NERSES IV.

£5,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

Extremely rare editio princeps of Yisus Ordi or 'Jesus the Son', a spiritual poem containing an abbreviated biblical narrative and with verse prayers to Christ by the twelfth-century Armenian saint Nerses Shnorkhali or 'the Graceful', attractively printed and beautifully ornamented with initials formed of birds, vines and architectural ornaments, in a lovely contemporary Armenian binding. In the colophon, the editor Yohannes Ankyurats’i, also known as Giovanni Molino (c.1592-1643), describes earlier failed attempts at printing the work, and how the Armenian Catholicos had finally requested his expertise. Molino, born in Ankara, was from the Armenian community of the Ottoman Empire. Sent to Rome as a child, as was common for talented Armenian and other non-Muslim Ottoman boys at the time, he was educated at the Academy of Neophytes, a school for Jewish and Muslim converts. He evidently returned to his native Ankara, since he arrived in Venice from there in 1626, where he began work as an interpreter. Molino was heavily involved in the project to print an Armenian Bible in Rome on behalf of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, and travelled there in order to study printing and advance this ultimately fruitless work: ‘I put myself … to learn the art of printing … I went with hope and desire to the city of Rome, where for four years, with hard work, pain and torment … that it is not possible to explain in writing and [only] my Creator knows I procured punches and matrices, o

• Binding: Hardcover

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