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NICHOLAS MARLOWE RECENT ACQUISITIONS 1489–1938 recent acquisitions 1489–1938 NICHOLAS MARLOWE recent acquisitions 1489–1938 145 wilmot street, london e2 0bu uk 17 boulevard louis blanc, montpellier 34000 france [email protected] www.nicholasmarlowe.co.uk 2019 NOTE Our previous catalogues can be viewed and downloaded at our website, www. nicholasmarlowe.co.uk. Nicholas Marlowe Rare Books has been selling rare books and manuscripts since 2006. Our interests include European and Asian manuscripts, incunabula, early printed books, travel, science, and literature. TERMS All material is offered subject to prior sale. Notice of return must be given with seven days of receipt. We accept payment via US and UK domestic bank/ wire transfer, international bank transfer, USD and GBP cheque, credit card, and Paypal. All prices in USD (US dollars). BOETHIUSDE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE One of the great masterpieces of philosophical literature Finely printed French incunable; the “Conradus” edition No.1 BOETHIUS. DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE. DE DISCIPLINA SCHOLARIUM. Lyon: per Iohannem de prato [Jean Du Pré], 1489. Quarto, (239 × 165 mm.) two parts in one, ff. [142], a–r8, aa6 ; ff. [56], A–G8. A1 blank, quire d folded out of order, but complete. Gothic letter in two sizes, smaller for the commentary; 50 lines and headline. Capital spaces; large spaces filled with painted initials in red and blue, small spaces in alternate red and blue, sections rubricated in alternate red and blue throughout, all capitals highlighted in yellow ink in the first book of the Consolatione, occasional contemporary manuscript ‘nota bene’ pointing hands, occasional contemporary underlining, part of a 17th century engraving (possibly by Jaques Callot) of a man pruning vines pasted on the blank lower section of title. In 17th century vellum over boards, using a manuscript leaf from a 16th century legal document, (visible through the vellum), all edges sprinkled red. Small chips to vellum at head of spine, small tear at centre, minor staining. Light age toning, title with lower section of blank margin torn and restored (probably when bound), light damp stain in places at gutter and lower blank margin; title, first leaf, and last leaf fractionally dusty, small single worm trail in lower blank margin of eight leaves at end, not touching text. A very good copy, crisp and clean, on fine thick paper. ¶ A beautifully printed, rare and interesting French incunable edition of one of the great masterpieces of philosophical literature. The Consolation of Philosophy has been described as both the single most important and influ- ential work in the West on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, and the last great work of the Classical Period. It was written in prison under a death sentence by Boethius (c. 480–524), an Imperial official under Theodoric, Ostrogoth ruler of Rome. Boethius found himself, in a time of political paranoia, denounced and arrested; he was then executed two years later without trial. Composed while its author was forbidden from seeing his family and friends, it remains one of Western literature’s most eloquent 2 3 BOETHIUS . DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE . meditations on the transitory nature of earthly possessions, and the superiority of things of the mind. Editions rapidly appeared in all the major European languages. It has been translated into English nearly a dozen times, starting with King Alfred’s para- phrase; subsequent English translators included Chaucer, Sir Thomas More, and Elizabeth I. It is a work of philosophy that has profoundly marked western literature; Dante made it a centrepiece of the intellectual scaffolding of his Divine Comedy. Its influence percolates right through to the modern period, in which Boethian themes run through the works of such varied authors as J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse- Five. THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY AS A WORK OF LITERATURE “Much, in fact most of the scholarship devoted to Boethius’ Consolatio has dealt with the work as a philosophical treatise. And this it certainly is. The author is almost ostentatiously conversant with Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, and neo-Platonic thought; what is more, he weaves these various strands into an organic whole. But in addition to philosophy the Consolatio is also literature. Formally, it is an example of an ancient literary genre, the Menippean Satire, a medley of alternating verse and prose. … But even those critics who do treat the Consolatio as a work of literature too often limit themselves to tracing Boethius’ sources and to indicating his influence on subsequent authors, Dante and Chaucer being the most renowned” (Curley p. 343). “Boethius … chooses the appropriate medium for the message in question. When, for instance, he bemoans his fall from fortune, he speaks as an elegiac poet; when he describes the apparition of Dame Philosophy, he draws on the established