Scarce: WorldCat, NUC Pre-1956 and Goff locatejust three copies of this part, this edition, in the U.S. (two of those being part of full five-part sets). Wenssler was a prolific printer, but his works are not necessarily common. Elizabeth Evenden & Thomas S. Freeman, in Religion and the Book in Early Modern England, note that “Like many technologies in their early stages, printing provided entrepreneurs with the opportunity to make considerable fortunes, but at considerable risk. . . . The business fortunes of Michael Wenssler, a printer in fifteenth-century Basle, areinstructive” (p. 6).

•  Goff A-874; HC 1245*; BMC, III, 728; GW 2188; ISTC ia00874000. On Antoninus, see: NCE, I, 646–47, and online.   Recent full calf ruled in blind and tooled old style using one roll in the same design on each cover; new endpapers. Second part only of five; title-page lacking but title words excerpted and seamlessly integrated into front fly-leaf. Waterstaining throughout, with all edges and many whole leaves age-toned; leaves at the beginning repaired across the inner column of text affecting legibility of print, in some cases with whole words or parts of lines taken; some other leaves repaired similarly and yet others unrepaired leaving holes or tears very occasionally affecting text; paper now stable and nowhere weakened. Otherwise, one pin-type wormhole to outer margin of early leaves, three corners torn away, a short closed marginal tear in three leaves; a few signatures corrected in early ink manuscript. An incunable that has seen multiple instances both of suffering and of “rescue,” across its many generations.  (31142)

The recto of leaf a1 is blank, the text of the prefatory matter beginning on the verso.

Provenance: Signature of “John Webb” in a 17th-century hand twice in margin of k3r.

Uncommon beyond the Continent: ISTC and Goff locate only two copies in the U.S. and ISTC locates only two copies in the U.K. (one incomplete), but there is a third copy at the British Library.

•  ISTC ic00601000; Goff C601; HC 5274*; IGI 2910; Pr 4942; BMC, V 400; GKW 6954.   Full modern walnut calf old style: Spine with raised bands, accented with gilt and blind rules, the latter extending onto covers to terminate in trefoils with blind double fillets beyond. Gilt center devices in the spine compartments. Red leather spine label lettered in gilt, and date in gilt at base of spine. Lacking two leaves (b4–5). Upper corners of leaves in gatherings & and [con] damaged with loss of paper. Lower corner of i1 torn with loss of text of both sides of leaf. Waterstaining and old dampstaining variously, this often faint and never really worse than moderate (worst at beginning/end); some age-toning and dustsoiling. Though an imperfect copy, a rarity; indeed, with its manuscript enhancements, a “uniquum.”  (25766)

Offered here is folio ccxii: Printed in a single column in Germanic roman type.

Provenance:  From the collection of leaves assembled by the Grabhorns.

•  Goff J162; Hain 9978*; Schreiber 4309; IGI 5049; GW M11369; ISTC ij00162000.   Light dust-soiling in margins. Tipped into a plain, single-ply mat. With a typed identification label on the front of the mat.  (31083)

This is an uncommon edition in the U.S. though heavily held in Europe; Goff and ESTC locate only two U.S. copies — this being one of them, deaccessioned.

•  Copinger, II, 6452; ISTC ij00122000; Proctor 618; BMC, I, 138; Goff J122. Deep walnut full calf old style: Round spine with raised bands, accented with gilt rules, fillets extending onto covers from each band to terminate in trefoils and covers framed in blind double fillets; very plain with date and place of publication only gilt on spine. Various waterstaining throughout, with other stray stains; copy missing first two and final two leaves of text, and the leaves at front and back remargined (with some others repaired). Priced according to faults, not pleasures! (12378)

•  ISTC ip00365000; Goff P365; HC 12749; Walsh 1191, 1192; Oates 2791, 2792; Pr 7608; BMC III 757.   Inner margin slightly irregular. Very nice.  (30852)

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 text is in English printed in Bâtarde type (i.e., a modified English gothic), double column, with 44 lines and a headline to a page, and decorated on the recto with two large woodcut initials against a foliated ground and acolumn-wide woodcut of St. Ambrose with the bishop's mitre and scepter (10 x 7 cm; 4" x 2. 875"), the woodcut frame being only partially printed and completed by hand in early ink.

The printer, Wynkyn de Worde (a.k.a., Jan van Wynkyn), was England's first typographer and worked with William Caxton, England's first printer. In 1495, he took over Caxton's print shop conclusively, but this was only after a difficult three-year litigation following Caxton's death in 1491.

•  Goff J150; Copinger 6474; Ricci, A census of Caxtons, 107; Pellechet, Jacques de Voragine, 113; Duff, Fifteenth century English books, 410; STC 24875; Walsh 3993; Rhodes, Oxford Colleges, 992; Bod-inc J-069; Sheppard 7426; Proctor 9691; BMC, XI, 184; GW M11436; NCE online (Voragine). On The Golden Legend, see: S. Reames, The Legenda Aurea: A Reexamination of Its Paradoxical History (1985).   Leaf (with red fore-edge) mounted within a light grey mat, both sides visible. Evidence of former binding along gutter and two small wormholes in inner margin, with very light toning where not covered by mat; one light stain in upper left quadrant and minor smudges from early ink around woodcut. An elegant, beautiful leaf, fine and bright.  (30905)