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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[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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BOUTMY, C.
‘Exercitium quotidianum dedicatum perillustri domino domino vice comiti de Haro et d’Enghien &c a C. Boutmy 1760’.
[Belgium, 1760.]
An attractively bound unpublished devotional manual composed by one C. Boutmy (unidentified) for his patron Henri vicomte de Haro et d’Enghien.
£450
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[BOUTREUX D’ESTIAU, Jacques de.]
De la puissance roialle sur la police de l’Eglise.
Paris, Pierre Durand, 1625.
A pair of uncommon works defending the French king’s authority over the Church, in a binding for Jacques-Auguste II de Thou and later in the renowned Caumartin library.
£950
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[BREVIARY.]
Sarum Breviary, in Latin.
England, first quarter of fifteenth century.
A fragment of twenty-one leaves from a portable Sarum Breviary, with nineteenth-century Staffordshire provenance.
£4250
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BRUNFELS, Otto.
Precationes Biblicae sanctoru[m] patrum, illustrium viroru[m] et mulierum utriusq[ue] Testamenti.
Strasbourg, Johannes Schott, 1528.
First edition, rare. The earliest Protestant prayer-books, of which this is perhaps the most notable example, often comprised prayers taken directly from (or adapted from) the Bible. Brunfels’s Precationes Biblicae appeared in the same year in German translation (Biblisch Bettbüchlein...
£3500
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BUXTORF, Johannes.
Epitome grammaticae Hebraeae, breviter & methodice ad publicum Scholarum usum proposita. Adjecta succincta de...
London, Roger Daniel, 1653.
Second edition (first Cambridge, 1646) of Buxtorf’s Hebrew grammar to be printed in England, here preserving a fragment of a sixteenth-century English-French grammar as endpapers and with a student’s manuscript Hebrew transliterations.
£650
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CADOGAN, William Bromley.
The Felicity of God’s Children, considered in a Sermon, preached upon the Death of a Lady, in the parish...
Reading: Printed and Sold by Smart and Cowslade; and sold by J. Rusher, Reading; Messrs. Robinsons, V. Griffiths ... & J. Matthews ... London;...
First edition, a funeral sermon by the popular preacher William Bromley Cadogan, a friend of John Newton, for the local widow Maria Littlehales, printed at the request of her children.
£75
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CALMET, Antoine Augustin.
Commentaire litteral sur tous les livres de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament. Les deux livres d’Esdras,...
Paris, Pierre Emery, 1712.
First edition of the commentary on the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, and Esther by the French Benedictine Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672–1757), from the library of the last male descendant of the distinguished Colbert family.
£450
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CAMBOUT, Sébastien Joseph du, and John EVELYN (attributed translator)].
The moral Practice of the Jesuites. Demonstrated...
London, Printed for Simon Miller, at the Star at the West-end of St. Paul’s, 1670.
First edition in English of La morale pratique des Jesuites (1669), a polemical Jansenist critique of Jesuit practices intended to ‘inspire the World, and the Jesuites themselves, with horror at their detestable Morality’ (p. [4]).
£700
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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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[CAPUCHINS.]
Diploma conferring ‘privilegium maximum’.
‘Bojonii’, 22 October 1779.
An attractive diploma issued by Erhard von Radkersburg (1714–1798) in his capacity as Minister General of the Capuchins to one Nicolas Homont and his family, granting them the spiritual benefits of the devotions and good works undertaken by the order.
£450
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CARLI, Paolo Francesco da Montecarlo.
La Svinatura di Barbigi Mezzabarba (Paol Francesco Carli da Montecarlo) resa a miglior lezione...
Campobasso, Stab. Tip. Del Progresso, 1878.
Rare edition of a satire by poet and abbot Paolo Francesco Carli (1652–1725) ridiculing the work of his nemesis, the Tuscan priest and schoolmaster Giovan Paolo Lucardesi, who made a tremendous theological blunder in a sonnet in which he describes Christ as ‘crucified and triune’, thus undermining...
£150
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CARO, Annibale.
Rime del commendatore Annibal Caro. Col privilegio di N.S. PP. Pio V. et dell’illustrissima signoria di...
Venice, Aldus Manutius the Younger, 1569.
First edition of the poetry of Annibale Caro, offering a scathing yet humorous critique of his greatest poetic rival, Ludovico Castelvetro.
£650
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[CARTHUSIANS. GUIGO DE CASTRO, compiler.]
Repertorium statutoru[m] ordinis cartusiensis per ordinem alphabeti.
Basel, Johann Amerbach, 1510.
First printed edition of the Statutes of the Carthusian Order, printed at the expense of the editor, Gregor Reisch (c. 1467–1525), author of the Margarita philosophica, for distribution to members of the Order only.
£7500
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CASAL, Gaspar do.
Axiomata christiana ex divinis scripturis & sanctis patribus.
Coimbra, João da Barreira and João Alvares, 1550.
First edition of Gaspar do Casal’s major work of theology, which informed his participation in the Council of Trent, from the library of another participant in the Council.
£2500
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CASTELLESI, Adriano.
Hadriani cardinalis de vera philosophia libri IIII ex quatuor ecclesiae doctoribus conscripti, varia eruditione...
Cologne, Melchior von Neuss, 1540.
A fine sammelband of theological works, with interesting provenance. The De vera philosophia (first published Bologna, 1507) is the most important work of the Italian cardinal and English agent in Rome, Adriano Castellesi (c.1461–1521). ‘The dedication to Henry VII suggests that...
£1750
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CATHERINE OF SIENA.
Dialogo della serafica vergine, et sposa di Christo S. Catherina da Siena. Diviso in quattro trattati...
Venice, Giacomo Cornetti, 1589.
Uncommon reprint of the 1579 edition (Venice, Domenico Farri) of Saint Catherine of Siena’s famous Dialogo, thought to have been composed between 1377 and 1378, and to have been largely dictated by the saint while she was in a state of ecstasy. It is here divided into four parts, on discretion, prayer,...
£550
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CATTANI DA DIACCETO, Francesco.
Homelie … sopra la sequenza del corpo di Christo.
Florence, Lorenzo Ducale, 1559.
Uncommon first edition of a collection of eleven sermons by Francesco Cattani da Diacceto (1531–1595), bishop of Fiesole, dedicated to Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.
£550
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[CHARITY.]
Costituzioni della Congregazione della Carità di Parma sotti gli auspizi di San Filippo Neri rinnovate nell’anno...
Parma, Stamperia Reale, [1778].
Uncommon set of constitutions for the Congregazione della Carità of Parma, printed after its refoundation in 1777. After a brief introduction, the constitutions set out the procedures for the election of the confreres and their reception, the times and order for meetings, discipline within the...
£300
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[CHARLEMAGNE and LOUIS the Pious; ANSEGISIUS and Benedictus LEVITA, editors.]
Karoli Magni et Ludovici Pii...
Paris, Guillaume Pelé, 1640.
Paris edition of a collection of Carolingian statutes and laws, with many substantial annotations and insertions by Étienne Baluze, the pioneering historian and professor of Canon Law at the Collège de France who became librarian to Colbert.
£3500