Trithemius, Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, sive illustrium virorum, Cologne, 1531, brown calf

TRITHEMIUS, JOHANNES. Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, sive illustrium virorum, cum appendice eorum qui nostro etiam seculo doctissimi claruere. Per venerabilem virum, Dominem Johannem à Trittenhem Abbatem Spanhemensem, disertissimè conscriptus. Cologne: Peter Quentel, 1531

Third enlarged edition of this bio-bibliography of Christian writers, ranging from the first centuries to early modern times, which first appeared in Basel in 1494. Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) was a German Benedictine, abbot of Sponheim, and Renaissance scholar, whose catalogue of ecclesiastical writers was completed in 1492. Trithemius synthesised a vast amount of ancient and medieval sources, and his work was much sought-after by scholars as a reliable reference work and guide to forming a learned library. The recorded authors were all clerics (as most scholars were) but their subject matter extends over all human learning.

4to (200 x 139 mm). Roman type, 38 lines plus headline. Collation: A-B⁴ a-z⁴ 2a-2z⁴: 192 leaves. Some early modern marginalia. (Some dampstaining).

Binding: Late sixteenth-century brown calf (201 x 141 mm), 2 frames of a repeated blind palmette flanked by blind lines, spine gilt (seventeenth- or early-eighteenth-century tooling), red title label and printed paper label "1703" at head, red edges, horizontal fore-edge title in ink. (Rubbed and abraded, small splits to joints).

Provenance: Ex-libris Ludovici Vrancx, ownership inscription to upper endleaf — Pierre de Spoelberch (1576-1636), provost of Leljeudael (diocese of Cambrai, near Malines), ownership inscription to upper endleaf — Jean Gerard Smolderen (1773-1854), ownership inscription to front free endpaper, his sale, Antwerp, 3 September 1855, lot 1703. Acquisition: Purchased in 1998 from H.P. Kraus, New York. References: VD16 T 1999; USTC 619857