuscript title, lightly rubbed and worn, but a good genuine
copy.
Venezia, [Comin da Trino?], 1573.
FIRST EDITION (variant issue in which the blank leaf Q7 is replaced by a bifolium containing a sonnet by Domenico Venier and the errata). The volume is dedicated by Celio Magno to Giulio Contarini
(Zara, October 20, 1572) and also contains a life of Molino written by the painter Giovanni Mario
Verdizzotti, a pupil of Titian. This verse collection represents a kind of summa of the Venetian neoPetrarchism and has printed at the end a ‘tombeau poétique’ in Molino’s memory, including verses by
Lauro Badoer, Girolamo Fioretti, Federico Frangipane, Giorgio Gradenigo, Pietro Gradenigo, Nicolò
Macheropio, Celio Magno, Domenico Vernier and some anonymous authors (cf. E. Taddeo, Il manierismo letterario e i lirici veneziani del tardo Cinquecento, Roma 1974, pp. 73-91).
“Nel 1569 muore Girolamo Molino. Gli amici, Domenico Venier in primo luogo, promuovono la pubblicazione delle sue rime; Celio Magno le dedica a Giulio Contarini. Il compito di scrivere la
vita dell’autore è affidata al Verdizotti. Anche in questo caso egli coglie l’occasione per dare al libro un
particolare sapore. Si celebra la collaborazione fra grandi personaggi di generazioni diverse: si ricorda
l’amicizia del giovane Molino con i vecchi maestri, il Bembo, Triphon Gabriele, il Trissino, e con personaggi illustri, con cui minore era lo stacco generazionale, come Domenico Venier, il Navagero, Daniele Barbaro, Bernardo Cappello, Luigi Cornaro, lo Speroni, Bernardo Tasso, Giulio Camillo. Il Verdizotti ricorda anche che l’amore per la poesia volgare conviveva nel Molin con l’interesse per la pittura, la scultura, la musica, e che anche conosceva la
lingua ebraica, oltre al greco e al latino. Interessante
è anche il ritratto morale del personaggio, non si
sposa per non turbare l’otium degli studi letterari,
ma non è certo insensibile al fascino delle belle donne; accetta raramente incarichi pubblici, ma si indigna per il cattivo uso che altri ne fanno: si arrabbiava, scrive il Verdizotti, contro coloro che ‘carichi di
ricchezza e ornati di grande autorità, non facessero
molte cose degne di loro, come si può tener per certo ch’egli fatto haverebbe’. La vita del Molin scritta
dal Verdizotti tende dunque a tramutarsi nella celebrazione di un ambiente, nella appassionata rievocazione di un momento magico della vita culturale
veneziana” (L. Bolzoni, La stanza della memoria.
Modelli letterari e iconografici nell’età della stampa,
Torino, 1995, p. 36).
“Since musical activity in Venier's salon functioned as a pastime rather than a central activity, and
since the academy kept no formal records of its
meetings, concrete evidence of links between musicians and men of letters is scarce... Among literati
the most intriguing link may be found in the figure
of Molino, Venier's aristocratic poet friend and acquaintance of Parabosco. Molino's stature in Venetian society was considerable, despite family battles
that cost him an extended period of poverty and
travail. A bust sculpted by Alessandro Vittoria for
the tiny Cappella Molin in Santa Maria del Giglio -
where a great number of reliquaries owned by the family are still preserved — portrays Molino as the
embodiment of gerontocratic wisdom. In 1573 his posthumous biographer, Giovan Mario Verdizzotti, wrote that of all the arts Molino had delighted in understanding music most of all. The remark is
supported by earlier evidence. Several composers based in Venice and the Veneto - Jean Gero,
Francesco Portinaro, and Antonio Molino (no relation) - set Molino's seemingly little-accessible verse
to music before its publication in 1573, four years after the poet's death... Molino himself may have
performed solo song, as Stampa seems to hint in a sonnet dedicated to him with the words ‘Qui convien sol la tua cetra, e 'l tuo canto, / Chiaro Signor’ (Here only your lyre is fitting, and your song, /
eminent sir). In Petrarchan poetry the idea of singing, and singing to the lyre, is of course a metaphorical adaptation of classical convention to mean simply poetizing, without intent to evoke real singing
and playing. But Stampa's poems make unusual and pointed separations between the acts of "scrivere"
and "cantare" that suggest she meant real singing here. Other contemporaries specifically point up
Molino's knowledge of theoretical and practical aspects of music. In 1541, Giovanni del Lago dedicated his extensive collection of musical correspondence to Molino, whom he declared held ‘the first
degree in the art of music’ (nell arte di Musica tiene il primo grado). Further, he claimed, ‘Your Lordship... merits... the dedication of the present epistles, in which are contained various questions about
music... And certainly one sees that few today are found (like you) learned... in such a science, but yet
adorned with kindness and good morals’. Del Lago's correspondence, was theoretically oriented in
church polyphony. One of its most striking aspects is its recognition of connections between music
and language that parallel those embodied in the new Venetian madrigal style. Del Lago insisted that
vernacular poetry be complemented with suitable musical effects and verbal syntax with musical
phrasing. In discussing these relationships he developed musically the Ciceronian ideals of propriety
and varietas. His dedication to Molino therefore presents a fascinating bridge between patronage in Venier's circle and developments in Venetian music. Yet taken in sum these sources show Molino's musical patronage embracing two different traditions, each quite distinct: one, the arioso tradition of improvisers and frottolists; the other, the learned tradition of church polyphonists. Molino's connection
with both practices reinforces the impression that Venetian literati prized each of them” (M. Feldman,
City culture and the madrigal at Venice, Berkeley, CA, 1995, pp. 113-116, see also E. Greggio, Girolamo da
Molino, in: “Ateneo Veneto”, ser. 18, vol. 2, 1894, pp. 188-202 and 255-323).
