Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison 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. 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
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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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DIODATI, Giovanni.
Pious and learned Annotations upon the Holy Bible. Plainly expounding the most difficult Places thereof …...
London, Printed by Tho. Roycroft for Nicholas Fussell, 1664.
An intriguing late eighteenth-century amateur binding from the American Mid-West, possibly decorated with saddler’s tools, and with interesting early American provenance, on the fourth edition in English of the Swiss-Italian Calvinist theologian Giovanni Diodati’s Annotationes in Biblia...
£8500
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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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PIUS II (Nicolaus von WYLE, editor).
Epistolae familiares.
Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 17 July 1486.
Second Koberger edition of the Epistolae familiares of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), the great Renaissance humanist who became Pope Pius II in 1458, a handsome copy enhanced with manuscript additions comprising epistolary models, a German-Latin wordlist, and medical recipes.
£7500
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[ANTIPHONAL.]
Very large historiated initial ‘H’, probably for the antiphon Hodie nata est beata virgo Maria for the Nativity...
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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ERASMUS, Desiderius.
Paraclesis, id est adhortio ad sanctissimum ac saluberrimum Cristianae philosophiae studium …
Basel, Johann Froben, February 1520.
Attractive contemporary Erasmus sammelband, superbly eloquent in its physical union of three treatises without which the humanist’s Praise of Folly would risk gross misinterpretation.
£5500
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SENECA, Lucius Annaeus.
L. Annei Senecae opera, et ad dicendi facultatem, et ad bene vivendu[m] utilissima, per Des. Erasmum Roterod....
Basel, ‘in officina Frobeniana’, 1529 [(colophon:) Basel, Johann Herwagen, March 1537].
Second Erasmus edition of the moral essays and letters of Seneca, owned and annotated by Ludovicus Carinus (d. 1569), friend and later foe of Erasmus himself.
£5000
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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).
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 Gentian Hervet. Clement lived and wrote in the second and third centuries, one of the most important interpreters of Christianity within an established Greek philosophical...
£4750
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NAVARRETE, Domingo Fernández.
Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China. Descripcion...
Madrid, Juan Garcia Infançon for Florian Anisson, 1676.
Scarce first edition, one of the most important early studies of Chinese history, religion, philosophy, and culture, by the Spanish Dominican Domingo Navarrete (d. 1689).
£4750
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[PONTIFICAL.]
Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII. primum, nunc denuo Urbani Papae Octavi auctoritate recognitum.
Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1663.
An attractive Plantin-Moretus Pontifical, splendidly preserved in a richly baroque binding.
£4500
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[ANTIPHONAL.]
Antiphonal, with neumes, containing music for the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday.
Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-fifteenth 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
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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 Psalms in shorthand by a ‘skilled and celebrated’ practitioner whose work was known to Pepys (though Pepys himself employed a rival system).
£4250
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[THOMAS À KEMPIS.]
Messer Giovanni Gerson. Utile & divota operetta della imitatione di Giesu Xpo …
Florence, Piero Pacini da Pescia, 16 April 1505.
Scarce edition of an anonymous Italian translation of the Imitatio Christi, with a striking woodcut of Christ to the title.
£4000
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BERNARD of Clairvaux.
Opera omnia, tam quae vere germana illius esse nemo inficias eat, quam quae spuria & supposititia (quanquam...
Paris, [Nicolas Bruslé for] Sébastien Nivelle, [1571-] 1572.
A rare Parisian edition of the works of Bernard of Clairvaux, beautifully preserved in a contemporary Spanish plateresca binding with elaborate fore-edge lettering.
£3750
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NEWTON, Isaac.
Opuscula Mathematica, philosophica et philologica. Collegit partimque Latine vertit ac recensuit Joh. Castillioneus...
Lausanne and Geneva, Bousquet & soc., 1744.
First edition of Newton’s collected works, a major tool in the dissemination of Newton’s science and a major publication in the history of science. The edition, edited and introduced by the Pisa alumnus Giovanni Salvemini da Castiglione, contains twenty-six works (which, while having appeared...
£3500