conventions for portraying divine visitations; when Philosophy begins her instruction, she speaks in the tones of Latin didactic poetry; and so on throughout the work. But something more interesting is also going on. In his manipulation of literary genres Boethius is commenting on their nature and on the nature of literature as a whole. On the surface, the Consolatio is a work of philosophy; but just below the surface there runs a continuous stream of reflection on literature and its relationship to philosophy. … Thus the purpose behind Boethius’ chosen form, the Menippean Satire, becomes clear. He required a form which would allow poetry and philosophy to play off of each other in order to define their relationship and to suggest a possible reconciliation” (Curley p. 367). 4 5 BOETHIUS . DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIAE . THE ‘DE DISCIPLINA SCOLARIUM’ edition closely, and was extremely influential in fixing the attribution of the commentary to Thomas Aquinas (erroneously). “As many as a dozen more The Consolatio is published here, as often, and in a tradition started in French editions with titles worded as Du Pre’s appeared at Lyons before 1501, and incunable editions, with the de Disciplina Scolarium. “The Pseudo-Boethian it was also copied at Venice before the year 1489 was out. In this edition, De disciplina scolarium reveals a facet of the medieval figuration of Boethius commissioned by the well-known publisher Octavianus Scotus, the commen- largely neglected in accounts of medieval Boethianisms, a humorous, raunchy taries on both Boethian texts are expressly described as the work of Aquinas Boethius who tells ambiguously moral exempla. Considered authentic from (“cum sancti Thome super vtroque commentariis”), and it was probably this its “rediscovery” in 1230–1240 until 1498 and beyond, this widely-read advice note, given wide publicity by the prestige of Venetian printing, which perma- text for scholars, written in the voice of Boethius, modifies the auctor’s serious nently fixed the name of Aquinas upon the commentary of De Disciplina” self-presentation in the Consolatio Philosophiae to fit within the tonal and (Scholderer p. 257). thematic conventions of 13th century grammar school teaching texts. These texts—such as Maximianus’s Elegies, which includes a similar sexual and morally ambiguous Boethius—use titillation, violence, and transgression as PROVENANCE pedagogical tools for young students. Rather than an odd outlier or excep- tionally poor forgery, De disciplina’s playful, ironic Boethius would have (1) “Conventus Castrensis ordinis dd ma. Trinitatis Redemptionis seemed normal to medieval readers used to such schoolroom conventions. De Captiuorum catalogo inscriptus” in a slightly later hand at head of first disciplina’s Boethius, and his neglect, reveals a gap in our understanding of leaf of text. The seminary of the Trinitarian order was founded in Castres medieval Boethianisms and medieval conceptions of auctoritas” (Hunter in 1250, outside the city. In 1369 they moved into the city to a site given p. 161). to them by the Abbot of St.-Victor de Marseille. Their monastery was destroyed in the late 16th century. (Castres was a Protestant stronghold THE FRENCH “CONRADUS” EDITIONS in the wars of Religion in France).1 (2) “Jean Dujardin” in a 19th century hand on rear fly. The first edition of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae to appear in France was printed by Johann Parix, a native of Heidelberg, at Toulouse in 1480; this was followed by another edition from the same printer in 1482, RARITY the first to combine the two Boethian texts in one volume and the first to include the commentary on De Disciplina with the incipit “Solum hominem.” (1) This edition is rare; ISTC records two copies only in American These editions are associated with the name “Conradus.” “The name of one libraries, one at Cornell University incomplete of the De Disciplina, and Conradus, or Conradus Poseiaen, which is found in the form of an acrostic one at the Library of Congress. It is particularly rare on the market. in certain editions of De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius and De ABPC (1975–2018) records no complete copies of this edition or any of Disciplina Scholarium of pseudo-Boethius, has caused a good deal of trouble. the French “Conradus” incunable editions at auction in the last 40 years. After having been variously regarded as the author of the pseudo-Thomist commentaries on these texts which accompany the editions in question, and $8,750 even of De Disciplina itself, he has now settled down as the presumable editor of the two commentaries” (Scholderer p. 257). All later French incunable ISTC ib00785000. Goff B785. Copinger 1115. editions copied the text of the Toulouse edition, retaining the “Conradus” Pellechet 2526. Polain(B) 733. Madsen 764. GW 4542. acrostic. Curley, T. F. “The Consolation of Philosophy as a Work of Literature,” The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 108, No. 2. 1987 “We then come to the edition signed by Jean du Pré at Lyons on 8 February, Hunter, B.