The printing of the volume has been attributed to Comino da Trino, active in Venice from
1539 to 1573, and probaly his last printed work (cf. E. Vaccaro, Le marche dei tipografi ed editori italiani del
XVI secolo nella Biblioteca Angelica di Roma, Firenze, 1983, p. 254)
Edit 16, CNCE 48399; Universal STC, no. 843040; I. Pantani, Biblia. Biblioteca del libro italiano
antico. La biblioteca volgare. Vol. 1: Libri di poesia, (Milano, 1996), no. 2974; H. Vaganay, Le sonnet en Italie et
en France au XVIe siècle, (Lyon, 1902), I, p. XXX, no. 7.
€ 1,400.- / CHF 1,550.- / $ 1,570.-
16. PLUTARCH (ca. 50-120). La prima [-seconda] parte delle vite...di greco in latino
& di latino in volgare tradotte. 8vo. 2 volumes. Leaves 528; 549 [i.e. 551], [1]. Leaf rrr8
is a blank. Numerous half-page woodcuts in the text, titles within historiated woodcut borders, and the
printer’s device at the end of the volumes. Some tiny wormholes in the title and the first leaves
of the second volume, some light browning.
Venezia, Bernardino Bindoni, August 1537. – And:
- - -. Alcuni opusculetti de le cose morali del divino Plutarco. In questa nostra lingua
tradotti. 8vo. Two parts in one volume. 164, (4) leaves (lacking leaf x8 a blank); 289, (3)
leaves. With the printer’s device on the title-page. Some light dampstains, a few tiny wormholes, title-page very lightly soiled. Uniformly bound in 19th century half-vellum, decor-
ated panels, spine with three raised bands, gilt ornaments and lettering, pink endpapers,
on the title page of the third volume entry of ownership of Francesco Venanzi, an attractive set.
Venezia, Girolamo Giglio, 1559.
ILLUSTRATED ITALIAN TRANSLATION in the version of Battista Alessandro Jaconello for the
first part of Plutrach’s Lives, and of Giulio Bordone for the second part. It is a reprint of the 1529 Bindoni edition, which in turn was first published by Zoppino in 1525.
This version was first published by Tramezzino in 1543 and reprinted in 1548. The selections
from Plutarch’s Moralia were translated by Antonio Massa and Giovanni Tarcagnota. These older
translations were superseded by those of Lodovico Domenichi in 1555 (Vite) and 1560 (Opuscoli) (cf.
V. Costa, Sulle prime traduzioni italiane a stampa delle opera di Plutarco, secc. XV-XVI, in: “Volgarizzare e
tradurre dall’Umanesimo all’Età contemporanea. Atti della Giornata di Studi, 7 dicembre 2011, Università di Roma ‘Sapienza’ ”, M. Accame, ed., Roma, 2013, pp. 87-88).
(I:)Edit 16, CNCE 23131; Universal STC, no. 849983; M. Sander, Le livre à figures italiens depuis
1467 jusqu'à 1530, (New York, 1941), no. 5792; S.F.W. Hoffmann, Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesammten
Litteratur der Griechen, (Leipzig, 1845), III, p. 218.
(II:) Edit 16 CNCE 25875; Universal STC, no. 849998; S.F.W. Hoffmann, op. cit., III, p. 222.
€ 1,800.- / CHF 2,000.- / $ 2,020.-
“AQUA VITAE”
17. RUPESCISSA, Joannes de (Jean de Roquetaillade, ca. 1310-1362). La vertu et
propriété de la quinte essence de toutes choses... 8vo. 155 pp., 2 blank leaves. With the
printer’s device on the title-page. Vellum, some light marginal dampstains, a faint marginal ink
stain, but a very fine copy.
Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1549.
FIRST EDITION. Originally written around 1351-1352 as Liber de consideration quintae essentiae omnium
rerum, the work widely circulated in manuscript form. The translator, Antoine du Moulin (see below)
probably used a Latin manuscript, since the work, in its original form, was issued at Basel only in 1561
by Guglielmo Gratarolo. De Tournes reprinted the French translation in 1581 (cf. R. Halleux, Les ouvrages alchimiques de Jean de la Roquetaillade, in: “Histoire littéraire de la France”, 41, 1981, pp. 243-244).
The tract, dealing with the production of an elixir that would strengthen and sustain the humors of the human body, lengthening the lifespan of man, was regarded as a unique approach to the
medical powers of plants and minerals as well as a unique treatise among medieval alchemical writings
(cf. R.P. Multhauf, John of Rupescissa and the Origin of Medical Chemistry, in: “Isis”, 45, 1954, pp. 359-367;
see also C. Crisciani, Giovanni di Rupescissa: sapere, alchimia e profezia, in: “I francescani e le scienze. Atti
del XXXIX Convegno internazionale di studio. Assisi, 6-8 ottobre 2011”, Spoleto, 2012, p. 239-280).
