The Summa, completed shortly before his death, is divided into four parts: the first is concerned with the soul and its faculties, passions, sin, and law; the second addresses different types of sin and redress; the third considers various states and professions in life, with treatises on ecclesiastical offices and censures; and the fourth contemplates the cardinal virtues, religious morals, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Although the text draws heavily on earlier theological works by St. Thomas Aquinas, among others, it is regarded as“a new and very considerable development in moral theology” (NCE online), and it containsa wealth of matter for the student of 15th-century history.

Printed in Gothic type, double-column format, with most capitals supplied in red or blue manuscript in plain style, the text here has red markings to aid in reading and navigation. Topics addressed in these volumes include sin, penance, canon law, will, original sin, privilege, lying, pride, avarice, anger, and infidelity, among several others.

Goff and ISTC find only one complete set of all volumes in American libraries — at the Countway in Boston. All other U.S. libraries, save the Newberry, report owning one or two of the volumes. The Newberry has volumes I–IV.

Provenance:  Old illegible European library stamp in lower margin of first leaf of vol. I; in 20th and early 21st century in the library of the Pacific School of Religion (properly deaccessioned).

•  ISTC ia00878000; Goff A878; BMC, I, 109; GKW 2192.   Contemporary calf over bevelled wood boards, recently rebacked and new endpapers supplied; lacks a blank and a title leaf. Leather of boards elaborately and richly tooled in blind using rolls, rules, and individual stamps of a rose, a fleur de lis, and a saint; small area of leather on front board missing and substitute leather inserted. Evidence of bass and leather clasps, remnants of vellum guide tabs. Text and boards of binding wormed, mostly with many pinhole wormholes, and text with some meandering; no great losses. Some small tears in a few margins and one lower margin with an old repair; stamp as above; browning to many margins. A good, solid volume, one with some condition issues but at the same time a good example of these productions and the era's printing.  (33734)

In March of 1286 Balbus, a Dominican friar, completed this study of five aspects of the Latin language: orthography, prosody, grammar, etymology, and rhetoric. Four-fifths of the work is devoted to etymology, making it more a dictionary than any other type of reference book, but it did provide a one-volume reference work for the study of Latin. It was most definitelythe dictionary most used by Boccaccio, Petrarch, and other writers of the early Renaissance.

The present leaf is unwatermarked, so we do not know to which issue it belongs. It is printed in double-column format, using a small font used here for the first time and cast in imitation of a fine semicursive Gothic hand, with 66 lines per column. It is nicely rubricated with numerous small initials and pilcrows.

•  Goff B20; HC 2254*; Stillwell, Gutenberg and the Catholicon of 1460; IGI 1154; BMC, I, 39; GKW 3182.   Removed and with irregular margins. Very good.  (38154)

Provenance:  From the library of American collector Albert A. Howard, small booklabel (“AHA”) at rear.

This is the last Paris-printed edition in the incunable period and the next to the last of all printed in that era.

•  ISTC ig00406000; Goff G406; BMC, VIII, 29; GKW 11402.   Later limp vellum, light dust-soiling, lacking final blank as above. Title-page and first two leaves of text with marginal repairs, the former with a small reddish stain and starting to separate from gathering; some dust-soiling and chipping to leaves, especially at start and end of text, and a single pin-type wormhole through perhaps a third of the text's bottom margins. With hand-coloring, ribbon tabs, and “personalization” of title-page as above.  (37735)

This leaf of The Golden Legend has on its recto the end of the life of St. Eutrope and the beginning of “The Lyf of Saynt Marcyall” which continues on the verso. Saint Marcial, commonly known as “the Apostle of the Gauls” or “the Apostle of Aquitaine,” was the first bishop of Limoges. He was one of those saints whose legend grew greatly across time, until (as here) he was baptized by St. Peter himself and could cast out fiends and raise the dead. The text is printed in double-column format inEnglish gothic type.

Provenance:  From the incunabula leaf collection of the Grabhorn press.

English incunable leaves are increasingly difficult to obtain.

•  STC (rev. ed.) 24876; ESTC S103597; Duff 411; Copinger 6475; Goff J-151.   Sometime removed from a bound volume and trimmed without touching text; foremargin (recto) closely trimmed and both upper corners trimmed on the angle. Browning to the upper outer corner and across top; old soiling to verso. A striking relic recounting multiple miracles.  (38262)

German printer Vindelinus de Spira (a.k.a. Wendelin de Speier or Speyer) was, alongside his brother John, in 1468 one of the first to bring printing to Venice from Germany, where their use of roman type was considered innovative. Trevitt & Steinberg note in Five Hundred Years of Printing that the brothers' publications “were well produced and show discrimination in their choice of authors” (p. 31).

Provenance:  From the incunabula leaf collection of the Grabhorn press.

•  Goff L238; IGI 5771; BMC, V, 154; ISTC il00238000; GKW M18494.   Leaf disbound and mounted along the top edge to a dark gray pasteboard. Very light dust-soiling overall, with none on the side facing the mounting; age-toning along edges with a few small spots; text block gently skewed. Faint bibliographical information pencilled in bottom margin. An attractive early leaf from an early press.  (38326)

The verso blank.

