BURLEY, Walter (pseudo).

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De vita et moribus philosophorum. The third book printed by Anton Koberger and the first edition of the shorter South German recension of this medieval biographical compendium. Koberger established his press in Nuremberg around 1470 and is one of the most important printers of the incunable period, famous for the scale of his international operations and his richly illustrated works, including Bibles and the Nuremberg Chronicle.Koberger's earliest books make up a suite of five undated editions completed in late 1472, all undecorated and elegantly printed with the same gothic type in Chancery folio format. Their order has been established by Janet Ing Freeman on the basis of paper evidence. During his first decade of printing, much like his competitors in Mainz and Augsburg, Koberger employed illuminators to decorate the books for sale. De vita, in its longest recension, compiles the lives of 132 philosophers, poets, historians, physicians, grammarians, and statesmen from the Greek and Roman world. They are arranged chronologically from Thales of Miletus to Priscian. Formerly attributed to the English philosopher Walter Burley (c.1275-1344), it is now recognized as an anonymous northern Italian production, composed between 1317 and 1320 before Burley's arrival in the region. It draws from Diogenes Laertius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers and medieval encyclopaedic traditions, including the Arabic-Spanish-Latin Bocados de oro, Vincent of Beauvais, and John of Wales.The text cir

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