BRUECKMANN, Franz Ernst.
De Cervo Volante et eius Hybernaculo.
Wolfenbüttel, [for the author], 1739
4to, pp. 12, with 1 engraved plate; a large copy in very good condition and bound in contemporary marbled wrappers.
First and only edition of the earliest monograph on the stag beetle. The fine plate shows the insect in all its glory, also his winter quarters in the trunk of an oak tree.
Franz Ernst Brueckmann (1697-1753) was a physician at Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel who was also an avid collector and assembled a fine cabinet containing minerals, fossils, natural history objects, scientific instruments, and curiosities. He travelled widely in the German speaking lands and wrote a number of essays, styled travelling letters (epistola itineraria), on topics he was interested in, some also discussing fellow collectors and their collections. These epistolae were issued separately and privately printed for the author. This is epistola itineraria 78. Brueckmann was a member of the Berlin Academy and the Leopoldian academy at Vienna.
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PSEUDO-HEGESIPPUS.
De rebus a Iudaeoru[m] principibus in obsidione fortiter gestis, deq[ue] excidio Hierosolymorum, aliarumq[ue] ciuitatum adice[n]tium, libri V diuo Ambrosio Mediolanensi episcopo interprete. Eiusdem Anacephaleosis fini operis adiecta est.
An early edition of this popular Latin account of the Jewish War of 66-73 AD, with a dedication by Philipp Melanchthon. The text borrows heavily from the Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities of the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, and is attributed in extant manuscripts either to Hegesippus – a possible corruption of Iosippus – or to Ambrose of Milan. Its composition is usually dated to the late fourth century: book 2 contains an allusion to the conquest of Britain by Theodosius c. 370 AD. The text is followed by the Pseudo-Ambrosian work Anacephaleosis, a Carolingian treatise on the destruction of Jerusalem, and the volume ends with tables of concordance between Hegesippus and Josephus’s works.
[BEER, Johann Christoph.]
Kurtzer Entwurff dess Lebens der Könige in Engelland von der Zeit an als die Sachsen und Angeln sich derselben Insul bemächtiget biss auf die jetzige Regierung. Mit schönen Kupffer-Figuren und Conterfäiten der Könige gezieret.
Second, corrected and improved, edition (first 1671) of this attractive German survey of English kings and queens. After describing the rulers in the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England (Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Kent, East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia), Beer discusses the kings from Egbert to Harold II before devoting the remainder of his work to monarchs from William the Conqueror to Charles II, who are depicted on the accompanying plates together with their escutcheons and the dates of their reigns. Important epithets are given, such as ‘Bellus Clericus’ (Beauclerc) for Henry I, and ‘Cor Leonis’ (Lionheart) for Richard I, shown with a lion at his feet and a bolt in his shoulder. Beer (1638-1712) was something of an expert on European monarchs, also publishing works on the rulers of Austria, Hungary, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden.
BL German 1601-1700, B613; VD17 23:312763A. COPAC shows copies at the British Library and Oxford only.