ABBEVILLE, Claude d’.

Histoire de la mission des peres capucins en l’isle de Maragnan et terres circonvoisines ou est traicte...

Paris, François Huby, 1614.

Second edition, enlarged and revised from the first edition published earlier the same year, a handsome copy. The first written account of the Capuchin mission to Maranhão, an island on the coast of Brazil, of which, Sabin notes, this is the earliest mention. In 1612 the mission, composed of...

£30000

ACETI DE’ PORTI, Serafino. 

Novo paradiso di delitie spirituali, nel quale si contiene la vita del salvator nostro Giesu Christo. ...

Bologna, Giovanni Rossi, 1563. 

Rare first edition of this devotional work by Serafino Aceti de’ Porti (1496–1540), a Canon Regular of the Lateran, encompassing episodes from the life of Christ, passages on love for God and on charity, prayers to the Virgin Mary, and spiritual advice by St Bridget. 

£850

ALBERTI, Leon Battista.

El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...

Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.

First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).

£3800

[ALTAR CARDS.]

Two altar cards with Latin text and images of Christ and St John.

‘A Paris, chez I. Baudemont’, second half of seventeenth century.

Two seemingly unrecorded hand-coloured prompt cards for priests, bearing readings and prayers, and devotional images of Jesus and St John, comprising separately printed images, text and borders arranged together in collage fashion.

£2750

ANGELI, Alessandro degli.

In astrologos coniectores libri quinque … Nunc primum prodit [sic] in lucem. Cum indicibus pernecessariis,...

Lyons, Horace Cardon, 1615.

First edition of this thorough attack on astrology by degli Angeli (1542–1620), head of the Jesuit college at Rome, this copy with a presentation inscription by the Lyons publisher and printer Horace Cardon (1566–1641).

£1600

ANGLÉS, José. 

Flores theologicarum quaestionum, in quartum librum sententiarum.  Collecti, iterumq. selecti …  Pars prima...

Rome, Giuseppe de Angelis, 1578. 

Scarce second edition (first Cagliari, 1575–6) of an exhaustive compendium of theological questions compiled by the Spanish Franciscan Anglés (d. 1586), bishop of Bosa in Sardinia. 

£750

ANTIPHONAL,

with neumes, containing music for the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday.

Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-15th century.

An unusual and striking antiphonal leaf written entirely in red and notated entirely in burnished gold, signalling the importance of the text for Holy Saturday.

£4250

ANVILLE, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’.

Considérations générales, sur l’étude et les connoissances que demande la composition...

Paris, Galeries du Louvres, 1777

Two first edition works in one volume by the great French geographer and royal cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville, consisting of d’Anville’s general guide to geography and his remarks on the construction of his famous maps of China.

£500

APULEIUS (Julien FLEURY, editor).

Lucii Apuleii Madaurensis Platonici philosophi opera interpretatione et notis illustravit...

Paris, Frederic Leonard, 1688.

First Delphin edition of the works of Apuleius, ‘une des meillures éditions qui soient dans la collection des Ad usum’ according to Brunet, comprising the Metamorphoses, his popularisations of Platonic philosophy, and excerpts from his lectures known as the Florida. The Delphin classics were a landmark...

£350

[AQUHORTIES.]

Abstract of the Rules and Regulations for the Students in the College of Aquhorties …

Edinburgh, J. Moir, [1799?].

Broadside rules for the newly established Aquhorties College, the only Roman Catholic college in Scotland, presumably designed to be posted up around the school.

£850

[ARCHCONFRATERNITY OF THE MOST HOLY CRUCIFIX.] 

Distinta descrizione della machina, luminari, ed ordinanza nella solenne processione...

Rome, per il Casaletti, 1775. 

Rare record of a procession made by members of the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Crucifix from the church of San Marcello in Rome to Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in the jubilee year of 1775. 

£250

ARISTIDES, Aelius. 

Orationum tomi tres, nunc primum latine versi a Gulielmo Cantero Ultraiectino.  Huc accessit orationum tomus...

Basel, Peter Perna and Heinrich Petrus, 1566. 

First edition in Latin, a remarkable copy once owned by one of the preeminent music theorists and composers of Renaissance Italy, Gioseffo Zarlino.  The translation was prepared from the Greek by the German scholar Wilhelm Canter (1542–1575), author of an acclaimed Syntagma, a systematic...

£2750

Aristotle: From Antiquity to the Modern Era.

Preface by Martin J. Gross. Essays by Benjamin Morison and Barbara Scalvini.

Lewes, D. Giles Ltd for the Martin J. Gross Family Foundation, 2021.

Aristotle’s influence towers over western philosophy and science. His astonishing range and depth – philosophy and logic, the physical and natural sciences, ethics and politics – make him indisputably the most important intellectual figure in the western tradition before the modern age.

£30

ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo. 

Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga. 

Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566. 

First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini. 

£1750

AUGUSTINE, Pseudo-, et al. 

Opusculum multarum bonaru[m] rerum refertum, ut sunt.  Diui Augustini meditationes, et eiusde[m]...

Venice, Pietro Quarengi, 6 March 1512. 

Uncommon edition of various devotional works, comprising: the pseudo-Augustinian Meditations, Soliloquies, and a treatise on the word of God; meditations on the human condition, and a letter on leading the perfect life, attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux; a short sermon assigned to Peter Damian; Anselm’s...

£750

AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS [i.e. AUGUSTINUS de Ancona].  

Summa de potestate ecclesiastica.

Augsburg, [Johann Schüssler,] 6 March 1473.

First edition of this highly important and influential magnum opus of political theory, a defence of papal supremacy.

£22500

BACON, Francis.

Opuscula varia posthuma, philosophica, civilia, et theologica, nunc primum edita. Cura & fide Guilielmi Rawley…...

London, R. Daniel, impensis Octaviani Pulleyn, 1658.

First edition, second issue (with the imprint R. Daniel, rather than R. Danielis) of this collection of the philosophical, political, and theological writings of Bacon, including numerous essays previously unpublished, and the first appearance of William Rawley’s biographical sketch of the philosopher....

£1250

BARTOLI, Adolfo.

Scenari inediti della Commedia dell’arte. Contributo alla storia del teatro popolare italiano.

Florence, Sansoni, 1880.

Rare first edition, one of only 350 copies, of a foundational source for the study of Commedia dell’Arte. The exceptionally well-loved and widely-performed form of drama is the subject of the author’s pioneering study: he examines tropes, characters, plots, structures and lines of ‘scenarios’...

£500

[BASKERVILLE PRESS.]

The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...

Third and final edition of Baskerville’s octavo prayer book. The prayers for the Royal Family on cancels B8, C6, and D3 include the name of Queen Charlotte, whom George III married in 1761. This copy also includes the ‘occasional prayers’ which were only printed for part of the edition and are...

£1200

BAUMGARTNER, Reinhard.

Conclusiones ex universa theologia morali in catholico lyceo Societatis Jesu ad S. Salvatorem Augustae publicae...

[Augsburg], Joseph Antonius Labhart, [1754].

Only edition of this attractively printed summary of moral theology, presented as a disputation in the Jesuit college in Augsburg under the supervision of the professor of the subject, Reinhard Baumgartner (1699-1764). Over fifty paragraphs, the reader is offered a concise guide to the operation of conscience,...

£175