“Having told us how to prepare an ardent spirit and circulate it, he [Rupescissa] goes on to
describe how we are to fix the ‘sun’ in the ‘heaven’, i.e. make potable gold. This he does by repeatedly
quenching hot leaves of gold in the aqua ardens. The ‘heaven’ could also extract the heavenly stars appropriate to their specific nature. Thus the quintessence could be rendered hot, cold, moisty or dry, or
could be given medical properties, by extracting with the appropriate plant or animal material having
that quality, the result being something – in fact a solution of various essential oils, etc. very like a liqueur. It is not unlikely that the complex liqueurs made by religious orders, for example Benedictine,
with their immense variety of plant ingredients, are actual examples of a ‘philosopher’s heaven’, in
which have been fixed the stars of so many plants” (F. Sherwood Taylor, The Idea of the Quintessence, in:
“Science Medicine and History. Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice”,
E. Ashworth Underwood, ed., London, 1953, pp. 258-259).
“De quinta essentia focuses on the restoration and prolongation of health through alchemical
medicine, which Rupescissa suggests is all the more important in the context of the last days. Healthier
and longer-lived evangelical preachers would presumably be more formidable allies of the church and
adversaries of Antichrist. De quinta essentia therefore includes two parts: book I focuses on the theoretical underpinning of alchemy; book II outlines the practical steps of healing. This organization reflects
the common division of scholastic disciplines into two areas the theorica (knowledge of underlying causes and principles) and the practica (the knowledge directed toward practical goals). Rupescissa’s practica
in book II offers a list of medical conditions, including skin diseases, infected wounds. Lice, leprosy,
poisoning, various fevers, and plague, followed by prescriptions for treatment” (L. De Vun, Prophecy
Alchemy and the End of Time. John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages, New York, 2009, pp. 61-62).
“Dans la cosmologie médiévale, le ciel, composé d’éther, passait pour incorruptible tandis que
le monde sublunaire, régi par les quatre éléments, était soumis à la corruption. Selon Rupescissa, il est
possible de soustraire l’homme à la corruption grâce à l’usage de la quintessence, ‘contre-partie terrestre de la matière celeste’. La quintessence se prépare à partir de l’aqua ardens (alcool), mille et mille fois
distillée jusqu’à être entièrement débarrassée des quatre éléments. La quintessence ainsi obtenue étant
de nature incorruptible, elle est à même d’agir sur les quatre qualités élémentaires régissant le corps
humain afin de le préserver de la corruption. Cette action se réalise par le biais de l’or, soleil terrestre,
de même que les cieux agissent sur le monde par le biais du soleil et des astres. L’or ne doit pas être
d’origine alchimique, car aux yeux de Rupescissa, l’or alchimique est fait de matières corrosives. Il faut
donc employer de l’or naturel, le purifier, le chauffer et le distiller plusieurs fois avec de l’aqua ardens
qui en extraira toutes les propriétés. Puis cette ‘eau ardente aurifiée’ doit être ajoutée à la quintessence
pour produire la médecine universelle. Cette opération, Rupescissa la désigne comme l’action de fixer
le soleil [i.e. l’or] dans le ciel [i.e. la quintessence]. Les propriétés de la quintessence ne s’arrêtent pas là.
Selon Rupescissa, on peut ‘fixer dans le ciel non seulement le soleil, mais toutes les choses terrestres’,
ce qui revient à dire que l’on peut extraire la quintessence ‘de tout fruit, bois, racine, fleur’, même des
herbes et des feuilles; il suffit de les faire distiller trois heures durant dans l’eau ardente et celle-ci extrait leur quintessence, s’incorporant leurs propriétés qui se trouvent ainsi multipliées. On peut également extraire la quintessence de l’or, à l’issue d’une série de manipulations (amalgamation avec le mercure, dissolution dans des acides minéraux, décantation au soleil, enfin obtention d’une ‘huile incombustible’ qui n’est autre que la quintessence de l’or). On peut alors combiner cette dernière avec la
quintessence ordinaire du vin dans un remède. Rupescissa énumère un tel nombre de substances susceptibles d’être employées de cette façon que, comme l’écrit Robert Halleux, ‘somme toute, l’eau ardente remplace simplement l’eau et le vin des infusions et des décoctions galéniques’ ” (D. Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France à la fin de la Renaissance, 1567-1625, Genève, 2007, pp. 40-41)
The translator, Antoine Du Moulin (1510? - 1551), lawyer and physician, was a poet in the
circle of the Lyonnais school around Maurice Scève and a translator and editor in the printing house
of Jean de Tournes. In 1536 he became secretary to Marguerite de Navarre, sister of King Francis I.
He also was a friend of Clément Marot and Bonaventure Des Périers, whose writings he edited in
1544 (cf. A. Cartier & A. Chenevière, Antoine du Moulin, Valet de Chambre de la Reine de Navarre, in:
“Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, II, 1895, pp. 469-490).
John of Rupescissa was born at Marcolès (Cantal), near Aurillac (Auvergne). He entered the
Franciscan order in 1332 after five years of study at the University of Toulouse (studying liberal arts/
philosophy, and devoting himself to alchemy, which resulted in his Liber de quinta essentia). He continued his studies (esp. theology) after his entry in the order in the sub-provincial school network
(predominantly at the Toulouse studium).
Around 1335, he had a dream, in which he
was transported to China and saw the Antichrist in the disguise of a child in the neighborhood of Zayton (Southern China). Some
elements of this dream seemed to be confirmed thereafter in a meeting between John
and the Franciscan bishop of Zayton, who
happened to be in France at the time. Thus
John became convinced of his own visionary qualities. Between 1340 and 1344 he was
living in the convent of Aurillac, from where he began to propagate his visions on the
approach of Antichrist, annoying his guardian and his provincial, Guillaume Farinier.
