VIRTUE REWARDED
ALBERTUS MAGNUS, [Pseudo-].
Tractatus de virtutibus … scd’m alios vocatus Paradisus anime.
Memmingen, [Albrecht Kunne, c. 1488].
4to, ff. [34]; a10 b–d8; gothic type, capital spaces with printed guide letters; first and last leaves very lightly soiled, a few small wormholes to later leaves, d1 cut somewhat close at head, but a good copy; bound in modern half vellum with pastepaper sides, spine lettered in ink.
An early edition of the Paradise of the Soul, a late medieval handbook of popular religious instruction, printed by the only press in Memmingen.
The Paradisus animae is now considered to be a spurious work of Albertus Magnus, the thirteenth-century Dominican friar and polymath from Lauingen. The text was first printed in Basel in around 1473, and this is the second or perhaps third printing (alongside a dated Antwerp edition of 1489). Its popularity resulted in translations into numerous languages.
‘Forty-two chapters each treat a virtue (virtus) and its opposite (falsa virtus). The most important source for this anonymous author is Holy Scripture; among the church fathers used, Augustine takes first place, followed by Gregory the Great and Jerome. Of medieval authors, only Bernard of Clairvaux and, rarely, Anselm of Canterbury are mentioned. The lack of dogmatic and moral-theological sources qualify the Paradisus animae as a work of edificatory literature’ (Gottschall).
Albrecht Kunne (d. 1520) began his printing career in Trent, with pamphlets about the killing of the boy Simon, before moving to Memmingen in 1480. He was the only printer there until his death in around 1520, issuing around 130 titles in Latin and German, after which there was no longer an active press in Memmingen. The printing is usually dated to around 1488, though the rubrication in a copy in Munich has the date 1496.
HC 477*; GW 704; Goff A291; BSB-Ink A-191; Bod-inc A-127; ISTC ia00291000. See Gottschall, ‘Albert’s contributions or influence on vernacular literatures’ in A Companion to Albert the Great (2013), pp. 748-749.
