Judging Pontius Pilate

The author, Ludovico Montalto (d. c.1528), was a jurist, patron of the arts, and an important Neopolitan bureaucrat. The Sicilian studied under leading law professor Giasone del Maino (1435-1519). His Tractatus draws on contemporary law and current affairs, including Spain’s expulsion of the Jews just one year prior (fol. 34r). It critiques Pilate for his part in Jesus’s death, and also displays antisemitism. It helped stimulate forged or imaginary records of Pilate’s sentence against Jesus (Lavinia). Our tract remained influential more broadly, with Ernest Jovy suggesting it informed the Mystère de Jesus of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Pascal also used the author’s name as a pseudonym when writing his Lettres provinciales, an important defence of Jansenism.

The Gothic type used for the title in this first edition is found nowhere else among works printed by Johannes Higman and Wolfgang Hopyl (BMC). Only two further incunable editions were produced, both also Parisian (1496, 1498). All early editions are scarce, with ours located in just 17 holding institutions. Montalto’s text was later included in the Tractatus Universi Juris (Venice, 1584–1586), an important legal compendium.

Physical Description

Printed. One volume, quarto, 19 x 13 cms in binding, ff. [62]. Collation: a-c⁸ d¹⁴ e-g⁸ (includes final blank). Printer’s device (Renouard, Marques, no. 711). Types 100 GB (title) and 76 G (text). 40 long lines to the page, marginal paratext throughout. Unrubricated.

Bound in red goatskin over boards, triple fillet frame tooled in gilt to both covers, gold-tooled sides and dentelles, goldtooled decoration and vertical lettering to flat spine. All edges gilt, green marbled endpapers. Quite possibly bound for the Duc de la Vallière, known for bindings in this style (Coq 1988, p. 319; Hobson 1953, p. xxii; see further at provenance 3).

Condition (textblock): light browning and foxing, a small water stain in gutter at beginning and end, one folio folded in at outer margin at time of binding to preserve printed paratext. Condition (binding): leather professionally treated with conservation polish in 2024 to stabilise historic addition of extra colour. Underneath the bookplate, another was removed in the 18th century.

Provenance

1. A couple of early reader’s marks and an underlining all relating to conscience(sig. e2v).
2. Imprint date to title page in old hand.
3. Perhaps the copy in ‘mar. r.’ (i.e. red morocco) owned by Louis-César de La Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière (1708-1790). Catalogue des livres provenans de la bibliotheque de M. L. D. D. L. V… vol. 1 (Paris, Chez Guill. François de Bure le jeune, 1767), lot 200.
4. Pierre-Jacques Sépher (1710-1781). Cf. Catalogue des livres rares et singuliers; de la bibliothèque de M. l’Abbé Sepher… (Paris, Fournier, 1786), lot. 2233.
5. Alexis-Ferreol Perrin de Sanson (1733-1820). Armorial bookplate to front pastedown. Cf. Catalogue des livres imprimés, des manuscrits… composant la bibliothèque de feu M. Perrin de Sanson ... et provenant pour la plupart des bibliothèques … de L’Abbé Sepher, de L’Abbé Rive, etc (Paris, Merlin, 1836), no. 17. Bibliographical note probably from this time to front free endpaper, referencing its lot number in the Sepher catalogue.
6. Various booksellers’ notes to endpapers, mostly in pencil.

Bibliography

ISTC im00821000. BMC VIII 134. BodInc M-309. GW M25300. 17 copies worldwide, 4 of which in North America (Bridwell Library, Huntington Library, Library of Congress, Newberry Library).

Campbell, I, and Gaston, R, ‘Pirro Ligorio and two columna caelata drawings at Windsor Castle’, Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. 78 (2010), 265-287 (esp. 278).

Coq, Dominique, ‘Le parangon du bibliophile français: le duc de la Vallière et sa collection’, Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, Vol. II (Paris, Promodis, 1988), pp. 317-31.

Hobson, A. R. A., French and Italian Collectors and their Bindings: Illustrated from Examples in the Library of J. R. Abbey (Oxford: Printed for presentation to the members of the Roxburghe club, 1953), p. xxii, 94.

Jovy, Ernest, ‘Essai de solution d’un petit problème d’histoire littéraire relatif à Pascal’, Bulletin Historique et Philiologique du Comité des travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, Année 1894 (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1894), pp. 324-340.

Lavenia, Vincenzo, ‘ « Che cos’è la verità »: l’apocrifo della sentenza di Pilato e la sua storia’, in Andrea Del Col and Anne Jacobson Schutte (eds), L’Inquisizione romana, i giudici e gli eretici: studi in onore di John Tedeschi (Rome, Viella, 2017), pp. 177-208 (p. 186).

Miletti, Marco Nicola, ‘Montalto, Ludovico’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 75 (2011).

Mongitore, Antonino, Bibliotheca Sicula sive de scriptoribus Siculis, vol. 2 (Panormi, ex typographia Angeli Felicella, 1714), p. 22.

Renouard, Philippe, Les Marques typographiques parisiennes des XVe et XVIe siècles (Paris: Champion, 1926).

See Provenance above for references to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century auction catalogues.