A SPANISH LIVY IN AUGSBURG
LIVY; [Pedro DE LA VEGA, translator].
Todas las decadas de Tito Livio paduano, que hasta al presente se hallaron y fueron impressas en Latin, traduçidas en Romançe Castellano, agora nuevamente reconosçidas y emendadas, sobre la vieja translaçion, y añadidas de mas libros.
[(Colophon:) Cologne [i.e. Antwerp?], Arnold Birckmann], 1553.
Folio, ff. [iv], ‘DCVII’ [recte 610], LXXXV–CIII, [1]; a3 and V4 blank; large woodcut of the Spanish royal arms to title-page, woodcut initials, woodcut Birckmann device to final leaf verso; a few small wormholes to first few leaves, small losses to outer margin of H5 and to lower outer corner of eee2, nonetheless a very good copy; bound in contemporary Augsburg pigskin over pasteboard, composite blind-tooled centre-piece of 4 fleurs-de-lys to each board, blind fleuron corner-pieces, front board lettered in contemporary ink (‘Todas las Decadas di Tito Liuio P.’), four pairs of ties in alternate blue and yellow ribbons (largely perished); binding a little rubbed, corners bumped, small chip to headcap, a few minimal wormholes.
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Todas las decadas de Tito Livio paduano, que hasta al presente se hallaron y fueron impressas en Latin, traduçidas en Romançe Castellano, agora nuevamente reconosçidas y emendadas, sobre la vieja translaçion, y añadidas de mas libros.
A handsome copy of Livy’s History in Spanish, containing the surviving books as well as Florus’s Epitome, in a contemporary Augsburg binding produced by a bindery in the service of the Fugger family.
The translation of Livy’s History by the Hieronymite monk Pedro de la Vega (d. 1541) first appeared in 1520 with a dedication to Charles V, printed in Zaragoza by Jorge Coci, whose press had a close relationship with de la Vega’s monastery in the same city. It was subsequently revised Francisco de Enzinas (d. 1552), with the addition of his version of books 41–45, not included in the 1520 printing. A reformer, de Enzinas had studied in Louvain at the Collegium trilingue and had also published translations of Lucian, Plutarch, and the New Testament, the last of which landed him in prison; the false Cologne imprint of the present edition was presumably to avoid further problems with the Spanish authorities in the Low Countries.
According to CCPB, this is one of several variants: ours appears without the imprint on the title-page but with the date 1553 below, the Spanish royal arms on the title-page (rather than the printer’s device), and an initial inhabited by skeletons at the start of the dedication to the future Philip II. Another issue (with the preliminaries reset) appeared shortly after Philip II’s marriage to Mary Tudor, as the dedication also addresses him as King of England (CCPB 000001417-6); this issue also contains the imprint on the title-page, naming the place of publication as Antwerp.
The stamps on the binding can be attributed to one of the Augsburg binderies that worked for the Fugger family, in particular for Johann Jakob Fugger (1516–1575), though the individual binderies have not been separately identified (see EBDB w004467). The watermark in the pastedowns, of a small double-headed eagle perching on a shield containing a spider, is datable to the mid-sixteenth century in Prague, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg (see Wasserzeichen-Informationssystem, online). The connection to the Fugger family is reinforced by the binding’s blue and yellow ties, the Fugger family colours; beyond an unidentified later shelfmark on the flyleaf (II a-3), however, there is no other provenance in the volume to confirm or refute this connection. Johann Jakob Fugger went bankrupt in 1563 and sold more than ten thousand volumes from his collection to Duke Albrecht of Bavaria in 1571.
CCPB 000978135-8; USTC 698637; VD16 L 2126.
