Bound with an Annotated Incunable

❧ Francofurti ad Moenum [Frankfurt am Main]: Sumptibus Jacobi Godofredi Seyler, mdclxxii. [1672]. In Latin. 321 × 205 mm (12.75 × 8 in.). [10] leaves, 776 columns, [16] leaves. Title page in red and black. Engraved vignette on title page. Wood cut head- and tail-pieces and initials. Text in double columns. Ink inscription on half-title: ​“Pio Lectura S. Bonaventur Dettelb.” Ink stamp on half and full title page: ​“Franziskaner Kloster Dettelbach.” Leaf [par.]2 is misbound after 2[par.]6, but preliminaries complete. Very Good. Full calf, covers scuffed and worn from use. Rebacked. Head of spine chipped revealing the sewn-on headband. Spine title: ​“Revchlinvs et Picvs:Mirandvlnvs.” Edges stained red. Cropped with some loss to marginal annotations.

The seventh edition of Galatino’s most famous work, in which he attempts to prove the truth of the Christian faith by using Jewish texts. Agreeing with Reuchlin, Galatino further argues for Christians to eagerly take up the study of Jewish works and cites Jewish scripture, which is reproduced in this work in Hebrew type. The first edition appeared in 1518 and was written to oppose the confiscation of Jewish books in the Holy Roman Empire, as decreed by Maximilian i in 1509, encouraged by Johannes Pfefferkorn.

Though this first edition was published by a Jewish printer, Gershom Soncino, Galatino’s interest in Judaism and Jewish texts is not at all sympathetic, and his works are anti-Jewish. His sense of ​“religious freedom” or ​“tolerance” only extended to the point where Galatino could find in Jewish texts a means of upholding Christian beliefs while disproving Judaism using its own works. The work is set up as a dialogue between Capnio (whose perspectives reflect those of Johann Reuchlin, a German scholar opposed to the destruction of Jewish books), an inquisitor, and Galatino. In this edition, Galatino’s three-part Arte cabalistica follows after De arcanis.

Vd17 12:120771G

-Bound With-

Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Ioannis Pici Mirandulae omnia opera.

❧ Ventiis [Venice]: Bernardinus Venetus, 1498. In Latin. Folio. [262] leaves. Forty-four lines of text per page. Woodcut drop caps six lines tall. With some spaces left blank, save for a placeholder letter, for later decoration or illumination. Worming at the bottom of the leaves u4‑6 with minor loss to text. In two parts; part two begins at ​‘a1.’ With many marginal annotations and underscoring to the Apologia and Epistolae sections, some cropped at the margins from a previous rebinding.

Collates: 2o: A10 2A6 B6 C–E4 F–Q6 R4 S–X6 Y4 Z6 &6 a–s6 t4 u6

Colophon of part 1 on &6v reads: Opuscula haec Ioannis Pici Mirandulae Concordiae Comitis diligenter impressit Bernardinus Venetus adhibita pro uiribus solertia & diligentia né ab archetypo aberraret: Venetiis Anno Salutis. mcccclxxxxviii. die. ix. Octobris.

Colophon of part 2 on t4v reads: Disputationes has Ioannis Pici Mirandulae co[n]cordiae Comitis littera[rum] principis, aduersus astrologos: diligenter impressit Venetiis per Bernardinu[m] Venetu[m] Anno salutis mcccclxxxxviii die uero xiiii Augusti.

Second Italian edition of the collected works of the Italian Renaissance philosopher, ​“the best known philosopher of the Renaissance,” including Mirandola’s letters, Oration on the Dignity of Man (“better known than any other philosophical text of the fifteenth century”), and the unfinished work Disputations edited by the author’s nephew, Gianfrancesco, who also wrote a biography of his uncle that opens this work (Copenhaver). This copy is bound immediately after Pietro Galatino’s ​“defense” of Reuchlin in arguing against the destruction of Jewish texts as they were believed to be repositories of Christian truths. Galatino and Reuchlin were among a group of Christian Hebraists who looked to Pico as a model.

Mirandola was born near Modena in 1463 and studied philosophy with Elia del Medgio, a Jewish philosopher with Aristotelian tendencies. Medigo and Mirandola had a falling out around the time the latter composed the work which would be later known as the Oration on the Dignity of Man (titled in this edition ​“Oratio quaedam elegantissima,” an elegant oration), which reflected Mirandola’s turn toward Platonism and mysticism.

The work was an introduction to a unified theory of knowledge that encompassed various traditions (Platonist, Aristotelian, medieval, pagan, Jewish, Muslim) that was supposed to be delivered at a conference planned for 1487 to discuss ​“a search for harmonies connecting all the world’s wisdom traditions” (Copenhaver). Mirandola’s work was suppressed by the Catholic Church.

Apologia was written in defense of  the project but it only intensified scrutiny from authorities, and Mirandola was imprisoned for a short while. Oration, which mobilized Kabbalist arguments for the divinity of Christ and the Trinity, was not published until after Mirandola’s death, when Gianfrancesco edited it for the 1496 edition of Mirandola’s collected works.

Copenhaver argues that these controversies, discussed in Gianfrancesco’s biography, contributed to Mirandola’s celebrity beyond the Renaissance. Another factor was the popularity of his letters, which were frequently reprinted and used as models for letter writing late into the 17th century. In this copy, it is Mirandola’s letters and defense of his early philosophical project against accusations of heresy that have received the most attention from an early reader, who has marked those pages with numerous annotations and underscored several passages. In Heptalus, Mirandola offers a Kabbalist reading of Genesis that was more sanitized than his younger work to make it more palatable to Christian audiences. Mirandola was ​“the first Christian to treat knowledge of Kabbalah as valuable” (Copenhaver).

A reprint of the 1496 Bologna edition by Benedictus Hectoris, albeit with some of the contents shuffled around. For example, the preface to the Disputationes in this edition is an appendix rather than a prefix. Bernardino Venetus (de Vitalibus) was a Venetian printer of Albanian origin who moved to Venice following the Siege of Shkodra, after which the city was turned over to the Ottoman Empire. He was part of an intellectual milieu of Albanians that had settled in Venice, and was the editor and publisher of Marin Barleti, a historian remembered for his eyewitness account of the siege of Shkodra.

At the time of cataloguing, no other incunable copies for sale.

Incunabula Short Title Catalogue ip00634000.

References:

Goff, F.R. Incunabula in American Libraries, P‑634.

Hain-Copinger 12993.

BMC V 548.

Documentation: This book underwent review and received approval for export to the United States in compliance with German cultural protection laws applicable to incunables.