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. [GOSPELS.] Charles HURÉ, translator.

    Le nouveau testament de notre-seigneur Jesus-Christ, nouvellement traduit en françois...

    Paris, L. Roulland, 1712.

    An attractive early Jansenist binding, with a sober shagreen exterior concealing gilt decoration within, on a copy of the Gospels extracted from Charles Huré’s French New Testament.

    £950

  2. [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

  3. GRAILE, John.

    Three Sermons preached at the Cathedral in Norwich. And a fourth at a parochial Church in Norfolk. Humbly recommending,...

    London, Printed for W. Kettilby … 1685.

    First and only edition, rare. The third of these four sermons was delivered on the anniversary of Charles I’s execution, 30 January 1684, drawing on the Proverb: ‘For the transgression of a land, many are the princes there’, in which the plurality of leaders is shown to be the ‘constant...

    £850

  4. GUILLON, Pierre.

    Danti voci suae vocem virtutis. Quaestio theologica … Has theses … ac praeside, S.M.N.D.D. Ludovico Bellayer,...

    Poitiers, Jean-Felix Faulcon, [1770].

    An apparently unrecorded broadside giving the text of theological theses defended by Pierre Guillon of Poitiers for entry into minor orders. A bachelor of theology from the city’s university, Guillon’s gruelling five-hour examination took place on 22 November 1770 between one and six o’clock,...

    £275

  5. HAEFTEN, Benedictus van.

    Regia via crucis.

    Antwerp, Ex officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti, 1635.

    First edition of an important counter-reformation devotional emblem book, with a title-page designed by Peter Paul Rubens. Haeften (1588-1648) was provost of the Benedictine abbey of Affligem, Belgium, and played an important role in the reform of the Benedictine order. The Regia via crucis was his most...

    £1100

  6. HEBER, Reginald, and Nicolas BARKER (editor).

    A Letter from India.

    The Roxburghe Club, 2020.

    'I do not expect that with fair prospects of eminence at home, you should go to the Ganges for a mitre,’ wrote Sir Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs, in 1819 to Reginald Heber at Hodnet in Shropshire, but in vain. Despite a growing reputation...

    £100

  7. HENRICUS DE HERP.

    Speculum aureum decem praeceptorum Dei.

    [(Colophon:) Mainz, Peter Schoeffer, 10 September 1474.]

    First edition of this collection of sermons based on the Ten Commandments, devised for both confessors and preachers, printed by Peter Schoeffer, Gutenberg’s assistant and, after Gutenberg himself, ‘the most influential individual in the early history of the printed word’ (White, p. xi).

    £24000

  8. [HOMILETIC.] 

    Meditations de la seconde annee. 

    [France, c. 1700.] 

    Apparently unpublished set of meditations for the Sundays in the liturgical year running from the seventh to the twenty-fourth week after Pentecost, shedding light on tools and practices in the homiletic art.  Themes range from reflections on the Eucharist, to considerations on mortality, on...

    £750

  9. HOSPINIAN, Rudolf. 

    Historia Jesuitica.  Hoc est, de origine, regulis, constitutionibus, privilegiis, incrementis, progressu...

    Zurich, Johannes Rudolph Wolf, 1670. 

    Second edition of Hospinian’s vast and vitriolic attack on the Jesuits, first published in 1619 (also in Zurich by Wolf); both editions are scarce. 

    £800

  10. HURTADO, Eugenio, scribe.

    [Missal for feast days.]

    Madrid, 1827.

    An extraordinary and enormous liturgical manuscript with painted and stencilled decorations, in a remarkable binding on wheels for ease of movement

    £9500

  11. [HYMNAL.]

    Neu-vermehrt- und vollständiges Gesang-Buch, worinnen sowohl die Psalmen Davids, nach D. Ambrosii Lobwassers, Uebersetzung...

    [Likely Swabia, for] Philadelphia, Ernst Ludwig Baisch, 1774.

    First and only edition thus of this German hymnal, issued in Philadelphia by Ernst Ludwig Baisch under his own imprint but printed in Germany, bound by an itinerant German Pennsylvanian binder with printed waste from Charles Cist’s Americanische Stadt und Land Calender for 1797, with inscriptions...

    £3500

  12. IBN VERGA, Solomon; Georg GENTIUS, translator.

    Historia Judaica res Judaeorum ab eversa aede Hierosolymitana, ad haec fere...

    Amsterdam, Pieter Niellius, 1651.

    First Latin edition of Solomon Ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah, an important account of persecutions suffered by the Jews and a reflection upon the origins of antisemitism, from the library of the distinguished French savant and bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet with annotations in his hand.

    £3750

  13. [INCUNABLE SAMMELBAND.]

    Sammelband of ten works.

    Rome, Stephan Plannck and Eucharius Silber, c. 1481–1491.

    A sammelband of ten Roman incunables, nine of which printed by Stephan Plannck, covering subjects from astronomy to usury, holy water to marriage, and ending with St Antoninus’s manual for confessors, our copy with early annotations and partially preserving its original binding.

    £25000

  14. [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

  15. [INDULGENCES.] 

    Indulgencias concedidas a los congregantes de la inmaculada concepcion de Maria SS baxo el titulo de la corona...

    [Barcelona, 1793.] 

    Very rare broadside detailing the indulgences granted to members, of both sexes, of the Congregation of the Immaculate Conception, established under the title of the Crown of the Seven Joys of the Virgin at the Franciscan convent in Barcelona.  In 1792, Pope Pius VI had formerly linked the Congregation...

    £175

  16. ISIDORUS A CRUCE. 

    Devoti admodum et consolatione pleni confessionales Psalmi septem in quibus peccator divinam pro criminibus...

    Dillingen, Johann Caspar Bencard, 1675. 

    Rare illustrated edition of this work devoted to confession and seeking forgiveness for sins by Isidorus a Cruce (d. 1681), abbot of St Charles the Great in Prague. 

    £450

  17. JACOBUS MEDIOLANENSIS. 

    Stimulus divini amoris Sancti Bonaventurae. 

    Venice, Stefano Nicolini da Sabbio, April 1535. 

    Rare edition of the Stimulus divini amoris, a popular medieval devotional treatise long attributed to St Bonaventure but in fact composed by the thirteenth-century Franciscan Giacomo da Milano. 

    £550

  18. [JESUITS.]

    The Travels of several learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus, into divers Parts of the Archipelago, India, China,...

    London, for R. Gosling, 1714.

    First English translation of twenty-two letters by major French Jesuit missionaries in Asia and the Americas, taken from Charles Le Gobien’s Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (1711–13). The Jesuits largely dominated seventeenth and early eighteenth-century missionary activity in the...

    £1250

  19. [KAMES, Henry HOME, Lord].

    Grundsaetze der Kritik, aus dem Englischen übersetzt, von Joh. Nikolaus Meinhard.

    Vienna, Johann Thomas Edlen von Trattnern, 1785-6.

    A Viennese reprint of the first German translation of the Elements of criticism, by Meinhard with the approval of Lessing, first issued in 1763-66, instrumental in the dissemination and reception of Kames’s aesthetic theories in Germany and a seminal publication in the formation of pre-Romantic aesthetics.

    £250

  20. KARG, Stanislaus, Celso EISENMAN, and Eccard HOCHENBAUM.

    Fur theologicè examinatus, & in judicio sacramentali ad restitutionem...

    Munich, Johann Lucas Straub, [1712].

    Only edition, rare, of this dissertation on the theological and legal aspects of theft and restitution, presented to the distinguished canon lawyer, and author of the monumental Manuale theologico-canonico-legale practicum, Stanislaus Karg.

    £275