Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison or Sally Deegan
Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.
We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.
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[CARTHUSIANS.]
[GUIGO DE CASTRO, compiler.] Repertorium statutoru[m] ordinis cartusiensis per ordinem alphabeti.
Basel, Johann Amerbach, 1510.
First printed edition of the Statutes of the Carthusian Order, printed at the expense of the editor, Gregor Reisch (c. 1467–1525), author of the Margarita philosophica, for distribution to members of the Order only.
£8000
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CASAL, Gaspar do.
Axiomata christiana ex divinis scripturis & sanctis patribus.
Coimbra, João da Barreira and João Alvares, 1550.
First edition of Gaspar do Casal’s major work of theology, which informed his participation in the Council of Trent, from the library of another participant in the Council.
£2500
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CAVALCANTI, Bartolomeo.
La retorica … divisa in sette libri, dove si contiene tutto quello, che appartiene all’arte Oratoria. In...
Venice, Gabriel Giolitto, 1559.
Second edition, published in the same year as the first with a few amendments, of the earliest Italian and most innovative treatise on rhetoric. The author ‘builds an original account of rhetoric by adding Ciceronian and Hermogenean material to an Aristotle base’ (Mack, p. 172).
£2250
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[CHARITY.]
Costituzioni della Congregazione della Carità di Parma sotti gli auspizi di San Filippo Neri rinnovate nell’anno...
Parma, Stamperia Reale, [1778].
Uncommon set of constitutions for the Congregazione della Carità of Parma, printed after its refoundation in 1777. After a brief introduction, the constitutions set out the procedures for the election of the confreres and their reception, the times and order for meetings, discipline within the...
£300
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CHARRON, Pierre.
Les trois veritez. Seconde edition reveue, corrigée, & de beaucoup augmentée.
Bordeaux, Simon Millanges, 1595.
Second, much enlarged edition of Charron’s first book, which sought to prove the existence of God, man’s need of religion, and – in the main part, with a heavy debt to Montaigne’s Christian scepticism – the truth of Catholicism against Protestantism.
£1400
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[CHARTONNET, Antoine-François.]
Considerations sur les devoirs des personnes qui sont engagées par leur état à servir les...
Paris, chez Edme Couterot, 1695.
Rare first edition of this religious manual of instruction aimed at those caring for the sick in hospitals, exhorting carers to look after the bodily and spiritual needs of their charges ‘with charity, gentleness, compassion, patience, diligence, zeal, respect and humility’.
£275
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CHEVALIER, André-Joseph, professor; A.J. BERENTS, compiler.
‘Tractatus De Fide, Spe et Charitate Dictatus ab...
[Douai, 9 March – 4 August] 1787.
A manuscript treatise concerning the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity as expounded in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, compiled by a student at the University of Douai from lectures by André-Joseph Chevalier.
£375
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[CHINA.]
Précis des nouvelles reçues des missions de Chine et des royaumes voisins, en 1819.
[Paris, Adrien Le Clere, 1819?].
An extremely rare summary of the state of French Christian missions in Su-Tchuen (China), Tong-King (Vietnam), Cochinchine (Vietnam), Siam (Thailand), and Pondichery (India) in 1819.
£180
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CHRYSOSTOM, John.
[Opera: Homeliae.] Que in secundo Ioannis Chrisostomi volumine continentur: Super Mattheum homelie 89 …...
Venice, Stagnino & de Gregoriis, 1503.
First edition of Chrysostom’s Opera omnia, the second volume (of two), annotated throughout by two critical readers.
£2800
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[CICERO, Marcus Tullius.]
Tully’s three Books of Offices, in English. With Notes explaining the Method and Meaning of the...
London, [W. Onley] for Sam. Buckley, 1699.
First edition of this translation by Thomas Cockman, who had prepared an edition of the original text in 1695, here provides copious footnotes and an index. There were at least eleven further editions by the end of the eighteenth century.
£300
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[CICERO, Marcus Tullius.]
