[INDULGENCE.] 

Letter of Indulgence (in Catalan), incipit ‘A Honor …’, granted by Cardinal Luis de Milá,...

[Lerida, Heinrich Botel, c. 1498.] 

Extremely rare incunable indulgence in Catalan granted by Luis de Milá, Bishop of Lérida, in favour of the living (as opposed to the dead, see below) to gather funds for the repair of the old cathedral of Lérida, printed at Lérida, the second city of Catalonia, about one hundred miles...

£34000

ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.

Histoire de la mission des peres capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...

Paris, François Huby, 1614.

Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy. The first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed of...

£30000

LACTANTIUS.

Opera.

[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.

Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...

£25000

[ROZIER.] 

Le rozier historial de France contenant deux roziers.  Le p[re]mier rozier contient plusieurs belles rozes et boutons...

Paris, [Gilles Couteau for François Regnault,] 26 February 1522 [i.e. 1523]. 

First edition, the very handsome Fairfax-Murray copy, of the Rozier historial de France. 

£25000

AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].  

Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.

Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.

First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.

£22500

[GRADUAL.]

Vast historiated initial ‘A’ cut from a Gradual.

Italy (Umbria), end of thirteenth century.

A spectacular initial on the scale of a small panel painting. The verso includes the text ‘[neque] irrideant me inimici mei […] [un]iversi qui te expectant’ and the versicle ‘Vias tuas domine de[monstras]’, indicating that the initial would have introduced the introit ‘Ad te levavi...

£20000

GIBBON, Edward.

The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire.

London, printed for W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1776–88.

First editions of all six volumes of Gibbon’s ‘masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style’ (PMM). The first volume here is of the second variant (of two), with the errata corrected as far as p. 183 and X4 and a4 so signed.

£14000

MACROBIUS, Ambrosius Theodosius.

Somnium Scipionis ex Ciceronis libro De republica excerptum; Macrobii … primi diei Saturnaliorum...

Venice, Filippo Pinzi, 29 October 1500.

Sixth and last incunable edition of Macrobius, illustrated with a world map, with extensive early marginalia.

£9500

DIODATI, Giovanni.

Pious and learned Annotations upon the Holy Bible. Plainly expounding the most difficult Places thereof …...

London, Printed by Tho. Roycroft for Nicholas Fussell, 1664.

An intriguing late eighteenth-century amateur binding from the American Mid-West, possibly decorated with saddler’s tools, and with interesting early American provenance, on the fourth edition in English of the Swiss-Italian Calvinist theologian Giovanni Diodati’s Annotationes in Biblia...

£8500

ANTONIUS de Vercellis. 

Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...

Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93. 

A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites. 

£8500

POCOCKE, Richard. 

A Description of the East, and some other Countries.  London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and...

[Nourse, and J. Rivington’ (I)], 1743–1745. 

First edition, demy folio issue. A successful churchman Pococke (1704-1765) is now best remembered as a traveller and mountaineer. His earliest journeys were undertaken between 1733 and 1736 through continental Europe. His ‘next and most ambitious journey, from 1737 to 1740, was to the Near...

£8000

MÜNSTER, Sebastian.

[Melechet ha-Dikduk] מלאכת הדיקדוק Institutiones grammaticae in Hebraeam linguam FR Sebastiani...

[Basel,] Johann Froben, 1524.

First edition of Sebastian Münster’s (1488–1552) important Hebrew grammar for students, bound with the first Latin edition of his translation of Elia Levita’s Composita verborum, both critical to the Christian scholarly reception of Hebrew grammatical works and here enhanced by extensive...

£7000

[ANTIPHONAL.]

Very large historiated initial ‘H’, probably for the antiphon Hodie nata est beata virgo Maria for the Nativity...

Italy (Siena), c. 1300.

A very fine large initial painted in a style associated with the Master of the Gradual of Cortona, an artist named for a Franciscan gradual produced c. 1290 for the church of San Francesco in Cortona (now Vatican City, BAV, MS Ross. 612).

£6750

DASSIER, Jean and Jacques-Antoine. 

‘An Explanation of Dassier’s Medals being a Representation of a Series of Events taken...

London, c. 1795–1800. 

An exceptionally fine illustrated manuscript, with drawings after the series of sixty medals of Roman history from Romulus to the Age of Augustus produced by Jean Dassier and his son in 1740-1743.  The drawings are executed with considerable finesse, adding detailed elements not clearly visible...

£6500

MELCHIOR, Christian. 

‘Synechia sive summa lectionum Plutarchicarum a domino conrectore huius scholae Salderianae praelectarum. ...

[Brandenburg an der Havel, 1620.] 

An unpublished early seventeenth-century manuscript recording lectures on Plutarch’s pedagogical work On the Education of Children, bound with a scarce printed edition of the same text, and a rare edition of the poems of Theognis and other Greek lyric poets, each with numerous marginal and...

£6500

HOMER.

Ομηρου Ιλιας και Οδυσσεια μετα της εξηγησιος. Homeri Ilias et Ulyssea cum interpretatione...

Basel, Johann Herwagen, 1535.

First Herwagen edition of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, with the scholia of Didymus, edited, according to Dibdin, by the great German classicist Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574), with interesting near-contemporary annotations by a student of Greek, likely drawn from Thomas Grynaeus’s lectures in...

£6000

OVIDIUS Naso, Publius, and Pedro Sánchez de VIANA, translator and commentator. 

Las transformaciones. 

Valladolid, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, 1589.

First edition, a copy of notable provenance, of perhaps the most successful early Spanish translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by Pedro Sánchez de Viana (c. 1545–1619), a physician by training, published along with his substantial commentary. 

£6000