Wittenberg: Joannes Berger, 1661.
First edition of the pioneering German zoologist and rector at University of Wittenberg Joannes Sperling's posthumous treatise on the characteristics and properties of fruits and tree nuts, as well as their medical and gastronomic uses. Sperling discusses lemons and limes, apples, citrons, hazelnuts and chestnuts, figs.....
Cologne: Peter Quentell, 1528.
A fine, compact edition of Johannes Liechtenberger's Pronosticatio latino, and the first to feature Anton Woensam von Worms's lively integral woodcuts. Liechtenberger's reputation as an astrologer and seer has always been suspect (even when he was alive), but his book's renown as a publishing phenomenon is.....
Basel: Oporinus, 1550.
In the 1549 first edition of the Initia doctrinæ physicæ—essentially the first scientific textbook of the Reformation—Philipp Melanchthon refutes the heliocentrism of Copernicus with a single blow, invoking Ecclesiastes 4:5: “The earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets.” Moreover, he writes, referring to Copernicus.....
France: 1450-1500.
Exceptional print of the Merovingian saint-queen Bathilde's vision of her ascent to heaven. Bathilde, an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat sold into slavery in Gaul in the second half of the seventh century, later founded the Abbey of Chelles, near Paris, where her remains were enshrined following her death in 680.....
Paris: Ambroise Girault, c1530.
A compact edition, with an unrecorded imprint, of the most popular of all Christian devotionals, the Imitation of Christ, printed at Paris by Ambroise Girault about 1530. Known in more than 210 manuscripts antedating the handpress era, with dozens of stemmae, at least 76 incunable editions.....
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.....