The latter ordered Jean’s imprisonment in
the convent of Figeac (December 1344)
also for his radical ideas about Franciscan
poverty and his eschatological visions,
which went hand in hand with attacks on
the Avignon Papacy. He was then kept in
confinement in several convents of Aquitaine (Figeac, Martel, Brive, Donzenac, Limoges, and Saint-Junien). After his transfer to
Toulouse, he received a sympathetic hearing
by the inquisition (the Dominican inquisitor
Jean de La Molineyrie could not find any
heretical tendencies in his opinions). But his
own provincial, Guillaume Farinier, made
sure that he was again imprisoned, first in
Toulouse, and then in the convent of Rieux.
Around this time, John suffered a fracture in his leg, which was not well treated, as well as other severe illnesses. Nevertheless, John survived the plague epidemic of 1348. The new provincial of Aquitaine, Raoul de Cornac, ordered John’s transfer to Castres (August 1349). However, the friars responsible for his transfer brought him to Avignon, so that Jean could defend himself before the pope. John
arrived at Avignon in August, 1349. His trial begun in October of that year. An uncompromising John
accused the pope and the college of cardinals of simony. During the trial, John was kept in the papal
prison (the Soudan, reserved for clerics), sharing a cell with the lunatic and aggressive English cleric
Simon Legat (episodes of his imprisonment are described in the Liber Ostensor). He stayed for several
years in the papal prison, where he was able to write, to receive visitors, and sometimes was questioned further by cardinals and other officials, yet also suffered from bad treatment. Some of the cardinals, notably the French cardinal-protector of the Franciscan order, Elias de Talleyrand-Périgord, took
some interest in him, which lead to an amelioration of his conditions. In 1354, another trial concerning John’s orthodoxy was started, this time lead by the Cistercian cardinal Guillaume Court. As no heretical views could be detected, John was finally released from prison in November 1356 (the liberation was already ‘shown’ to John by the Virgin Mary in a vision some months earlier). But Jean was still
kept in some kind of confinement in Avignon, until 1360, when pope Innocent VI had him apparently
transferred to the castle of Brignoles, where he again lived as a prisoner but received a better treatment. Accounts of the apostolic chamber show that, between June and December 1365, Jean received
several donations. A bit later, John fell seriously ill, and was hospitalized in the convent of the friars
minor at Avignon. Thereafter nothing more is known about his life. Both inside and outside his cell,
he composed many alchemical and prophetical writings, heavily influenced by Joachimist ideas (as well
as by prophetical traditions inspired by the Vaticinaria, the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, Peter John
Olivi, Arnold of Villanova, Robert d’Uzès, and others). All in all, he probably composed more than
thirty works. Seven of these have survived until this day. His prophecies had a great influence on late
medieval and early modern Latin and vernacular prophetical traditions throughout Europe (cf. J. Bignami-Odier, Études sur Jean de Roquetaillade, Paris, 1952, pp. 16-25).
Adams R-946; Universal STC, no. 12589; V.F. Brüning, Die alchemischen Druckwerke von der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst bis zum Jahr 1690, (München, 2004), p. 35, no. 0254; A. Cartier, Bibliographie des
éditions des de Tournes, imprimeurs à Lyon, (Paris, 1937), I, p. 279, no. 143; A. Cartier & A. Chenevière, op.
cit, III, (1896), p. 234, no. 20; S. von Gültlingen, Bibliographie des livres imprimés à Lyon au seizième siècle,
(Baden-Baden, 2004), IX, p. 157, no. 152.
€ 4,700.- / CHF 5,200.- / $ 5,230.THE DUTIES OF AN EDITOR
WITH VERSES BY
VITTORIA COLONNA AND VERONICA GAMBARA
18. RUSCELLI, Girolamo, ed. (ca. 1500-1566). I fiori delle rime de’ poeti illustri,…
Con alcune annotationi del medesimo, sopra i luoghi, che le ricercano per l’intendimento delle sentenze, o per le regole & precetti della lingua, & dell’ornamento. 8vo. (24),
608 [i.e. 624], (56) pp. With the printer’s device on the title-page. Contemporary limp vellum
with manuscript title on the spine, lacking ties, new endpapers, a fine copy with the
book plate of Franz Pollak Parnau.
Venezia, Giovanni Battista & Melchiorre Sessa, 1558.
FIRST EDITION (issue B with the title-page and the first two gatherings reset). This important verse
anthology is usually considered volume eight in the fifteen volumes series published by various Venetian printers between 1545 and 1560. It was reprinted in 1569, 1579 and 1586 (cf. L. G. Clubb & W.
G. Clubb, Building a Lyric Canon: Gabriel Giolito and the Rival Anthologists, 1545-1590, in: “Italica” 68/3,
1991, p. 338).
