Salamanca: Andrea de Portonario, 1558.
First edition. A compelling treatise on gambling, recreation, and theater, written by the Observant Franciscan friar Francisco de Alcocer. The author is principally concerned with potential for sin in any given activity, but in arguing his points, he illustrates in great detail the recreational life.....
Strasbourg: Johann Knobloch, 1517.
Only edition. Remarkable news brief reporting the activities of Maximilian I on his visit to Brussels and the surrounding Brabant region in 1516-17, with notes on the jousts, festivals, and exhibitions he attended. Most notable is Maximilian's visit to the Brussels zoo founded by young Charles.....
[Venice?]: ? 1525.
Giovannantonio Tagliente's manual on chancery cursive and geometric type design was one in his series of teaching handbooks on a variety of arts and skills, all of which first appeared in the late 1510s and 1520s, when Tagliente was in the twilight of a long career as.....
Paris: Martin le Jeune, 1580.
A strange French translation of the Batrachomyomachia, the Iliadic mock-heroic poem recounting a battle between the honorable mice and odious frogs, and the crabs that are sent in by Zeus to destroy them all. Once attributed to Homer, the poem was widely taught in the.....
Paris: Didier Maheu for Pierre du Pin, 1534.
Only edition of the earliest printed document of the largest and most venerated of all Parisian brotherhoods, the Grand Confraternity of Notre Dame, whose roots reach to the eleventh century. The grande confrérie Notre-Dame, a pious, tightknit group that advocated a life.....
Paris: Gabriel Buin, 1563.
Fine copy, with esteemed provenance, of Pierre de Ronsard's verse conduct book, addressed to recently crowned 11-year-old Charles IX, on how to rule a kingdom, and how to comport in both public and private. The poem was composed in the tradition of the speculum principum, or.....
Paris: Galliot du Pré, 1532.
Following his victory in the Battle of Marignano in September, 1515, Francis I of France, barely 21 years of age, negotiated with Pope Leo X to form what would become known as the Concordat of Bologna. It was signed in Rome on August 18, 1516.....
Basel: Peter Perna, 1581.
Later edition (first 1569) of the Swiss physician and philosopher Johann Jakob Wecker's two-part work on medicine and wine. The first part contains medical remedies (including many to treat plague) that Wecker learned in his years as a practicing doctor in Basel, which degree he acquired.....
Paris? 1578?
A request directed to Henri III of France to reduce the tax burden on the good subjects of Burgundy, arguing by virtue of case studies of suffering Burgundians that existing taxes and obligatory tributes are too large a strain on the tax base. The treshumble request is framed.....
Strasbourg: Joannes Knobloch, 1516.
Popular German-language epitome of Bolognese astrologer and chiromancer Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles's Chiromantie ac physionomie anastasis. Cocles discusses, in 23 short chapters, the fundamentals of physiognomy: the nature of the four principal "complexions" (humors), and how to determine the character of a person by not just.....
![Ein Predigt von den Engeln. Mart. Luth. Wittemberg. 1531. [Colophon, C4v]: Gedruckt zu Wittemberg...](/pictures/thumb/15.png?v=1586443800)
Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1531.
Luther's sermon on angels, preached on the occasion of Michaelmas, 29 September 1530, was ostensibly about the Archangel Michael and the divine college of angels' reverence for God in Matthew 18.10, but the substance of the sermon was actually about fallen angels, in particular the Devil.....