EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA.

£7,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

The very handsome French binding is decorated with an early fanfare pattern of interlacing ribbons, infrequently found in centrepiece decoration. Close models are the fanfare patterns of Parisian bindings c.1570s-80s, e.g., BL Davis445, some produced for the great C16 bibliophiles J.-A. de Thou, e.g., BL C19b11, BL c19f23, and Thomas Grenville, e.g., BL G11322. The expert, fine tooling is reminiscent of the style of the royal binder Clovis Eve (e.g., Belin n.229), active in Paris in the same years. A very good, clean, wide-margined copy of this sumptuous Greek editio princeps—the second work printed in Garamond’s Grec du roi, decorated with woodcut initials and ornaments by Geoffrey Tory. Robert Estienne (1503-59) was son and heir to Henri and a talented classicist. In 1543, Francis I made him Royal Printer for the Greek. The post came with the privilege of using the new Greek type commissioned in 1540 by the King from Claude Garamond, a pupil of Tory. Grec du roi ‘paralleled, even surpassed, the earlier success of the Aldine founts in setting a European pattern’ (Ingram, p.377); ‘it was, and is, by far, the best type of its kind that has ever been cut […], I believe’ (Proctor). The Royal Printer was responsible for choosing suitable mss from the Royal Library as sources for new editions of classical and Patristic works. ‘Among the most important unpublished Greek texts […] were those of Eusebius of Caesarea, the first great historian of Christianity. This was decided upon by

• Binding: Hardcover

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