On Death and What Comes Next
DENISSE, Nicolas.
Divinis humanisq[ue] dignu[m] conspectibus preclarissimum opus super quattuor novissimis cui Speculu[m] mortalium titulus prefertur a reverendo p[at]re magistro Nicholao Deniise … editum ac co[m]munis utilitatis o[mn]ium intuitu congestum … Rouen, Martin Morin, 15 February 1506 [1507].
8vo, ff. [127] (of 128, without the final leaf with colophon and verses to recto and printer’s device to verso); title printed in red and black with bicolour line fillers, woodcut initials, text in two columns, margins ruled in pale red ink; old repairs to inner margin of title-page verso, a few small chips to edges, small marginal wormhole to last few leaves, some toning, overall very good; in modern stiff vellum, title and date in manuscript to spine; boards bowed, some staining to pastedowns; a few sixteenth-century marginalia, underlining; sixteenth-century inscription to last page ‘Istius voluminis simplex … usus conceditur a reverende patre provinciali fratri Michaeli Labite’, modern bookplate of Arthur Mullin.
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Divinis humanisq[ue] dignu[m] conspectibus preclarissimum opus super quattuor novissimis cui Speculu[m] mortalium titulus prefertur a reverendo p[at]re magistro Nicholao Deniise … editum ac co[m]munis utilitatis o[mn]ium intuitu congestum …
Rare edition of the Speculum mortalium of the Franciscan theologian Nicolas Denisse, printed at Rouen by Martin Morin.
Denisse (or Denyse, d. 1509) divides his text into four parts: on death (identifying three kinds: inevitable, desirable, and terrifying); on the last judgement; on the punishment of the damned; and on the glory of the blessed. The volume ends with various related questions and answers e.g. will everyone rise at the last judgement from where they were buried; will women rise or only men; will angels serve as judges; do the damned hate God; can men become angels? A Parisian edition of the Speculum mortalium was issued by François Regnault in the same year.
From Orbec in Normandy, Morin (d. 1522) trained as a printer in Paris before working for Guillaume Le Talleur, Rouen’s first printer, whom he succeeded in 1490/1. He issued several liturgical books for the English market and produced university texts in association with booksellers in Caen and Angers.
No copies traced in the US; we have located only three in the UK (BL, Edinburgh, Stonyhurst College), plus a fragment (Bodleian).
USTC 111296.