Only edition of the Milanese parish priest Giovanni Magagni's vernacular libro dell'animo, told in the form of a dialogue between a physician and an ailing nun. Illustrated with an engaging and quite realistic narrative title woodcut in two parts: on left is the interior of a convent, where a well-to-do doctor addresses a nun through her divisional grate, and, at right, is the immediate exterior of the convent, where the doctor's rigazo, or factotum, is attending their mule. Magagni, as a writer, is matched in obscurity only by his Compendio—very little scholarship has been committed to either the author or his book, and we must rely heavily on Massimo Prada, Silvia Morgana, and Mario Piotti's engaging study published in 2004. Magagni's Compendio combines practical healthful precepts with advice on spiritual well-being, and is offered up as a dialogue between a visiting physician suffering spiritual decline, and an infirm nun; each offers the other remedi for their conditions. The didactic-moralistic literary device of the expository dialogue was well established in Italian literature of the period, but Magagni, writing in a vernacular that would have been very familiar to ordinary Milanese, elevates his work to almost comic theater, with his essential point being that care of the body, and care of the soul, are not so different; that neither is to be prioritized, but both persistently attended to in equal measure in order to live a full life. The Compendio is not just a book of remedies, but an exposition of both the nun's and physician's larger roles in Milanese daily life. From a linguistic point of view the Compendio is, as Massimo Prada states:

[…] va notata una continua oscillazione tra i due estremi del tecnicismo colto e di un lessico marcatamente dialettale: la tensione interna al vocabolario scientifico nel dialogo tra il medico e l’inferma è rinvigorita anche dalla presenza nel lessico comune di voci riconducibili ai poli bassi della lingua.

Returning to the arresting title woodcut (repeated twice in the text), the reader notices both the left-to-right narrative effect of movement from the dialogue between the physician and the nun inside the convent, to the exterior where the physician's attendant waits patiently with their burthen mule, and finally to the background with houses and smoking chimneys, and even the Lombardy mountains with the Grigna massif in evidence. Withal a fascinating examination of the state of medicine vis-à-vis spiritual life in early cinquecento Milan, told in a brisk, elevated vernacular dialogue. Five copies have survived, including ours. Since no modern edition has been published, and no digital or microform surrogate is known, our original edition bears sole witness to both Magagni and his only known writing. Our book has uninterrupted modern provenance down to c1950.

Full title: [Within a five-part woodcut border]: COMPENDIO DI LA | SANITA CORPO | RALE ET SPI | RITVALE. [Colophon, G8v]: ¶Impreſſo In caſa de Domino Gotardo da | Ponte in Porta Romana Parochia de Sancto | Satiro Apreſſo ala Douana n Lãno del Si- | nore. M.D.XXVII. Adi.xiii.Iulii.

Milan: Gottardo da Ponte, 1527.

Quarto in eights, 173 x 131 x 10 mm (binding), 171 x 129 x 8 mm (text block). A-G⁸; LV, [1] ff. Fingerprint: nade rila e.ni coma (3) 1527 (R). Later carta rustica, unlettered. Light wear to extremities. Interior: fore and tail margins a trifle precious, with binder's plough trimming a few sidenotes, two signatures, and just touching printer's device on last page; restoration to tail gutter corner of title, with small area of woodcut renewed in manuscript; minor marginal mends; staining to gutter margin of title and to ff. XLV and XLVI; leaves crisp. 

Provenance: Acquired W. S. Cotter Rare Books from Giansandro Catteneo of Milan, who acquired the book from a private collection. Detailed provenance statement available upon request. Valid export licenses on file with Mr. Cattaneo.

Item #314