MNEMONICS AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Boethius [Sulpicio, Giovanni Antonio] [Bade, Josse; Thomas Aquinas, pseudo-:] Duplex commentatio ex integro reposita atque recognita in Boetium... [Lyons, Claude Davost, for Simon Vincent, 1506].

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A fascinating copy of a teaching compendium, annotated with visual, textual and musical mnemonics, and biographical information on owners. The printed text comprises Boethius’s Late Antique classic Consolation of Philosophy; an extract from Quintilian’s Institution of Oratory; a poem on student table manners by the humanist Giovanni Antonio Sulpicio (1440-c.1508); and a pseudo-Boethian work called On the academic discipline. Our copy appears to have been at the Benedictine abbey of Garsten (Austria).

Details

One volume, 25.6 cms. x 17.7 cms. In binding, quarto, fols. [132]; [28]. Title-page with title in red, with in black, large woodcut initial, with, above and below, printed in black, woodcut devices of Simon Vincent (above: Silvestre 267, Peter and Paul with Veil of Veronica and initials PV; below, Silvestre 265, armorial lozenge with initials SV, flanked by woman and unicorn, banner with motto “Memento finis”). Further Vincent device with Veil of Veronica to final page. Woodcut initials throughout. Text printed in two sizes (main text and surrounding commentary). Printed side notes, printed manicules.

Bound in early 16th-cent. wooden boards, hook clasp fastenings to front cover (cf. Szirmai 259 (d)), straps removed, old leather spine replaced c.1700 with alum-tawed pigskin, decorated in blind, with giltstamped goatskin label. Pastedowns made from bifolia from Michael Lochmaier, Parochiale curatorum [Nuremberg, Friedrich Creussner, not before 1493] (ISTC il00267000), sigs. d1/ d8 and d2/d7. 

Provenance: Possibly from the Benedictine abbey of Garsten (Austria). Annotations by various Benedictine monks. 

Condition (text block): light browning, some dustiness and occasional light staining, worming at beginning and end, a spot of ballpoint pen to title-page. Condition (binding): worming, loss to pastedowns (tear to rear pastedown).

Bibliography: USTC 154972. Renouard, Badius Ascensius II, 204 #14.