Use of capitals in text for words: Generalmente, Magestad, Senores, Presidente, Oydores, Reales, Alcaldes, Juezes, and Justicias.

The manuscript completions were sworn in Puebla de los Angeles on 14 September 1590, before the notary Marcos Reyes. Francisco Hernandez de Tinoco, a citizen of Puebla, gives power of attorney to Hernan Perez, a “procurador de causas,” who is not present.

Our attribution to printer is based on the type used and stylistics of composition.

•  Edwin A. Carpenter, A Sixteenth-Century Mexican Broadside (i.e., The Valtón Collection), possibly type 14, 15, or 16. Not in Szewczyk & Buffington, 39 Books and Broadsides Printed in America before the Bay Psalm Book.   Removed from a bound volume with worming in margins and into text, touching but not costing letters; age-toning. Light waterstain in upper margin. A good example of a Mexican incunable broadside.  (34744)

This book is “around” in libraries; ISTC locates 12 U.S. copies.But on the market, it is a different story!

•  Goff S222; H 14436; HC(+ Add) 14439; Audin 126; CIBN S-107; IGI 8739; Sallander 2430; Pr 6361; BMC, VI, 684; GKW M40472; ISTC is00222000.   20th-century grey boards, lightly discolored, with caramel-color leather label on front one. Text very clean.  (27042)

Savonarola wrote this painful document in prison, completing it on or before 8 May 1498. Significantlyone of the most widely read and reprinted of Savonarola's works, it was in its original Latin version immediately distributed in Florence and quickly translated into Italian, this particularly early version at the instance of “certain devoted women” (our translation, f. [1]r). Indeed Giovannozzi lists a total of 32 printings in four languages from 1498 to 1581, ISTC noting of this one that it is “printed in a later state of the type associated with the Printer of the Caccia di Belfiore, who is identified as Lorenzo Morgiani and Johannes Petri by A. Tura, in La Bibliofilia 101 (1999) pp.1–16.” A neat, handsome incunable production.

Provenance:  Probably from Lathrop C. Harper (its binding style, see below).

ISTC locates 8 copies in libraries in the U.S., 5 in Britain, 15 on the Continent, and 1 in Australia.

•  Goff S216; BMC, VI 695; IGI 8737; ISTC is00216000; HR 14428; HC 14429?; Audin 145; CIBN S-104; GKW M40538; Pr 6305; Giovannozzi 104 (“S.n.t [sec. XV]”); Ridolfi, I, 389, & II, 220.   20th-century grey boards, lightly discolored, with caramel-color leather label on front board. Text very clean.  (27045)

The Vatican Incunabula catalogue notes that this commentary was, “In fact written after Savonarola's death, probably by the Dominican Simone (or Placido) Cinozzi”; ISTC adds, “The Dominicans ordered an enquiry into its authorship and publication on 24 May 1499.” Placido (Lorenzo) Cinozzi (1464–1503) is famous for his Epistola of 1501–03, considered the earliest extant biography of Savonarola; he first heard Savonarola preach at San Lorenzo in 1484 and later knew him at San Marco, where Cinozzi joined the Dominican order in 1496.

Evidence of readership: Early ink manicule in the margin of f. 3v, pointing to a passage beseeching God to free His people, who are in great danger; and some letters finished with the same ink (ff. 3v–4r).

Provenance:  Probably from Lathrop C. Harper (its binding style, see below).

ISTC locates five copies in libraries in the U.S., two in Britain, and ten on the Continent.

•  Adams S485 (“c. 1501”); Goff S203; HCR 14410; H14409?; CIBN S-151 (“about 1500”); IGI, VI, 131 (“after 1500”); Audin 128; Pr 6453; BMC, VII, 1209; GKW M40467; ISTC is00203000; Proctor 6453; Isaac 13494; Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae, Incunabula, III, S-120 (see above); C. Olschki, “Un codice savonaroliano sconosciuto,” in La Bibliofilia 23 (1921), pp. 154–65, at p. 163; R. Ridolfi, Vita, II, p. 669, n. 22 (“about 15 May 1499”); Walsh 3035e. On Cinozzi, see: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani online.  20th-century grey boards, lightly discolored, with caramel-color leather label on front board, and blue edges; rectangle of offsetting to paper of back cover, probably from a similar label on a similar book once this one's neighbor! Text very clean.  (27040)

The introduction is by Bernhard Bischoff (the distinguished paleographer, historian, and philologist) and the work's editor was Rudolf Hirsch (the dynamic librarian of the University of Pennsylvania, identified in the “Editorial Note” merely by his initials); both men knew Schulz.

“Five hundred copies of this essay have been printed at the Bird & Bull Press, North Hills, Pennsylvania. Copies 1-200 for distribution to members of the Philobiblon Club of Philadelphia.” The work is printed in Baskerville type on Strathmore Artlaid paper.

•  Taylor & Morris, Twenty-one Years of Bird & Bull, B8.   New. As issued in brown textured paper wrappers with a paper spine label on the front cover.  (35762)