Ruscelli's Fiori was different in kind from the earlier Giolito anthologies: it was a selective and
retrospective anthology, consisting mostly of poems published in previous anthologies that were held
out to be the cream of the crop. It also marked something of a change in poetic taste, for the Fiori
abounds in contemporary Neapolitan poets, such as Rota, Tansillo, Caraffa, and Di Costanzo; these
poets revived the earlier flamboyant style (condemned by Bembo) made popular by Tebaldeo, Chariteo, Serafino, and, of course, Sannazaro, the latter of whom is mentioned, it will be remembered, by
Ruscelli (and Cinzio) as an appropriate lyric model. In an act of mutual self- promotion, Ruscelli refers
explicitly in his treatise to his anthology as a work full of potential models, just as he had done in that
volume's preface. Ruscelli's theoretical and editorial work are thus complementary: both bear witness
to an exploding canon of approved authors who can serve as models for imitation. The volume is dedicated to Aureoliano Porcelaga, scion of an ancient family from Brescia and contains 847 composition by 39 authors: Luigi Alamanni (11), Giovanni Battista Amalteo (10), Pietro Barignano (12), Pietro Bembo (38), Giovan [sic] Antonio Benalio (3), Giacomo Bonfadio (4), Giovanni Battista Brembati (3), Giulio Camillo (9), Bernardo Cappello (10), Giulio Cesare Caracciolo (11), Annibal Caro (23),
Ferrante Carafa (21), Vittoria Colonna (32), Luca Contile (6), Angelo di Costanzo (63), Lodovico Domenichi (18), Sebastiano Erizzo (10), Remigio Fiorentino (17), Veronica Gambara (12), Giovanni Battista Giraldi (7), Giovanni Guidiccioni (77), Giuseppe Leggiadro [Gallani] (10), Lodovico Martelli (17),
Vincenzo Martelli (19), Giacomo Mocenigo (7), Francesco Maria Molza (116), Giovanni Mozzarello
[Muzzarelli], Girolamo Muzio (19), Antonio Francesco Rainieri (45), Berardino Rota (24), le cavaliere
Salvago (12), Jacopo Sannazaro (32), Luigi Tansillo (43), Bernardo Tasso (11), Claudio Tolomei (9),
Bernardo Tomitano (12), Giovanni Andrea Ugoni (22), Benedetto Varchi (7), Domenico Venier (28)
(cf. P. Zaja, Intorno alle antologie. Testi e paratesti in alcune raccolte di lirica cinquecentesce, in: “I più vaghi e più
soavi fiori. Studi sulle antologie di lirica del Cinquecento, M. Bianca & E. Strada, eds., Alessandria, 2001,
p. 113-145).
Ruscelli also sees in his anthology a kind of manual for the student of poetry and a model
book for poets: “Nasce da queste istanze, insieme di natura critica e commerciale, la raccolta
dei Fiori che, per essere meglio compresa, deve
essere letta in stretta relazione con la composizione e pubblicazione del trattato Del modo di
comporre, due volumi per i quali, forse non a caso, gli stampatori Giovan Battista e Melchiorre
Sessa rivolgono nello stesso giorno la supplica
per il privilegio di stampa al Senato veneziano.
Le due opere, almeno nelle intenzioni, nascono
infatti come un vero e proprio sistema teorico e
pratico rivolto a chi intende studiare e praticare
il genere lirico, alla cui base sta una precisa presa di posizione militante rispetto alla tradizione
e alle esperienze più recenti. Nei materiali paratestuali dei Fiori come nel trattato Ruscelli si
dichiara infatti aperto sostenitore della piena
legittimità della modernità letteraria” (Franco
Tomasi, Distinguere i ‘dotti da gl’indotti’: Ruscelli e le
antologie di rime, in: “Girolamo Ruscelli dall’Accademia alla corte, alla tipografia. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Viterbo, 6-8 ottobre, 2011”, P. Marini & P. Procaccioli, eds.,
Manziana, 2012, p.583).
The volume furthermore offers a valuable
insight into editorial practice of the time and
Ruscelli’s opinions regarding the duties of an
editor: “La qual cosa [selezionare solo i testi
migliori] se con la stessa necessità, o con lo stes-
so rischio di perdita, e di molta spesa, si facesse in questi nostri tempi, si vedrebbono sicuramente più
chiari i nomi de gli scrittori che vanno in pubblico. La ove perché con maggior commodità, e con forse minore spesa i librari nostri fanno oggi mille libri, che non ne facevano uno solo o pochi più con la
penna quegli altri, si vede moltiplicar tanto la copia de’ libri, che già buon prezzo cominciano gli studiosi a desiderare, e ancora sperare di veder odinato da i Principi e dalle Repubbliche quello che quel
gran Filosofo accennò come per nesessario ancor fino a’ suoi tempi, cioè che sì come oggi santamente
si tiene inquisizione a non lasciar uscir libro che sia contro la santissima religione, né contra i Principi,
a chi doppo Iddio s’ha da avere la prima riverenza, così ancora si tenesse inquisizione per non lasciar
uscir libri che corrompessero o tenessero dannosamente impediti gli studij di coloro che vi spendono
denari in averli, e tempo in leggerli per giovarsene in quelle professioni, di che essi si portan titolo. E
per certo se in alcuna professione fosse giovevole una così fatta cura, in questa de’ componimenti volgari sarebbe da ogni parte utilissima, poi che per le già dette cagioni se n’è veduto fin qui crescer tanto
il numero, e con tanta confusione, che i dotti ne siano fastiditi, e quasi sdegnino il volerli leggere. Percioché gli veggono così confusi, molti freddissimi di niun valore, senza soggetto, senza modo, senza
osservation di lingua, senz’alcun ornamenti mescolati fra pochi buoni, e quegli ancora incorettissimi, o
attribuiti falsamente molti ad autori di cui non sono. Nel che non è da dare in molta parte la colpa a i
librai, Né a coloro che si sono venuti mettendo insieme. Perciòche le incorrezioni de’ nomi scambiati
sono in gran parte di coloro, che che così gli hanno dati scritti. E lo scegliere i buoni da i non buoni,
oltre che non è opera così da ognuno, non è stato poi libero ne’ librari, per esser venuti dando loro
molti componimenti per buoni, lodati da chi n’avea poco giudicio, o con prieghi di farli uscire comunque fossero. Ma ben si vede già, che essi medesimi sono ormai divenuti accorti, o più tosto esperti e
spaventati in modo che par ancora le rime buone e perfette essi fuggano di volersi torre a fare stampare a loro spese” (leaf *4r-v).
