AUGUSTINE’S MASTERPIECE
AUGUSTINUS, Aurelius.
De civitate Dei.
Venice, Nicolaus Jenson, 2 October 1475.
Chancery folio, ff. [303] (of 306, without 3 blank leaves); [a–b]8 [c–z]10 [A–H]10 (without blanks [a]1 and [H]9–10, with blank [b]8); gothic letter, text in two columns, printed headlines, small initials supplied in red with purple penwork decoration, larger initials in blue with red penwork decoration, traces of manuscript signatures; first leaf reinforced around all three margins, stain at foot of gutter in first and last quires, first leaf of the text proper with lower margin excised and replaced, other occasional light marginal soiling, paper repairs to margins of last few leaves; nevertheless a tall and crisp copy bound in eighteenth-century vellum, brown morocco lettering-piece to spine, blue edges; binding a little rubbed with a few wormholes in spine, joints splitting at foot; a handful of early annotations, note on flyleaf about Hieronymus de Bosch (1740–1811), stating that this was item 20 in the folio section of his sale (Amsterdam, P. den Hengst, 13–23 April 1812), and bookseller’s label of A.J. van Tetroode of The Hague (active 1831–1865) pasted to foot of front pastedown, paper shelflabel to foot of upper cover.
A tall copy with some deckle edges of the only Jenson edition of the City of God, Augustine’s influential treatise written in the wake of the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410. Augustine sought to justify why a Christian state, with the support of God, could be defeated in this way; the result is a monumental tome of political theory and theology, philosophy, and history, covering the history of Rome from its origin a thousand years earlier, and encompassing the philosophical heritage of Greece and Rome.
The City of God appeared in print early; Sweynheym and Pannartz printed it three times between 1467 and 1470, and this is the second edition to appear at Venice. It is one of two Venetian editions from 1475 which have almost identical imposition; the other was printed by Gabriele di Pietro of Treviso. More unusually, both these 1475 editions also contain the name of the printer in the centre of the headline of the first leaf of text (‘Nicolaus Jenson gallicus’ here).
HC 2051*; BMC V 175; GW 2879; Goff A1235; BSB-Ink A-858; Bod-inc A-522; ISTC ia01235000.