Aristotle (pseudo-) & Isidorus Hispalensis | A remarkable Sammelband featuring the first printed lapidary, Merseburg, 1473; and the first printed map, Augsburg, 1472

Aristotle (pseudo-).

Lapidarius. Quomodo virtutes pretiosorum lapidum augmentantur. Physiognomia. Merseburg: [Lucas Brandis], 20 October 1473

Chancery folio (295 x 220 mm). Gothic types, text in two columns, 37 lines, initial spaces. Collation: [1¹⁰ 2–4⁸ 5⁶]: 40 leaves (1/1& 5/6 blank). Red lombard chapter initials, underlining and capital strokes.

REFERENCES

BMC II 546 (ІВ.9605); Goff A998; GW 2389; ISTC ia00998000; Osler (IM) 30; Donau. Inc. 49. On the text see Charles B. Schmitt and Dilwyn Knox, Pseudo-Aristoteles Latinus (1985) no. 72; Lynn Thorndike, "De lapidibus," in Ambix 8 (1960):21–23

[bound following:]

Isidorus Hispalensis

Etymologiae. [Augsburg:] Günther Zainer, 19 November 1472

Chancery folio (295 x 220 mm). Roman types, 38 lines, initial spaces, some with printed guide letters, a line of blind bearer type at the foot of 9/5v. Collation: [1⁴; 2¹⁰ (+6* De Partibus orationis) 3–13¹⁰ 148 (±3; +3* Vnde) 15–24¹⁰ 25⁸ 26¹⁰ 27¹⁰ (+9* lumine, 9** Forfices)]: 264 leaves. Three full-page woodcut diagrams, small woodcut world map, numerous small in-text woodcut diagrams and symbols. Lombard initials commencing each book variously colored, chiefly in pale green and mauve, and heightened with yellow, alternating red and blue lombard chapter initials, paragraph marks, underlining and capital strokes.

REFERENCES

BМС II 317 (ІВ.5438); Goff I181; GW M15250; ISTC ii00181000; Osler (IM) 13; Printing and the Mind of Man 9; Schreiber 4266; Schramm II, Abb. 282–284, 286; Donau. Inc. 306. For the map: Shirley, Mapping the World 1; Campbell, The Earliest Printed Maps,1472–1500 77; Destombes, Catalogue Des Cartes Gravées Au XV Siecle 13 & 14, 20–26; The World Encompassed 11

Together 2 works in one volume. Contemporary marginal annotations; occasional light soiling and staining, scattered worming, occasionally touching a few characters, the Stemma stirpa humanae and Arbor consanguineitatis cuts slightly shaved. Contemporary blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, brass catchplates and one stamped clasp retained, headbands of ecru, green, and red threads, spine lining from a fifteenth-century document, edges stained yellow; worn, boards a bit wormed, corners and spine restored.

The Lapidarius falsely ascribed to Aristotle is the first printed lapidary and the second book printed in Merseburg. Very rare: the Yampol copy is one of just ten surviving copies, and the only other copy in the United States is at the Huntington Library. The printer, Lucas Brandis, apparently moved his printing shop immediately thereafter to Lübeck.

The text is preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript in the Public Library, Bern (MS. 513) as an anonymous physiognomy dedicated to Wenceslaus II, King of Bohemia (1266–1305); it includes an extensive discussion of the kinds and properties of basilisks. “The work is divided into three parts. In the first is treated the Lapidarius of Aristotle in the new translation from the Greek with all the other lapidaries and their statements as to the colors, virtues, and place of generation of each stone. The second part describes how the virtues of precious stones are increased and altered according to diverse situations, such as wearing them on the finger or in the armpit, or combining them with other things and engraving characters on them. The third part is devoted to physiognomy itself” (Schuh, Annotated Bio-Bibliography of Mineralogy and Crystallography 1469–1919).

First edition of the encyclopedic Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, Zainer's first book printed in Roman type. Although Zainer owned this font by the end of 1471, he had employed it hitherto only for a broadside calendar (GW 1293). The woodcuts include trees of consanguinity and affinity, as well as a large wheel-shaped diagram of family relationships.

Most significant is the small text woodcut mappa mundi on fo. 176v: the very first printed map. Its late classical “T-O” form derives from the schema that was standard in manuscripts of the Etymologiae. The map depicts a T-shaped Mediterranean Sea separating Asia, Europe, and Africa, with the world ocean circumscribing the whole. Later fifteenth-century editions of Isidore’s work with a “T-O” map were published in Strassburg (1473), Cologne (1478), Venice (1483 and 1493), Basle (1489) and Paris (1499).

“Older and of infinitely greater importance than [other medieval summae printed in the fifteenth-century] is the work of the Spanish bishop Isidore, which is now known under the title of ‘Etymologies, or the Origins of Words’. An industrious and uncritical compiler, he supplied factual as well as fantastic information culled from all the ancient authors available to him (and incidentally preserved much material that has since been lost). Isidore thus became the chief authority of the Middle Ages, and the presence of his book in every monastic, cathedral and college library was a main factor in perpetuating the state of knowledge and the modes of thought of the late-Roman world. Johannes Balbus [Catholicon], Bartholomaeus Anglicus [De proprietatibus rerum] and a host of other writers were deeply indebted to Isidore. In his homeland, Spain, his reputation outlasted the Middle Ages far into the seventeenth century. … To our age, Isidore has remained a primary source of the ancient world-picture as conceived in the Middle Ages” (Printing and the Mind of Man).

PROVENANCE

Joannes Pyrrherus of Vienna (inscription, 1550) — D. de Maius Urfahr, Discalced Carmelites (inscription, gift of the preceding) — The Court Library at Donaueschingen (eagle stamp; Sotheby’s London, 1 July 1994, lot 167, sold by order of His Serene Highness Joachim Prince zu Fürstenberg)

We are grateful to Paul Needham for his consultation on this lot.