It is interesting to note that of the 39 authors found in the anthology are included the two major Renaissance poetesses: Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara (cf. D. Robin, Publishing Women,
Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth Century Italy, Chicago, IL, 2007, pp. 236-237).
Girolamo Ruscelli, of humble origins, was born in Viterbo and became one of the leading editors of the Cinquecento. He was first active in Rome, where he founded the Accademia dello Sdegno
together with Tommaso Spica and Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara. He later settled in Venice working for such publishers as Sessa and Valgrisi. He was a friend of Bernardo and Torquato Tasso, Lodovico Dolce and Pietro Aretino. The last two were to become his rivals in several bitter controversies.
He edited the works of Boccaccio, Petrarch and Ariosto and translated Ptolemaeus’ treatise on geography. While in Venice he had contact with other academies (della Fratta, dei Dubbiosi, della Veniera
and della Fama), and was interested in issues such as the systematization of the Italian language (cf. P.
Procaccioli, ‘Costui chi e’ si sia’. Appunti per la biografia, il profilo professionale, la fortuna di Girolamo Ruscelli,
in : “Girolamo Ruscelli. Dall’accademia alla corte alla tipografia. Atti del Convegno internazionale di
studi, Viterbo, 6-8 ottobre 2011, Roma, 2012, pp.13-76 and C. Di Filippo Bareggi, Il mestiere di scrivere :
lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento, Roma, 1988, 78-80 ; 296-301).
Edit 16, CNCE29864; Adams, R-950; Universal STC, no. 853890.
€ 2,400.- / CHF 2,650.- / $ 2,680.-
19. (TRENT, Council of – Reform of the Nuns). Decreto del Sacro Concilio Tridentino sopra la Riforma delle Monache, insieme con le Constitutioni de esse monache
per la città, et diocesi di Verona. Con aggiunta anche di alcuni utilissimi trattati pertinenti a persone religiose. 8vo. (8), 152 leaves (leaf *8 is a blank). On the title-page a woodcut
device attributed to Bolognino Zaltieri. 17th century vellum over boards, manuscript title on
the spine, light blue tinted edges, blind-stamped inscription erased from the title-page,
slightly browned, tiny wormholes on the lower margin of a few gatherings, only on
four pages slightly touching the text, but all in all a very good copy.
[Padova, Grazioso Percacino or Venezia, Bolognino Zaltieri], 1565.
FIRST EDITION of this work concerning the Council of Trent’s discussion on nuns, their orders,
their work, the abbesses, their habits, punishments for those who do not follow the rules, the vow of
chastity, cloisters, etc. The decrees (Decretum de regularibus et monialibus) concerning the reform of the
nunneries were issued during the council’s last session, on December 3-4, 1563. In it was renewed the
decree, Periculoso, of Boniface VIII, 250 years after its promulgation, adding sanctions in form of
excommunication for violators and extending enclosure to all female religious, what dramatically altered the position of women within the Church. The practical consequence of the rulings of the
Council of Trent and Pius V was a restriction of the vocational choices available to religious women.
After Trent, women interested in spiritual pursuits had only two avenues permitted to them: life within marriage or a religious life in a convent (cf. R. Creytens, La riforma dei monasteri femminili dopo i Decreti Tridentini, in: “Il Concilio di Trento e la riforma tridentina. Atti del convegno storico internazionale, Trento, 2-6 settembre, 1963”, Roma, 1965, pp. 45-84).
The volume was published by Bernardo Navagero (1507-1565), bishop at Verona, on the occasion of a diocesan synod. In the work are not only published the decrees of the Council of Trent
but also Navagero’s directions for the diocese of Verona and several moral treatises addressed to wo-
men (cf. G. Ederle, Dizionario cronologico biobibliografico dei vescovi di Verona, Verona,1965, p. 77).
Bernardo Navagero, scion of a patrician
family of Venice, studied philosophy in Padua
and Venice under Antonio Genova and Vincenzo
Madio. He became a member of the Collegio dei
Dieci Savi (responsible for the financial matters of
the republic). He married Istriana Lando, granddaughter of Venetian Doge Pietro Lando, and
had two children. His wife died young in childbed and Navagero never remarried. He has been
Venetian resident ambassador at the courts of
Emperor Charles V (1543–46), Suleiman the
Magnificent (1550-52) and Pope Paul IV (1555–
58), and member of the Council of Ten (1552).
On 26 February 1561 he was named cardinal by
pope Pius IV, and became bishop of Verona
from 1562 until his death. In 1563 he was legatus a
latere at the council of Trent. He died in Verona
on 13 April 1565, and was buried near the choir
of the city cathedral. His episcopate was transferred to his nephew Agostino Valier, who among
others, published Instruttione delle donne maritate
(1575), a book for wives, in the form of a letter to
his married sister (cf. D. Santarelli, La riforma della
Chiesa di Paolo IV nello specchio delle lettere dell’ambasciatore veneziano Bernardo Navagero, in: “Annali dell’Istituto italiano per gli studi storici”, XX, 2003-04, pp.
81-104).
Edit 16, CNCE 33762; Univeral STC, no.
