Speculum omnium statuum totius orbis terrarum.

£2,250 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A handsome copy of an uncommon edition of the hugely popular Speculum Vitae Humanae, from the library of a Bohemian rebel and his wife. First published in 1468, Spanish bishop and political theorist Rodrigo Sanchez de Arevalo’s (1404-1470) hugely popular Mirror of Human Life is a moralistic examination of different classes, stations and professions. It was intended to offer a guide to picking one’s vocation, as well as an instructive manual in the moral pitfalls to avoid in certain walks of life; it also offers an encyclopaedic account of various subjects, including astronomy, mathematics, music, agriculture, and so on. Present here with a separate half-title (though continuous pagination) is Petrus Desrey’s fifteenth-century translation of the dance of death in Latin verse. Printed in Hanau, the present text was edited by Melchior Goldast von Haiminsfeld (1578-1635), swiss jurist, and prolific writer and editor. He dedicates the text to Zdenko Adalbert Poppel, First Prince of Lobkowicz (1568-1628), member of one of the oldest noble families in Bohemia and staunch Catholic supporter of Habsburg rule in the region. An inscription dated 1613 on the front pastedown indicates that the present copy was, within months of publication, part of the collection of a staunchly Protestant landowner in the same region, Sigismund Matthias Vencelik (Zikmund Matej Vencelík) and his wife, Anna Magdalena . From a family made Barons of the Holy Roman Empire by Frederick III, Zikmund was commissi

• Year: 1613

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