Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan
Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.
We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.
-
[INDULGENCE.]
Letter of Indulgence (in Catalan), incipit ‘A Honor …’, granted by Cardinal Luis de Milá,...
[Lerida, Heinrich Botel, c. 1498.]
Extremely rare incunable indulgence in Catalan granted by Luis de Milá, Bishop of Lérida, in favour of the living (as opposed to the dead, see below) to gather funds for the repair of the old cathedral of Lérida, printed at Lérida, the second city of Catalonia, about one hundred miles...
£34000
-
[INDULGENCES.]
Indulgencias concedidas a los congregantes de la inmaculada concepcion de Maria SS baxo el titulo de la corona...
[Barcelona, 1793.]
Very rare broadside detailing the indulgences granted to members, of both sexes, of the Congregation of the Immaculate Conception, established under the title of the Crown of the Seven Joys of the Virgin at the Franciscan convent in Barcelona. In 1792, Pope Pius VI had formerly linked the Congregation...
£175
-
ISOCRATES.
Orationes et epistolae gravitatis et suavitatis plenae de Greco in Latinum pridem conversae, nunc recognitae, per Hieronymu[m]...
Paris, Michel de Vascosan, 1553.
A handsome Latin edition of twenty-one works by the Athenian orator Isocrates whose work was highly influential on later education, oratory and writing. Isocrates (436–338 BC) studied under Socrates and the sophists, before establishing a famous school of rhetoric which attracted pupils from...
£750
-
[JACOBUS DE GRUYTRODE, (attr.)].
Lavacrum conscientie [omnium sacerdotum].
[Colophon:] Cologne, Heinrich Quentell, 1504.
Rare edition of this popular late medieval treatise widely ascribed to the Carthusian monk Jacobus de Gruytrode (c. 1400–1475).
£750
-
JACOBUS MEDIOLANENSIS.
Stimulus divini amoris Sancti Bonaventurae.
Venice, Stefano Nicolini da Sabbio, April 1535.
Rare edition of the Stimulus divini amoris, a popular medieval devotional treatise long attributed to St Bonaventure but in fact composed by the thirteenth-century Franciscan Giacomo da Milano.
£550
-
[JESUITS.]
The Travels of several learned Missioners of the Society of Jesus, into divers Parts of the Archipelago, India, China,...
London, for R. Gosling, 1714.
First English translation of twenty-two letters by major French Jesuit missionaries in Asia and the Americas, taken from Charles Le Gobien’s Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (1711–13). The Jesuits largely dominated seventeenth and early eighteenth-century missionary activity in the...
£1250
-
JOHN OF FREIBURG.
Summa confessorum [and] Tractatus de instructione confessorum, in Latin
France, mid-fourteenth century.
From a large and well-decorated manuscript containing the Dominican theologian John of Freiburg’s massive Summa confessorum (written in 1297–8) and his smaller Tractatus de instructione confessorum (also known as the Confessionale and written shortly after the Summa)....
£1500
-
JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianius, and Lucius FLORUS.
[Epitome historiarum:] Justini historici clarissimi in Trogi Pompei historias...
[Venice, Bartolomeo Zani, 3 February 1503].
A thoroughly annotated copy of a greatly influential compendium of Trogus’s monumental forty-four-book Historia of the world from Babylon to the Augustan era.
£3800
-
JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianus; Cornelius NEPOS.
Trogi Pompei externae historiae in compendium ab Justino redactae. Externorum imperatorum...
Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Asulani soceri’, January 1522.
First Aldine edition of Justinus’ abridgement of the lost Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, and of Nepos’ De viris illustribus, with a decorated initial to the opening of the text, likely executed in the early nineteenth century when the work was bound in Rome.
£1850
-
JUVENAL.
The Satires … translated: with explanatory and classical Notes, relating to the Laws and Customs of the Greeks and Romans …
London, for J. Nicholson, Cambridge; and sold by S. Crowder and J. and F. Rivington, 1777.
Third edition of this parallel-text translation edited by Thomas Sheridan, first published 1739. Contemporary annotations (one is dated 1779) provide succinct summaries of the subject of each satire. Satire II for example ‘scourges the Hypocrisy, Effeminacy, & Bestiality of his Countrymen,...