862956; L. Borrelli, La collezione delle cinquecentine
relative al Concilio ecumenico tridentino della Biblioteca comunale di Trento, (Bologna, 1982), no. 41; G. Zarri, Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo. Studi e testi a stampa, (Roma, 1996). P. 517, no. 994.
€ 1,400.- / CHF 1,550.- / $ 1,570.-
20. [VALERIANO, Pierio (1477-1560)]. Pro sacerdotum barbis. 4to. (16) leaves. Old
boards, on the first front fly-leaf ownership entry by the famous Ferrarese humanist Lilio
Gregorio Giraldi (1479-1552); on the same page his initials ‘LGG’ and a short list of
Greek works by the same hand, some light marginal foxing and stains, but a very good
copy.
Roma, Francesco Minizio Calvo, 1531.
VERY RARE FIRST EDITION, one of the three issued by Calvo in the same year. Our copy belongs
to edition B, having the title-page without woodcut border and the text printed in italic types (edition A
has the title in capital letters within a woodcut frame and the text in Roman types; edition C has a different title, Defensio pro sacerdotum barbis, written in Gothic types within a woodcut frame different from that
of variant A).
The work was soon reprinted in France (Paris, 1531, 1533, 1558; Strasbourg, 1534) and translated
into English (London, 1533). It was also reprinted several times during the 17th century either alone or as
an appendix to Valerianos’s Hieroglyphica. The book contains a dedication by the printer Calvo to Andrea
Alciati and one by Valeriano to Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici.
“In the dedicatory letter to Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici, Valeriano indicates the occasion of
his writing. He speaks of certain unnamed powerful figures (nonnulli haud postremae auctoritatis viri)
who have assailed the ailing pope with criticism of the clerical wearing of beards, a position that they
claim was taken by the Council of Carthage and subsequently renewed by Pope Alexander III. In
response to the criticisms, Valeriano deploys humanist critical skills to construct historical and philological arguments to support his point. Yet if the methods employed show continuity with earlier Roman humanism, the tract’s elegiac tone and pessimistic predictions about Rome’s future attest to a
new, more sober perspective. Like earlier humanist writings, the tract draws upon sources from antiquity as well as upon precedents in Christian history. Valeriano marshals classical Roman and Greek
authors, ancient Egyptian lore, Mosaic law, and ancient Hebrew practice, to justify and dignify the
wearing of breads. Alongside this evidence, he cites numerous barbate figures in the Christian tradition, such as John the Baptist, Christ Himself (at least as portrayed in art), the apostle James, St. Jerome,
and most recently Popes Julius II and Clement VII... Tellingly, the Pro sacerdotum barbis locates the causes of Rome’s sufferings in the ‘feminine’ delicacies of the Roman clergy, which had provoked the
wrath of God and threatened to do so again. Because of the excesses, God ‘commanded that our
goods be taken from us, that our rather sumptuous houses be either brought down or burned, and
that the many delights of our too-wanton minds be plucked away from us’. The waring of beards, then
signifies the effort to reform the ‘effeminacy’ into which the clergy had slipped. But should reform not
follow, and should Rome slice back into corruption, then God will become ever so much angrier,
withdrawing His grace from the clergy, so that the rage of the entire world will turn against them. As a
consequence, ‘both on account of our impiety and on account of the savageness and ferocity of foreigners, we shall be utterly annihilated’. If the Roman clerics have brought God’s punishment upon
themselves, Valeriano does not wish to absolve foreign political powers from responsibility: ‘We have
been deserted by so many princes of the Christian name, with whose counsel and authorization the
Romans have been captured, despoiled of their goods, and worn out by intolerable tributes’. While
this passage refers transparently to Charles V and his troops, Valeriano claims that the entire world is
eagerly opening its jaws to devour the remnants of Italy. To the north, in Germany, the people have
fallen away from the traditional faith, casting out priests and profaning churches. To the east, Europe
has been besieged and Italy threatened (i.e., by Turkish expansion). To the south, the Moors and
Numidians menace Italian ships with daily incursions and piracy. And to the west, fighting amongst
Christians has led to lakes of bloodshed. God must pacify this turmoil, or restore to his former health
Pope Clement, ‘in whom is every hope of this concord’. Thus divine intervention, whether direct of
through the agency of the ailing pontiff, stands as the only hope for Roman survival, let alone
recovery. Taken as a whole, the Pro sacerdotum barbis reflects upon the ideological incoherence of crucial
humanism in the aftermath of the Sack of Rome. In early 1529, before Pope Clement had embarked
upon an alliance with Charles V, the future of Rome appeared bleak. Over the next decade, however,
as Valeriano moved permanently to Belluno and reestablished his career there, he reformed the image
of Rome. In the De litteratorum infelicitate, probably written in large part over the course of the 1530s,
his return to the Eternal City in 1529 provided a setting for rewriting his own relationship to the crucial culture that he had subsequently chosen to leave behind, as well as for reconceiving the place of Renaissance Rome in the history of the republic of letters” (K. Gouwens, Remembering the Renaissance. Humanist Narrative of the Sack of Rome, Leiden,1998, pp. 149-152; see also P. Pellegrini, Pierio Valeriano e la
tipografia del Cinquecento. Nascita, storia e bibliografia delle opere di un umanista, Udine, 2002, pp. 149-152).
