Paris: Jean Trompere, 1643.
A charming copy of an unrecorded pocket-size divine office of the Catholic Church, illustrated with six woodcuts, and bound in contemporary pale blue-green silk velvet embroidered with bullion silverwork, sequins, and slender pink silk stitching in the shapes of stars and delicate Tudor roses. Both boards.....
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.....
Bassano: Giovanni Antonio Remondini, c1658.
The first illustrated edition of the Tuscan poet and proto-feminist Chiara Matraini's highly personal retelling of the life of the Virgin, written when the author was nearly 75. Very little is known of Matraini's early life, though she certainly participated at age 16 in the.....