Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan

Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.

We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia.  Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.

 
  1. ANTIPHONAL,

    with neumes, containing antiphons, responses and versicles for Trinity Sunday, the Octave of Pentecost, Sundays after...

    Germany, 1st half of 12th century. 

    Two bifolia from a notably early antiphonal. 

    £5000

  2. [ANTIPHONAL.]

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

    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

  3. BEDFORDSHIRE – ARLESEY.

    Charter of William Hoye of Arlesey (‘Auricheseya’) granting to Robert of Wewenshal for seventy shillings...

    Bedfordshire, 1st half of 13th century.

    Witnessed by Roger Burnard, William Rixpaud, Roger his brother, Richard the clerk, Robert Rixpaud, Henry son of Odo, Walter son of William, Ivo of Stodfaud, Geoffrey his son, Simon of Estwich, Andrew of Qurisco, William son of Gerard, Roger son of Walter son of William Hay, and many others. Various place-names...

    £1400

  4. BOOK OF HOURS,

    in Latin, from the Hours of the Virgin and including the beginning of Psalm 97. 

    Flanders or northern France, early 14th century. 

    An exquisite leaf from an exceptionally early Book of Hours.  The defective parent manuscript, which also contained a Vie de sainte Marguerite in French rhyming verse, was lot 76 in Sotheby’s sale ‘Western Manuscripts and Miniatures’ of 17 December 1991, subsequent to which the leaves...

    £1800

  5. [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

  6. JOHN OF FREIBURG.

    Summa confessorum [and] Tractatus de instructione confessorum, in Latin

    France, mid-fourteenth century.

    From a large and well-decorated manuscript containing the Dominican theologian John of Freiburg’s massive Summa confessorum (written in 1297–8) and his smaller Tractatus de instructione confessorum (also known as the Confessionale and written shortly after the Summa)....

    £1500

  7. [BREVIARY.]

    Sarum Breviary, in Latin.

    England, first quarter of fifteenth century.

    A fragment of twenty-one leaves from a portable Sarum Breviary, with nineteenth-century Staffordshire provenance.

    £4250

  8. [ANTIPHONAL.]

    Antiphonal, with neumes, containing music for the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday.

    Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-fifteenth century.

    An unusual and striking antiphonal leaf written entirely in red and notated entirely in burnished gold, signalling the importance of the text for Holy Saturday.

    £3500

  9. [HOSPICE SAINT-NICOLAS, METZ.]

    Deed granting land to the hospice.

    Metz, 5 May 1464.

    A significant document recording the grant of agricultural land in 1464 to the Hospice of Saint-Nicolas, the oldest hospital in Metz, in northeast France, issued during the reign of Louis XI and in the final year of the papacy of Pius II.

    £450

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. BOOK OF HOURS.

    Leaf with Luke 1:26–35.

    Northern France, c. 1475.

    A very attractive leaf from a late fifteenth-century French Book of Hours with a nice miniature of the winged ox of St Luke marking the opening of a reading from his gospel.

    £550

  13. MEFFRET, Johann.

    Sermones Meffreth alias Ortulus regine de tempore. Pars hyemalis.

    [Basel, Nicolaus Kesler, not after 1485.]

    A volume of sermons with early English annotations, in a binding featuring tools attributed to an early Cambridge workshop known as the Unicorn Binder.

    £6500

  14. THOMAS AQUINAS; Antonius PIZAMANUS, editor.

    Opuscula [with a life of St Thomas].

    Venice, Hermannus Liechtenstein, 7 September 1490.

    First collected edition of seventy-one shorter works by Thomas Aquinas.

    £3750

  15. 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

  16. VORAGINE, Jacobus de.

    Sermones quadragesimales [– de tempore & de sanctis per totum annum] …

    [(Colophons:) Venice, Simon de Luere for Lazarus de Suardis, 12 September 1497; – 31 August 1497.]

    An annotated copy of Jacobus de Voragine’s sermons, one of the most popular medieval sermon collections, composed in the late thirteenth century. Jacobus de Voragine (Jacopo da Varazze) was a Dominican preacher from Genoa who produced several model books of sermons, providing variations to be...

    £3250

  17. [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

  18. 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 annotations.

    £9500

  19. URCEO, Antonio [or Codro]. 

    Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur.  Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat.  Epistolae. ...

    Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502. 

    First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts. 

    £3000

  20. LACTANTIUS, Lucius Caelius Firmianus, et alii.

    Opera perquam accurate castigata: Graeco integro adiuncto: quod in aliis...

    [(Colophons:) Venice, Giovanni Tacuino da Tridino, 3 January; 9 January 1502.]

    A closely read copy of Lactantius’s encyclopaedia of Christian apologetics, defending and explaining the Christian faith.

    £2750