De sermone Latino, et modis Latine loquendi. Eiusdem venatio ad Ascanium cardinalem. Item iter julii. ii. Pontif. ro. Cum indice.   (Cologne: Hero Fuchs, October 1524)

£2,250 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A handsome copy of this popular Renaissance study of and instructive manual for the use of classical Latin by the ambitious Cardinal, conspirator and English agent in Rome Adriano Castellesi (1461-1521), in contemporary French calf with sumptuous - if mysterious - gauffered edges. While the vine leaf and grape pattern at the head and foot of the text block is a familiar gauffering motif, the connection of ‘chastel villain a l’abre d’or’ that is so prominently gauffered on the fore edge of the text block, with the present work, or its previous owners - a Johannes Mongmot, perhaps Montmort, who has inscribed their name to the upper pastedown and verso of the final leaf - is unclear. It may indicate eastern French, noble provenance; Châteauvillain is a small medieval town in eastern France, with a long line of seigneurie associated with it, and with a curious chivalric connection to the emblem of ‘l’arbre d’or’. According to an amateur history of the diocese, the town was once called Château-Gentil and had a golden tree, or ‘arbre d’or’ incorporated into its coat of arms, but the bad behaviour of an errant seigneur of the town, who kidnapped a princess and fled to Spain, occasioned the name change to Château-villain (Jacques Vignier, Décade historique du diocèse de Langres). Possibly drafted in Bologna in 1507, Castellesi’s treatise on Ciceronian Latin - ‘the only sort that would do, insisted its author’ (ODNB) - was first published in 1515, and enjoyed immense popularity over t

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.