[PSEUDO-AUGUSTINUS.] Sermones Sancti Augustini ad heremitas.

£3,850 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Rare Incunable Edition of a Notorious Monastic Forgery [PSEUDO-AUGUSTINUS.] Sermones Sancti Augustini ad heremitas. [ (Colophon:) Venice: Simon Bevilacqua. 4 November 1495.] Small 8vo. Recased in the original sixteenth-century vellum, spine lettered ‘Sermon[es]’ in ink, ties wanting; ff. [112]; a-o8; gothic letter, text in two columns, woodcut initial to f. a3r; a few marks to covers, spine restored at head, endpapers renewed; small wormhole to inner margin of ff. [a1]–f4 (slightly touching a few letters), light dampstaining to lower outer corner, quires c, f, and o somewhat browned; overall a very good copy; early annotations to e5 and sidelining to 5 ff., old library stamps ‘Bibl. SS Apostolorum Neapolis’ to first and last leaves (see below); twentieth-century notes pencilled to flyleaves. Rare Bevilacqua edition of the pseudo-Augustinian Sermones, a bestselling collection of sermons falsely attributed to Augustine of Hippo, supporting the Augustinian Hermits’ priority in their controversy with the Augustinian Canons over the Order of Saint Augustine. The Sermones ad heremitas, also known as Sermones ad fratres in eremo, were first published in Modena in 1477 by Balthasar de Struciis. The collection was forged in the context of a medieval debate over which branch of the Augustinian Order held greater precedence – the Augustinian Hermits or the Augustinian Canons. The sermons’ purpose was to support the historically questionable claim that Augustine himself had established t

• Binding: Hardcover

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