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)

•  Goff A1246; Hain-Copinger 2068*; GKW 2890; BMC, III, p. 695 (IB. 14206); ISTC ia01246000; Printing & the Mind of Man 3 (for the first edition, 1467).   Late 19th- or early 20th-century half brown leather with tan paper paper sides and endpapers; binding lightly worn and covers with a bit of loss to paper. Fore- and part of upper margins of the first eight leaves damaged with loss and repaired many years ago. Some soiling to the text, chiefly in the margins; old waterstaining; pin-hole worming. Not a rare edition of this text but a nice copy of it withconsiderable added scholarly importance .  (40533)

Provenance:  Ownership inscription in the top margin of leaf [pi]2r, in Latin, dated 1500 of Matthew Schach, the Carthusian Prior at Prüll, and “tit. Bp. of Salona (Dalmatia), suffragan Bp. of Freising” according to Paul Needham's Index Possessorum Incunabulorum; mid-19th-century ownership signature on title-page of A. De Welles Miller, Charlotte, North Carolina, a Doctor of Divinity, but we do not know of which denomination. He was a devoted collector of early printed books. (Sincere thanks to Eric Johnson [Ohio State University Library] and Eric White [Princeton University Library] for assistance with the Shach provenance note.)

Evidence of readership: Early marginalia next to chapters (or their morals) 15, 16, 28, 33, 36, 43, 47, 55, 72, 80, 91, 92, 106, 111, 125, 128, 135, 144, 164, 173, and 178. A correction to the moral of 115 and an interlinear addition to moral 55.

•  Goff G-296; GKW 10902; BMC I, 146 (IB. 1928); ISTC ig00296000.   Recent ebony-brown calf old style: Round spine with raised bands accented by gilt rules, cream leather title label, fillets extending onto covers from each band to terminate in trefoils; a vertical blind-tooled “rope” to covers beyond the trefoils and covers framed in blind double fillets. Title-leaf stained and with old repairs, pencilling, and ownership indicia as above; very old bookseller's description glued to same not approaching type or inkings. Variable waterstaining throughout; pinhole-type worming, minor and not costing letters; leaf l4 torn in upper margin extending into text with loss a very few words in the top two lines of one column on each page of the leaf. Lacks the final blank (only). A significant book, and a handsome incunable in a very interesting copy.  (39525)

The incunable leaf offered here contains the account of his murder. It was printed in single-column format in an interesting gothic font by the famous early printer Johann Zainer, the first printer to set up shop in Ulm.

Provenance:  From the collection of leaves assembled by the Grabhorn Press (1920–65), for their reference library.

•  ISTC No.ij00091000; Goff J91; GKW M11319.   Disbound. Numeral “53" in lower outside corner of the recto. Nice margins, and very clean.  (40788)

Provenance:  From the collection of leaves assembled by the Grabhorn Press (1920–65), for their reference library.

•  ISTC No.ij00171000; Goff J171; GW M11405; Proctor 1262–63; Copinger 4626.   Disbound, inner margin slightly irregular and discolored from glue; dust-soiled. Else, very good — indeed, quite handsome.  (40785)

This leaf of The Golden Legend has on its recto, and continuing on the verso, the final portion of account of the nativity of the Virgin, which recounts episodes from her mature adulthood andshows the Mother of God as a powerful figure with a powerful sense of what is due her.  She promises death within 30 days to a bishop who has removed from office an unsatisfactory priest that she appreciates as specially devoted to her (he is reinstated and the bishop lives); she intercedes in another vision with her “debonayre sone” to reverse the damnation of a “vayne and ryotous” cleric who, on the other hand, has been specially devoted to her and her Hours (he reforms). In a third case, she redeems from the grasp of hell a bishop's vicar who, disappointed of promotion in office, had engaged “a Jewe [who was] a magycyan” to facilitate his signing in his own blood a soul-sacrificing deal with “the devyll” (the vicar repented).  The Marian section closes with an account of “Saynt Jherom's” devotion to her. All this is followed on the verso by the beginning of the life of St. Adrian of Nicomedia, who before his conversion to Christianity and subsequent martyrdom was a Herculian Guard of the Roman Emperor Galerius Maximian. He is the patron saint of soldiers, arms dealers, guards, butchers, victims of the plague, and epileptics. The text is printed in double-column format inEnglish gothic type.

Provenance:  From an offering of leaves from this edition of The Golden Legend by the Dauber & Pine Bookshops, New York City, in ca. 1928 .

English incunable leaves are increasingly difficult to obtain.

•  STC (rev. ed.) 24876; ESTC S103597; Duff 411; Copinger 6475; Goff J-151; ISTC ij00151000.   Removed neatly from a bound volume. With a “cover leaf” in approximation of a title-page, reading “The Golden Legende. J. de Voragine. Printed by Wynkyn de Worde 1498. Dauber & Pine Bookshops, Inc. New York.” A striking relic recounting multiple miracles and presenting Mary as a most interesting personality.  (40744)

•  Goff J260.   Removed from a bound volume; short tears and small chips to top and gutter edges, in the latter case at the old sewing stations. Waterstain in upper inner area of each leaf and narrowly across top edges; light dustsoiling and a little other old staining notably to first page of the series. Paragraph markings in red and blue with also some underlining in the former.  (41855)

Balli (fl. 1574–1600), originally from Salamanca, Spain, and of French and Spanish decent, arrived in Mexico as a bookseller butby 1574 was operating a printing shop.

Provenance:   Discreet ownership stamp in an inner margin of Michael Mathes.

Related to Edwin A. Carpenter, A Sixteenth-Century Mexican Broadside (i.e., The Valtón Collection), types 31– 35??

•  Edwin A. Carpenter, A Sixteenth-Century Mexican Broadside, Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1965; Not in Szewczyk & Buffington, 39 Books and Broadsides Printed in America before the Bay Psalm Book; María Isabel GraZén Porrúa, Los Grabados en la obra de Juan Pablos, Mexico: Apoyo al desarrollo de Archivos y Bibliotecas de Mexico & Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2010.   Removed from a bound volume, very irregular in inner margins, worming in lower margin and into last line of text, costing portions of two printed words and six manuscript words, but not impairing ability to understand the text; otherwise, ordinary age-toning only. Laid in, as issued, to a copy of the Carpenter leaf book (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1965; limited to 140 copies, printed by Saul & Lilian Marks at the Plantin Press). A good and visually striking example of a Mexican incunable broadside and of Mexican, specifically Balli job printing — and, one with evocative manuscript completions. (41754)

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)

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)