£1250
-
JUVENAL, Decimus Junius, and Aulus Persius FLACCUS.
Satyrae.
London, J. Brindley, 1744.
First Brindley edition, edited by the Irish classical scholar Usher Gahagan (d. 1749). John Brindley began to publish his series of well-printed duodecimo classics in 1744, for which Gahagan edited eleven works before his arrest and conviction for high treason, having become embroiled with a...
£650
-
JUVENAL, Decimus Junius.
Argumenta Satyrarum Iuvenalis per Antonimu [sic] Mancinellum. Cu[m] quattuor co[m]me[n]tariis … Sebastianus...
[(Colophon:) Milan, Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler for Giovanni da Legnano, 17 August 1501.]
Rare edition of Juvenal’s Satires with commentary by the Italian humanists Antonio Mancinelli, Domizio Calderini, Giorgio Merula, and Giorgio Valla, edited by the Greek scholar Sebastianus Ducius, with extensive early annotations and corrections to both the text and commentary.
£5000
-
[KAMES, Henry HOME, Lord].
Grundsaetze der Kritik, aus dem Englischen übersetzt, von Joh. Nikolaus Meinhard.
Vienna, Johann Thomas Edlen von Trattnern, 1785-6.
A Viennese reprint of the first German translation of the Elements of criticism, by Meinhard with the approval of Lessing, first issued in 1763-66, instrumental in the dissemination and reception of Kames’s aesthetic theories in Germany and a seminal publication in the formation of pre-Romantic aesthetics.
£250
-
KARG, Stanislaus, Celso EISENMAN, and Eccard HOCHENBAUM.
Fur theologicè examinatus, & in judicio sacramentali ad restitutionem...
Munich, Johann Lucas Straub, [1712].
Only edition, rare, of this dissertation on the theological and legal aspects of theft and restitution, presented to the distinguished canon lawyer, and author of the monumental Manuale theologico-canonico-legale practicum, Stanislaus Karg.
£275
-
KELLER, Martialis.
Neueröffnete Himmels-Schule, in welcher aus zwölf, als so vielen Theilen vorgesetzten Lehrpunkten verschiedene...
Augsburg, Matthäus Riegers, 1793.
Rare later edition of this educational and devotional work by the Bavarian Benedictine Martialis Keller, containing prayers, exercises, and points of doctrine, and illustrated with attractive engravings, this copy in a contemporary local binding.
£500
-
KERKHERDERE, Jan Gerard.
De situ Paradisi Terrestris ... Praecedit ... conatus novus de Cepha reprehenso ex Galatarum secundo capite.
Leuven, Martin van Overbeke, 1729.
First edition of this work attempting to identify the geographic location of the Garden of Eden, the earthly Paradise, accompanying his conjecture with a map engraved by P.E. Boultats of Antwerp.
£550
-
LACTANTIUS.
Opera.
[Venice,] Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Magnificent incunable edition of the works of Lactantius, a fine product of the first Venetian press, established in 1469 by Johannes de Spira and continued by his brother Vindelinus from 1470 until 1473. This was the fifth impression of the works of Lactantius, the hugely successful North African...
£25000
-
LACTANTIUS, Lucius Caelius Firmianus, et alii.
Opera perquam accurate castigata: Graeco integro adiuncto: quod in aliis...
[(Colophons:) Venice, Giovanni Tacuino da Tridino, 3 January; 9 January 1502.]
A closely read copy of Lactantius’s encyclopaedia of Christian apologetics, defending and explaining the Christian faith.
£2750
-
LALEMANT, [Pierre].
Les saints desirs de la mort, ou recüeil de quelques pensées des peres de l’Eglise, pour montrer comment...
Paris, Josse, 1710.
A very rare later edition, in a contemporary binding of onlaid morocco, of Lalement’s French paraphrases of the Church Fathers’ thoughts on death.
£850
-
LANDSBERG, Johannes Justus.
Iohannis Iusti Lanspergii Bavari Carthusiani omnium epistolarum ac evangeliorum dominicalium totius...
Cologne, Melchior von Neuss, 1548.
Later edition (first 1539) of paraphrases, exegeses, and sermons by the Carthusian ascetic and mystic Johannes Landsberg (c. 1490–1539).
£950