1522 GREGORY RIMINI Sentences MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY Catholic Theology P. - INCUNABLE
Item History & Price
[Early Printing - post-Incunabula - Venice - Giunta Press] [Christianity - Roman Catholic Church - Theology]
[Philosophy - Scholasticism] [Peter Lombard's Sentences - Commentaries]
Printed in Venice for Luca-Antonio Giunta, 10 January 1522. Two volumes in one. Complete. Text in Latin. Both title-pages within fine historiated woodcut borders incorporating portraits of philosophers (including the author himself, as well as Plato, Aristotle, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas,... Albertus Magnus, etc); as well as Giunta's woodcut device, and numerous woodcut diagrams in text.RARE and finely printed post-incunable edition of one of the most important works of medieval scholastic philosophy: the commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences by Gregory of Rimini, also called Gregorius Ariminensis (c. 1300 - 1358), one of the great scholastic philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. Gregory's work had a profound influence in the Late Middle Ages and Reformation.Gregory, whose scholastic nickname was Doctor authenticus, "may have been the last great scholastic theologian of the Middle Ages. He was the first thinker to incorporate substantially the developments of both the post-Ockham tradition at Oxford and the post-Auriol tradition at Paris, and his original synthesis had a long-lasting impact on European thought." (Christopher Schabel, "Gregory of Rimini, " in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Gregory's lectures on Books I and II of Peter Lombard's Sentences are the most important and influential of his writings. No manuscripts of his commentary on Books III and IV of Sentences are extant: they either have been lost, or never completed.This fine edition was produced at the press of Lucantonio Giunta (1457 - 1538), a celebrated Florentine book publisher and printer, and the founding member member of the Giunti dynasty of printers. He was born in the parish of Santa Lucia d'Ognissanti in Florence one of the seven sons of Giunta di Biagio, a weaver. In about 1477 with his brother Bernardo, he left Florence for Venice, where he set up as a stationer, and In 1489 he started publishing books. His publishing business was successful, and among the most important in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Initially, however, Giunta did not have his own printing workshop, and employed independent typographers, but starting about 1500 he started to operate as a printer, too. Giunta issued some 410 titles during his lifetime. Through partnerships, often with members of his family, he expanded the business through much of Europe. The edition is dedicated to cardinal Domenico Grimani (1461 - 1523), an Italian nobleman, humanist and theologian. Grimani exhibited an early predilection for humanist studies, which was encouraged by teachers in his native Venice and then in the Platonic Academy in Florence, where he moved in the circle of Lorenzo de' Medici among scholars like Ficino, Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola. In 1487 Grimani obtained a doctorate in canon law at the University of Padua, and was elected a Senator of Venice. After the election of Pope Julius II Grimani became cardinal priest of San Marco. After a period as apostolic administrator in Nicosia, he was Patriarch of Aquileia (starting from 1498), and In 1508 was named cardinal bishop of Albano, then served as the administrator of the diocese of Urbino (from 1514) and bishop of Ceneda (from 1517). Grimani was an avid collector, owning works by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Memling, Bosch, and others: his collection now forms part of the Museo d'Antichità in the Doge's Palace in Venice. Cardinal Grimani's coat of arms (also bearing his initials 'D G') printed in red are incorporated in the woodcut borders of both title-pages. Interestingly, at the time of the book was printed at Giunta's press, Venice was ruled by the dedicatee's father, Doge Antonio Grimani (1434 -1523), as mentioned in the colophon and in the dedication. Grimani was elected Doge in 1521 at the age of 86, the oldest elected Doge of Venice.
