Paris? 1515-1525.
Only known copy of an edition of medieval advice to young people on how to prepare for a life as a domestic. The work belongs to a long late-medieval tradition of doctrinals, or books of advice in verse, and became some of the earlier products of the vernacular.....
?Rome: S.n., c1530.
A very good copy of an early edition of the Portuguese apothecary Pedro Damiano de Odemira's illustrated Italian-Spanish chess manual, Libro da imparare giocare à scacchi. It was arguably the first and most important modern practical work on the subject, and was the inflection point between chess.....
Paris: Guillaume Merlin, 1538-1558.
An early French-gothic edition of this series of fifteen meditations on the moments of suffering in the life of Christ, by the Franciscan divine Philip of Aquila. Each effusion is illustrated with a tiny, well-executed woodcut, two of which are signed "G.M.," which is unlikely to.....
Paris: Alain Lotrian, 1541-2.
The last Gothic edition of a most popular French mystery play, originally written by the brothers Arnou and Simon Gréban of Le Mans in the 1450s, and expanded to more than double length by the Angers poet Jehan Michel a generation later. The Gréban original was.....
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.....
Erfurt: Georg Baumann, 1564.
First edition of an especially virulent astrological prediction for the year 1565 by the Erfurt physician and astronomer Joannes Hebenstreit, who produced prognostications for every year from 1553 until his death in 1569, but exemplars from some of these years have not survived. The text surrounding.....
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.....
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.....
![Item #15 Ein Predigt von den Engeln. Mart. Luth. Wittemberg. 1531. [Colophon, C4v]: Gedruckt zu...](/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.....
Augsburg: Hans Schoensperger, 1519.
No other illustrated book from the German Renaissance has been more deeply studied, or bears the same weight of fame, than the enigmatic and controversial Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I's hero's journey, the magnificent Theuerdank. We can add nothing to the steep corpus of scholarship, but.....
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.....
Paris: Richard Breton, 1559.
First edition. It's not surprising that Abel Matthieu, in advocating a return to a more elegant and balanced French language, chose to have his argument printed by Richard Breton in Philippe Danfrie's civilité type, which itself was a celebration of the beauty of an earlier French.....
Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, c1551.
The remarkable case of young Margaretha Weiss [1529-?], a girl from the village of Rode outside of Speyer, who, for three years following her tenth birthday, reportedly neither ate nor drank, yet seemed to grow more or less normally, play with her friends, talk, laugh, and.....
Paris? Jean Petit, 1514.
A fascinating French vernacular "art of war" vade mecum by the largely unknown Remy Rousseau, dedicated to Charles de Bourbon in the final years of the War of the Holy League. The work, which is divided into ten chapters, draws heavily on Frontinus's Strategemata, with direct.....
Augsburg: Heinrich Steyner, 1532.
Johann Tallat von Vochenberg's pharmacopoeia and master-book on the art of treating various illnesses first appeared at Memmingen in 1497, and went through more than 20 editions. Our 1532 edition is evidently the last of these, but only the second in which appears a most interesting.....
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.....