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. [BASKERVILLE PRESS.]

    The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

    Third and final edition of Baskerville’s octavo prayer book. The prayers for the Royal Family on cancels B8, C6, and D3 include the name of Queen Charlotte, whom George III married in 1761. This copy also includes the ‘occasional prayers’ which were only printed for part of the edition and are...

    £1200

  2. BEAUMONT, Joseph.

    Psyche: or Loves Mysterie in XX. Canto’s: displaying the Intercourse betwixt Christ and the Soule …

    London, Printed by John Dawson for George Boddington, 1648.

    First edition of this lengthy religious epic representing the journey of the personified Soul from England to the Holy Land and back, written by Beaumont, one of the Royalist fellows ejected from Cambridge in 1644.

    £1250

  3. BEAUVILLIERS, Marie de.

    Conférences spirituelles d’une supérieure à ses religieuses ... d’après un manuscrit revu et mis...

    Paris, Moquet et Cie for Toulouse, 1838.

    Scarce second edition (first 1837, also rare) of this spiritual guide by Marie de Beauvilliers (1574–1667), edited from a manuscript by the historian l'abbé Louis Gaudreau (1798–1872) and including a short biography of the author.

    £400

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. BERNARD of Clairvaux.

    Opera omnia, tam quae vere germana illius esse nemo inficias eat, quam quae spuria & supposititia (quanquam...

    Paris, [Nicolas Bruslé for] Sébastien Nivelle, [1571–]1572.

    A rare Parisian edition of the works of Bernard of Clairvaux, beautifully preserved in a contemporary Spanish plateresca binding with elaborate fore-edge lettering.

    £3750

  7. 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

  8. BIANCHINI, Giuseppe.

    Enarratio pseudo-Athanasiana in symbolum ante hac inedita, et Vigilii Tapsitani de Trinitate ad Theophilum...

    Verona, Pierantonio Berno, 1732.

    First edition, presented by the author, of this scarce work on the Apostles’ Creed by the Veronese Oratorian, Biblical and liturgical scholar, and librarian Giuseppe Bianchini (1704–1764), with a delightful frontispiece depicting the city of Verona.

    £675

  9. [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

  10. 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

  11. [BIBLE.]

    Biblia sacra vulgatae editionis Sixti Quinti Pont. Max. iussu recognita atque edita.

    Antwerp, Jan Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1599.

    Plantin edition of the Clementine Vulgate, bound in four volumes and interleaved for scholarly annotations.

    £1250

  12. [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

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. [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

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. [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

  19. 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

  20. [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