Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu Christi. Venice, Andreas de Bonetis, 12 March 1485

£7,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Annotated first edition - and the only one to be published in the 15th century - of The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus Christ , the most important work of Ubertino of Casale. Ubertino da Casale (1259-c. 1329) was an Italian Franciscan and one of the leaders, and last great exponent, of the Spirituali , a branch of the Franciscan order who held to the strict observance of Saint Francis’ Rule of poverty. Being a passionate preacher who propagated rigorist ideas, Ubertino often found himself at odds with the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, publicly criticising other Franciscan friars and even the Popes of his time, guilty of adapting a looser interpretation of the Rule. As a result, he was banished to the convent of Mount Alverna (around 1305), where he wrote the The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus Christ , his major work. The animosity between Ubertino and the papal authority escalated as a result, until he was excommunicated in 1318. He travelled through Europe to escape being arrested as a heretic, but after 1328 every trace of him is lost. Some suppose that in 1332 he left the Benedictine order (which he had joined in 1317) and joined the Carthusians, while the Fraticelli (successors of the Spirituali ) believed that he was murdered in 1330 and venerated him as a martyr. His figure provoked such a stir that Ubertino enjoys a long tradition in Italian literature: he is mentioned in Dante’s Divina Commedia (“ma non fia da Casal né d’Acquasparta,\ là onde vegno

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