BASIL THE GREAT

£3,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

The handsome binding with phoenixes and interlaced cranes, the detail of which remains very crisp, reprises early C16 exemplars produced in Lyon (e.g., BL, C66g11). They were based on a t-p produced by the Flemish artist Guillaume II Leroy for the Lyonnaise printer-bookseller Simon Vincent. As proved by a copy of Paulus Venetus s Summa philosophiae naturalis (Lyon, Antoine Du Ry for Simon Vincent, 1525) present in our web catalogue where the t-p and matching binding appear together, the latter was probably Vincent s marque de libraire . In 1561, Antoine II Vincent (1500-68), one of Simon s grandsons, was entrusted with the establishment of a branch of the press-bookselling business in Basle. Seen the peculiarity of this binding design, it was probably still in use in Antoine II s shop. The mozarabic corner and centrepieces were probably added; they resemble the binding on BL, Add. MS 28751, produced in Spain in the C16. The fine painted fore-edge with foliage and masques follows the mid-C16 fashion in Switzerland, where this kind of decoration lingered longer than in the rest of Europe (e.g., Davis II, 224, 225, 226). Excellent, clean copy of the first edition of St Basil s complete works edited by the Reformed humanist Wolfgang Musculus, professor of theology at Bern. Basil the Great (d. 379AD), Bishop of Caesarea, was one of the most influential Byzantine Church Fathers, admired for his theological arguments against heresy, his preaching and exegetic skills, theorisation of

• Binding: Hardcover

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