Pierio Valeriano (Giovanni Pietro Dalle Fosse), a native of Belluno, was the nephew of Urbano, author of an important Greek grammar. It was his uncle who brought him to Venice, where Urbano introduced him into the circle of Aldus Manutius and where he studied under such famous men
as Valla, Lascaris and Sabellico. Around 1500 he made his way to Padua to study under the famous
philosopher Leonico Tomeo, but also spent plenty of time in Venice. Here he corrected texts for Aldus and edited both Lactantius and Lorenzo Valla's translation of the Iliad for the printer Tacuino. We
know from the poem In sodales that at least five of Aldus' closest associates (Paolo da Canal, Andrea
Navagero, Trifon Bisanti, Andrea Marone, Girolamo Borgia) belonged to some kind of poetic sodality
in Padua during these years. In 1506 he left Padua ‘by the force of necessity’ as he explains in his parting letter to his patron Andrea Gritti, and took up residence in the little village of Olivé near Verona,
were he lived for the next three years, presumably as a tutor. When the troops of the League of Cambrai invaded the Venetian territory in 1509, Valeriano had to leave Padua, briefly returned to Belluno,
but found it was laid waste by the imperial troops. At the eve of his departure for Rome he published
in August 1509 his first book of poetry, the Praeludia. In Rome he became a favourite of Pope Leo X,
who entrusted to him the education of his nephews Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici. In his later
life he retired to Padua, where he devoted himself completely to his studies. His most important work
was Hieroglyphica (1556), the great summation of hieroglyphic material in the Renaissance (cfr. G. Fiocco, Il ritratto storico di Pierio Valeriano, in: “Archivio storico di Belluno, Feltre e Cadore”, XXXIII, 1972,
pp. 1-6).
Edit 16, CNCE 54620; Universal STC, no. 861713; C. F. Barberi, Le edizioni di Francesco Minizio
Calvo, in: “Miscellanea di scritti di bibliografia ed erudizione in memoria di Luigi Ferrari”, Firenze,
1952, p. 94, no. 118.
€ 2,500.- / CHF 2,750.- / $ 2,780.-

And...
New publication…
“Certainly book collectors will also find Ars Epistolica an invaluable source”
Donald R. DICKSON, Texas A & M University, in:
Seventeenth Century News, 72, 2/3, (2014), p. 233
“Esta información será recibida sin duda con enorme interés por parte de los expertos en Historia de
la Escritura, entre quienes el studio de las práticas epistolares viene siendo preferente desde varias décadaas atrás”
Carmen ESPEJO CALA
‘Arte y oficio de la escritura espistolar en el Renacimiento’, in:
Revista internacional de Historia de la Comunicacion, 3/1, 2014, p. 190
“No one working on questions of sixteenth-century communication can afford to be without this generous volume”
THE BOOK COLLECTOR, Spring 2015, p. 115
„…donnent au lecteur la clé qui permettra d’apprécier à sa juste valeur l’unité et la diversité du genre
epistolaire qui s’épanouit à la Renaissance”
Viviane MELLINGHOFF-BOURGERIE, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, in:
Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, LXXVII, 2015, p. 262
“This volume indeed has much to contribute to the intellectual and cultural history of the European
Renaissance and will be a most valuable resource for many years to come”
Chiara SBORDONI, University of Leeds
European History Quarterly, 45/3, 2015, p. 550-551.
Axel ERDMANN  Alberto GOVI  Fabrizio GOVI
ARS EPISTOLICA
Communication in Sixteenth Century Central Europe: Epistolaries,
Letter-writing Manuals and Model Letter Books, 1501-1600
With and introduction by Judith Rice Henderson
Luzern, 2014
Size: 29 x 23 cm. XXV, 771 pp.
With over 150 illustrations in the text. Hardcover.
ISBN 978-3-033-04329-9
€ 150 / CHF 160/ $ 165
For more information and/or to place and order click here.
The
CCollectionn
… is now offered for sale
“In one respect, though, the Renaissance letter writer’s experience
might be compared to social networking in our digital age”
(Judith Rice Henderson, Introduction, in “Ars Epistolica”, Luzern, 2014, p. VII)
The “Ars Epistolica”-collection (a chronological arrangement of all titles listed can be
found in the here following Appendix I) is the remarkable result of an intensive collecting activity in the field of sixteenth century epistolography over a period of nearly two
decades. To form a comparable collection today (within a reasonable laps of time)
would be a virtually impossible task, due particularly to the reason that many of the
works included are mostly not longer traceable.
The collection here presented is mostly focused on sixteenth century imprints
produced in Western Europe, and should give a representative overview on the subject
of letter-writing in the sixteenth century.
The collection is divided into three sections: (I) Letter collections by single authors
and anthologies, (II) Manuals of letter-writing, and (III) Model letter collections, fictitious letter collections and some letter collections by 15th century authors (mostly
schoolbook editions printed in the 16th century).
Furthermore the collection also shows an incredibly wide and intricate network of
communication covering the whole of Western Europe and also penetrating the Eastern regions.
Incidentally the collection does not only provide an enormous amount of historical facts, local and of European relevance, but also a representative survey of the printing business of a whole century exemplified by 127 printers from 30 different European towns (see the here following Appendix II).
A very detailed description of all the items in the collection can be found in the
following publication:
Axel Erdmann, Alberto & Fabrizio Govi
Ars Epistolica. Communication in Sixteenth Century Western Europe: Epistolaries,
Letter-Writing Manuals and Model Letter Books: 1501-1600
With an Introduction by Judith Rice Henderson
Luzern, Gilhofer & Ranschburg GmbH, 2014
For further inquiries please contact:
[email protected] or [email protected]