The Bishops and Saints of Pavia
GASPARI, Giovanni Battista.
Sanctorum Ticinensis ecclesiae episcoporum vitae breviarium, nec non SS. Guniforti, Boetii martii, et Honoratae virg.[inis] Papien.[sis]. Pavia, Giovanni Andrea Magri, [1651].
4to, pp. [xii], 100, [8], 101–121, [7]; title copper-engraved by Silvio Maria Curletti (see below), large woodcut initials, typographic and woodcut head- and tailpieces throughout, large woodcut arms of the city of Pavia to p. [xi], woodcut seal of Saint Syrus to p. 121; light damp-stain to lower outer margin of first few leaves, but a very good copy; bound in nineteenth-century pebble-grained cloth-backed boards with patterned sides; sides rubbed, edges slightly worn; early nineteenth-century manuscript annotations, sometime extensive, to a handful of pages.
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Sanctorum Ticinensis ecclesiae episcoporum vitae breviarium, nec non SS. Guniforti, Boetii martii, et Honoratae virg.[inis] Papien.[sis].
First and only edition, rare, of this history of the first Bishops and saints of Pavia.
The book includes the lives of some of the earliest Bishops of Pavia, including Syrus, Pompeius, Inventius, Urciscenus, Crispinus, Magnus Felix Ennodius, Crispinus II, Dalmatius, Epiphanius, Maximus, Ennodio, Anastasius, Damianus, Armentarius, Petrus, Theodore, Hieronymus, Joannes, Liutfredus, Lanfranco Beccari (1180–1198), Fulco Scotti (1217–1229), and Rodobaldo Cepolla (1230–1254); some of the bishops included are in fact spurious or listed in the wrong order, based on erroneous episcopal lists quoted in early Roman martyrology. To these are added the lives of three other saints important for Pavia, namely Honorata of Pavia (d. 500), sister of Bishop Epiphanius; Saint Guinefort, a martyr originally from Scotland (or Ireland); and Boethius, author of De consolatione philosophiae, whose remains were entombed in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro.
The work is also particularly important for the information, accompanied in this copy by sometime extensive manuscript annotations, on the translation of the relics of various saints and bishops and particularly those of Saint Augustine of Hippo, which were translated from Cagliari, in Sardinia, to San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia, where the remain to this day.
The book ends with a series of hymns to Syrus, first Bishop of Pavia and the city’s patron saint, prayers for the different saints of Pavia, and the ceremonial for the traditional benediction of the bread of Syrus.
The splendid engraved title, by the Genoese engraver Silvio Maria Curletti, depicts two winged putti holding a banner with the title wording at the centre, with a plethora of bishops sitting on the clouds above and a detailed bird’s-eye view of the city of Pavia below, showing the famous Covered Bridge over the river Ticino, the medieval towers, and the belltowers of Santa Maria del Carmine, San Michele Maggiore, and the Duomo.
OCLC find three copies in the US (Stanford, Illinois, Harvard) and three in the UK (Durham, Ushaw, BL).
USTC 1736034.