Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan
Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.
We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.
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[INDULGENCE.]
Letter of Indulgence (in Catalan), incipit ‘A Honor …’, granted by Cardinal Luis de Milá,...
[Lerida, Heinrich Botel, c. 1498.]
Extremely rare incunable indulgence in Catalan granted by Luis de Milá, Bishop of Lérida, in favour of the living (as opposed to the dead, see below) to gather funds for the repair of the old cathedral of Lérida, printed at Lérida, the second city of Catalonia, about one hundred miles...
£34000
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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, of 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...
£30000
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LACTANTIUS.
Opera.
[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...
£25000
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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
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[GRADUAL.]
Vast historiated initial ‘A’ cut from a Gradual.
Italy (Umbria), end of thirteenth century.
A spectacular initial on the scale of a small panel painting. The verso includes the text ‘[neque] irrideant me inimici mei […] [un]iversi qui te expectant’ and the versicle ‘Vias tuas domine de[monstras]’, indicating that the initial would have introduced the introit ‘Ad te levavi...
£20000
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[CANONS REGULAR OF THE LATERAN.]
Regula et constitutiones Canonicorum Regularium congregationis S. Salvatoris, Ordinis Sancti...
Rome, apud Paulum Bladum, 1592.
The most complete edition, rare, of the Rule and Constitutions of the Order of the Canons Regular of St Augustine of the Congregation of the Most Holy Saviour, printed on vellum, with two seemingly unrecorded cancels, from the library of a former Abbot General of the Order.
£18500
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HURTADO, Eugenio, scribe.
[Missal for feast days.]
Madrid, 1827.
An extraordinary and enormous liturgical manuscript with painted and stencilled decorations, in a remarkable binding on wheels for ease of movement
£9500
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VINCENT OF LÉRINS.
The Waie home to Christ and Truth leadinge from Antichrist and Errour, made and set furth in the Latine Tongue...
[London, Robert Caly, 22 October 1554].
First edition in English, very rare, of St Vincent’s Commonitorium pro catholicae fidei antiquitate, translated and with a long Prologue by John Proctor (1521–1558), and a dedication to Queen Mary, ‘a lady of heavenly simplicitie’ whom Proctor later praises as the restorer of the...
£9500
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ANTONIUS de Vercellis.
Sermones quadragesimales de XII mirabilibus Christianae fidei excellentiis [with additions by Ludovicus...
Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, [for Alexander Calcedonius], 16 February 1492/93.
A remarkable copy of the first edition of Antonius de Vercellis’ sermons, owned and annotated by three contemporary Franciscans, one of whom, Andrea Alamanni, may be the confessor who administered Machiavelli’s last rites.
£8500
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[ANTIPHONAL.]
Very large historiated initial ‘H’ (probably for the antiphon Hodie nata est beata virgo Maria for the...
Italy (Siena), c. 1300.
A very fine large initial painted in a style associated with the Master of the Gradual of Cortona, an artist named for a Franciscan gradual produced c. 1290 for the church of San Francesco in Cortona (now Vatican City, BAV, MS Ross. 612).
£6750
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MEFFRET, Johann.
Sermones Meffreth alias Ortulus regine de tempore. Pars hyemalis.
[Basel, Nicolaus Kesler, not after 1485.]
A volume of sermons with early English annotations, in a binding featuring tools attributed to an early Cambridge workshop known as the Unicorn Binder.
£6500
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WEBER, Johann Adam.
Discursus curiosi et fructuosi [ad praecipuas totius litteraturae humanae scientias illustrandas accommodate …].
[Salzburg, Johann Baptist Mayr, 1690.]
Third Salzburg edition of Weber’s wide-ranging discourses, in a handsome Bavarian binding for the Abbot of Ettal, Bernhard I Oberhauser, attributable to the monk Brother Gregor, a trained bookbinder from Hungary.
£6000
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ALCIONIO, Pietro.
Petri Alcyonii Medices legatus de exsilio.
[Venice, in the house of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, November 1522.]
First edition of Alcionio’s dialogue on exile, an intensely annotated copy from a family of French humanists and Reformers. Pietro Alcionio (or Petrus Alcyonius, fl. 1487–1527) was a Venetian humanist, scholar and Aristotelian translator who began his career as a proofreader for Aldus Manutius....
£5750
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BIBLE.
Biblia cum concordantiis veteris et novi testamenti et sacrorum canonum: necnon & additionibus in marginibus varietatis...
[(Colophon:) Lyons, Jean Marion, for Anton II Koberger in Nuremberg, 19 August 1520.]
A handsomely printed Bible in a contemporary Silesian or Bohemian binding, richly annotated by a Protestant scholar and with numerous woodcuts in contemporary colouring.
£5500
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[BIBLE.]
The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments … diligently compared and revised …
Oxford, T. Wright and W. Gill, 1769.
First quarto edition of the Oxford ‘standard’ Bible, as revised by Benjamin Blayney of Hertford College, Oxford (1728–1801), later Regius Professor of Hebrew. The quarto and folio editions of 1769, of which this was the first to be finished, were printed from the same setting of type differently...
£5250
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ANTIPHONAL,
with neumes, containing antiphons, responses and versicles for Trinity Sunday, the Octave of Pentecost, Sundays after...
Germany, 1st half of 12th century.
Two bifolia from a notably early antiphonal.
£5000
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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (Titus Flavius CLEMENS); Gentian HERVET, translator.
Omnia opera.
Paris, Sebastien Nivelle, 1572.
A thoroughly annotated copy of this early edition of the complete works of Clement of Alexandria, in the Latin translation of the theologian and humanist Gentian Hervet (or Hervetus, 1499–1584).
£4750
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[BOUCHET, Jean.]
Les triu[m]phes de la noble et amoureuse dame, et l’art de honnestement aymer, compose par le Traverseur des...
Paris, Estienne Caveiller for Pierre Sergent, 6 June 1539.
Unrecorded issue of Jean Bouchet’s contemplative vernacular work of moral theology in prose and verse explicitly intended for a female readership, following the personified Soul in dialogue with several virtues as she attempts to combat the forces of earthly temptation with the power of divine grace,...
£4500
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[BREVIARY, Use of Passau.]
Breviarium s[ecundu]m chorum alme Ecclesie Pataviensis.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Petrus Liechtenstein for Vienna, Lukas and Leonhard Alantsee, 25 May 1515.]
A rare Passau breviary with numerous woodcut illustrations in a contemporary Austrian binding, printed in Venice for the Austrian market.
£4500
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RICH, Jeremiah.
The Whole Book of Psalms in Meter. According to the Art of Short-Writing …
London, ‘Printed and are sold by Samuel Botley Teacher of the said Art … and nowhere els.’, [1660?].
First edition, the issue with Samuel Botley in the imprint – an extremely attractive miniature Psalter in shorthand by a ‘skilled and celebrated’ practitioner whose work was known to Pepys (though Pepys himself employed a rival system).
£4250