Commentarii Philippicarum Marci Ciceronis cum annotationibus Georgii Trapezuntii Philippi Beroaldi et...
Paris, Thomas Caseus for Jean Petit, [1514].
Rare edition, attractively printed and with occasional contemporary annotations, of Cicero’s Philippics, comprising Cicero’s text along with the commentaries of the Cretan humanist George of Trebizond (1396–1486), the Bolognese rhetorician Filippo Beroaldo (1453–1505), and the Perugia...
£950
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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (Titus Flavius CLEMENS).
Omnia opera.
Paris, Sebastien Nivelle, 1572.
A thoroughly annotated copy of this early edition of the complete works of Clement of Alexandria, in the Latin translation of Gentian Hervet. Clement lived and wrote in the second and third centuries, one of the most important interpreters of Christianity within an established Greek philosophical...
£4750
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[COLONNA, Francesco.]
Poliphili hypnerotomachia, ubi humana omnia non nisi somnium esse ostendit, atque obiter plurima scitu...
Venice, [heirs of Aldus], 1545.
Second edition, scarcer than the first (also an Aldine, published in 1499), of the most beautiful illustrated books printed in Italy in the fifteenth century. Known for its fine woodcut illustrations, mysterious meanings, and the cryptic inclusion of Colonna’s name, the Hypnerotomachia...
£24000
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[COMMON PRAYER.]
The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...
London, Millar Ritchie for J. Good and E. Harding, 1794.
A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy.
£1850
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CONTI, Natale.
Mythologiæ, sive explicationis fabularum, libri decem. In quibus omnia propè naturalis & moralis philosophiæ...
Frankfurt, the heirs of André Wechel, 1584.
The Mythologiae of Natale Conti (Natalis Comes), first published Venice 1567, was a standard reference work for classical mythology in the later Renaissance, treating the corpus as allegories that syncretized ancient philosophy and could thus be decoded by the initiated reader.
£950
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CORTÈS, Gioacchino.
Dissertazione anti-Bolgeniana sopra la carità difesa dal suo autore l’abate Gioacchino Cortes contro...
Rome, Salomoni, 1793.
First edition of this response to and attempted refutation of Bolgeni’s Della carità o amor di Dio by the Spanish Jesuit Joachim Cortès. Della carità was the best-known work of the Jesuit theologian and controversialist Gianvincenzo Bolgeni, in which he had argued, against...
£450
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COSTER, François.
Piarum et Christ. institutionum libri tres, in usum sodalitatis B. Mariae Virginis primum conscripti, nunc...
Douai, Jean Bogard, 1582.
Very rare Douai edition of this devotional work by the Belgian Jesuit François Coster (1532–1619), first published at Cologne in 1578, illustrated with woodcuts of the Crucifixion and Our Lady of Sorrows.
£675
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CURTIUS Rufus, Quintus.
De rebus Alexandri Magni, cum commentario perpetuo & indice absolutissimo Samuelis Pitisci, quibus accedunt...
Utrecht, Franciscus Halma, 1685.
First Halma edition of Curtius’s history of Alexander the Great, with a series of accomplished etched illustrations by Jan van den Aveelen.
£375
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DARRÉ, G.-G.
‘Conferences diaconales données par Mr l’abbé Darré, Vicaire Général au GrandSéminaire d’Auch. Année...
Auch, 1864.
An attractively written manuscript of Abbé Darré’s practical manual for the use of young priests entering pastoral ministry, the text remaining unprinted, according to OCLC, until 1872.
£200
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DASSIER, Jean and Jacques-Antoine.
‘An Explanation of Dassier’s Medals being a Representation of a Series of Events...
London, c. 1795-1800.
An exceptionally fine illustrated manuscript, with drawings after the series of sixty medals of Roman history from Romulus to the Age of Augustus produced by Jean Dassier and his son in 1740-1743. The drawings are executed with considerable finesse, adding detailed elements not clearly visible...
£7500