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.
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BELLARMINO, Roberto.
De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis liber unus. Adiunctis indicibus undecim, & brevi chronologia ab orbe condito...
Paris, Sébastien Cramoisy, 1658.
An uncut copy of Bellarmino’s bibliography of ecclesiastical writers, with extensive eighteenth-century annotations and additions.
£1250
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BELLINTANI, Mattia.
Quattro prediche dell’istesso R. P. F. Mattia Bellintani Capuccino, della risurrettione. Della manifestatione...
Brescia, Vincenzo Sabbio, 1598.
Very rare collection of sermons by the Capuchin friar Bellintani (1535–1611), illustrated with attractive woodcuts.
£750
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BESSE, Pierre de.
Conceptions theologiques sur tous les dimanches de l’année, preschées en divers lieux par Me Pierre de Besse...
Paris, Nicolas du Fossé, 1609.
Very rare editions of two works by the noted French priest and preacher Pierre de Besse (1567–1639), in a contemporary devotional binding.
£1500
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[BIBLE.]
Τα Βιβλια, τουτεστιν, η Θεια Γραφη της Παλαιας τε και Καινης Διαθηκης...
Moscow, the Holy Synod Press for the Russian Bible Society, 1821.
First edition printed in Russia of the Septuagint and Greek New Testament, published likely with political motives in the year of the Greek Revolution.
£1500
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BIBLE.
Biblia cum concordantiis veteris et novi testamenti et sacrorum canonum: necnon & additionibus in marginibus varietatis...
[(Colophon:) Lyons, Jean Marion, for Anton II Koberger in Nuremberg, 19 August 1520.]
A handsomely printed Bible in a contemporary Silesian or Bohemian binding, richly annotated by a Protestant scholar and with numerous woodcuts in contemporary colouring.
£5500
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[BIBLE, New Testament.]
Pauli Apostoli epistolae … Epistolae Catholicae … Apocalypsis Beati Ioannis.
Brescia, Damiano and Giacomo Filippo Turlino, May 1537.
Scarce Brescia edition of the Epistles of St Paul, St James, St Peter, St John, and St Jude, and of the Book of Revelation, in the Vulgate version, with a remarkable metalcut depicting St Peter and St Paul holding a Holy Shroud bearing the face of Christ, owned by an Italian Protestant-sympathiser.
£2500
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BIEL, Gabriel.
Sacri canonis Missae lucidiss. expositio … cum assertionibus in margine sacri Conc. Trid. et annotationibus necessariis....
Brescia, Pietro and Tommaso Bozzola, 1576.
Brescia edition of an exposition of the Canon of the Mass by the important German scholastic philosopher and theologian Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), with a sixteenth-century printed label threatening with excommunication anyone who would remove this volume from the library.
£350
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BLANCHON, Jacques.
Iacobi Blanchoni Ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum Beneventanum abbatem Selestensem defensionum liber.
Lyons, Jean de Tournes, 1550.
First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly printed de Tournes edition.
£950
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BOCCACCIO, Giovanni.
Philocholo opera elegantissima de lo excellente Poeta & Oratore Joanne boccacio.
[(Colophon:) Milan, [Alessandro Minuziano], 25 March 1520.]
An uncommon edition of Boccaccio’s first prose narrative, a fantastical tale of love overcoming all obstacles.
£950
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BOETHIUS, Severinus; Richard GRAHAM, Viscount Preston, translator.
Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books....
London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Francis Hildyard, York, 1695.
First edition of this translation by the diplomat, politician and Jacobite conspirator Richard Graham, 1st Viscount Preston (1648–1695).
£950
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BOLZANIO, Urbano or URBANUS BELLUNENSIS.
Institutionum in linguam Graecam grammaticarum, libri duo …
Basel, Johann Walder, September 1535.
Basel edition of this popular grammar commissioned and first published by Aldus in 1497. Bolzanio’s full exploration of the Greek language was the first book in which the principles of Greek grammar were explained in Latin – after the publication of the all-Greek grammar of Constantinus Lascaris....
£2000
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[BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.]
La Liturgie. C’est a dire, le formulaire des Prieres publiques, de l’Administrations des Sacreman;...
A Londres, pour Jean Dunmore & Octavien Pulleyn le Jeune … 1667.
First edition of this translation, printed for the use of ‘toutes les Eglisses Paroissiales & dans les Chapelles de Isles de Jersey, Guernsey, & autres Isles adjacentes’, as well as for the French congregation at the Savoy in London.
£750
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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
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[BOUCHET, Jean.]
Les triu[m]phes de la noble et amoureuse dame, et l’art de honnestement aymer, compose par le Traverseur des...
Paris, Estienne Caveiller for Pierre Sergent, 6 June 1539.
Unrecorded issue of Jean Bouchet’s contemplative vernacular work of moral theology in prose and verse explicitly intended for a female readership, following the personified Soul in dialogue with several virtues as she attempts to combat the forces of earthly temptation with the power of divine grace,...
£4500
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BOUTMY, C.
‘Exercitium quotidianum dedicatum perillustri domino domino vice comiti de Haro et d’Enghien &c a C. Boutmy 1760’.
[Belgium, 1760.]
An attractively bound unpublished devotional manual composed by one C. Boutmy (unidentified) for his patron Henri vicomte de Haro et d’Enghien.
£450
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[BOUTREUX D’ESTIAU, Jacques de.]
De la puissance roialle sur la police de l’Eglise.
Paris, Pierre Durand, 1625.
A pair of uncommon works defending the French king’s authority over the Church, in a binding for Jacques-Auguste II de Thou and later in the renowned Caumartin library.
£950
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[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
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[BREVIARY, Use of Passau.]
Breviarium s[ecundu]m chorum alme Ecclesie Pataviensis.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Petrus Liechtenstein for Vienna, Lukas and Leonhard Alantsee, 25 May 1515.]
A rare Passau breviary with numerous woodcut illustrations in a contemporary Austrian binding, printed in Venice for the Austrian market.
£4500
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BUDÉ, Guillaume.
G. Budaei … Epistolarum latinarum lib. V. Annotationibusq[ue] adiectis in singulas fere epistolas. Graecarum...
[Paris,] Jodocus Badius, February 1531.
Handsome Badius edition of the Latin and Greek letters of the great French humanist Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), edited with commentary by his pupil Jacques Toussain, here with profuse annotations by a contemporary French student to almost every page.
£5500
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BURNET, Gilbert.
A Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland. In four Conferences....
Glasgow, Robert Sanders, 1673.
One of three editions, all of the same year, of a ‘decidedly aggressive’ (Stewart, p. 40) tract in dialogue on the powers of the state in church affairs and on the subject’s right to resist.
£500