"Gregory of Rimini was an Italian member of the Augustinian Hermits active toward the middle of the fourteenth century. His major work of theology and philosophy, his commentary on the first and second book of Peter Lombard's Sentences, reveals a powerful and organized mind, widely read in the philosophical and theological literature from antiquity to his own time, and unafraid of taking seemingly radical views on pressing issues of the day. He had a large impact on many areas of the Scholastic debate right into the sixteenth century. [...]"Perusal of Gregory's Sentences commentary reveals a thinker who routinely draws razor-sharp distinctions, constructs arguments and analyses of impressive logical rigor, and offers coherent and often startling positions on a great number of issues. [...] Thus, he argued, against most of the Aristotelian tradition, for the possibility of actual infinites [...], and in defending this view and the consequences of it for the continuum, Gregory develops an analysis of the infinite that 'represents a huge advance on that of his predecessors and contemporaries' (Cross). In philosophical theology, Gregory argues for a fully deductive science of theology, he stresses God's absolute simplicity to such a degree that he denies any distinction whatsoever between the divine attributes and the divine essence, and he develops a Trinitarian theology of radical minimalism on which person, personal property, and essence are all strictly identical, while nevertheless the one God is three really distinct persons."Gregory of Rimini developed a detailed theory of cognition that would be the subject of critical discussion into the sixteenth century. The foundation of his view is that cognition comes in two varieties: intuitive cognition involves no representational intermediaries, whereas abstractive cognition does involve representational intermediaries. The intermediaries at issue here were called "species." Species were taken to be representational entities that came in several kinds. 'Species in the medium' were held to convey information about some extramental thing from the thing itself to a cognizer's external senses; "sensory species" were posited to convey that information further through a series of internal senses in the brain (e.g., common sense, imagination); and finally, as what was called an 'intelligible species, ' the relevant information was conveyed in immaterial form further still to the immaterial intellect. In addition to their role in conveying information, species were appealed to as the means by which we could recall information that we had earlier obtained; thus, the species of, say, gold found in the imagination could be recalled even when not in the presence of gold, and upon recollection it could be used, for example, in creating an image of a golden mountain. Gregory's theory of cognition is predicated upon the adoption of the theory of species. This was not an entirely obvious move: many Scholastics in the 13th and 14th centuries had rejected species outright, perhaps most famously William of Ockham. Gregory takes Ockham to task on several grounds. First, he claims that Ockham contradicted explicit and implicit testimony of the saints, and particularly St. Augustine. Second, he argues that certain cognitive functions that we know we have, like memory, are impossible to explain without the preservation of some representational entity; the representational entity in question is a species. [...]"Gregory's doctrine and impact on the interrelated problems of divine foreknowledge and predestination have been well documented, and in addition, his view on God's power to change the past has received some attention. Gregory's treatment of foreknowledge is primarily in reaction to [the French Franciscan] Peter Auriol's radical position from the 1310s. [...] Gregory agreed with Auriol on some of [his] points: that how God knows the future is incomprehensible; that, contrary to the view of some prominent theologians, Aristotle had indeed denied that propositions about the contingent future are true or false; and even that true (and false) propositions about the future would always and immutably be true (or false) up until the time to which the propositions refer. But Gregory's conclusion is the opposite of Auriol's, for Aristotle and Auriol are mistaken: all propositions about the future are either true or false, since de facto either the Antichrist will exist or will not exist at time x, and therefore either 'the Antichrist will exist at time x' is determinately true and 'the Antichrist will not exist at time x' is determinately false, or vice versa." (Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500, p.439-442)In his commentary on Book II of Lombard's Sentences, Gregory includes an interesting discussion on angels, which he often uses to talk about motion of bodies and other physical questions. "Gregory of Rimini posed a number of questions about angels, including questions about the motion of angels from place to place. [...] Thus, in distinction six of his second book, Gregory poses three questions: 'Whether an angel could be moved locally by itself.'
'Whether an angel could be moved from place to place successively in some time.'
'Whether an angel could be moved from place to place in an instant?'"Gregory divides the first of these questions into four articles, of which the third is [...] not concerned with angels, but with bodies. It asks whether simple bodies are moved locally by themselves. [...] In the third article, Gregory specifies that he is concerned only with the natural motion of simple - that is, elemental - bodies. There is no mention of angels. In this article, Gregory presents six conclusions, by means of which he discusses many common problems of motion drawn from Aristotle and Averroës. He shows that simple bodies are not moved directly by the heavens (first conclusion); that they are not moved actively by the places toward which they tend (second conclusion); that they are not moved by the media in which they happen to be (third conclusion); that they are not moved by the things that generated them (fourth conclusion); but that they are moved by some mover that lies within themselves, and not by something external (fifth conclusion); and, finally (sixth conclusion), that these simple bodies move themselves per se and not accidentally. In this lengthy article, Gregory includes many basic problems of natural motion that were normally considered in treatises on natural philosophy." (Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle Ages, p.263)"Gregory's thought had a tremendous impact in the century after his activity. Thus, he exerted a pervasive influence on several leading Parisian theologians of the late fourteenth century, for example, the Cistercians Pierre Ceffons and James of Eltville and the secular Peter of Ailly. When Ailly's colleagues, Henry of Langenstein and Henry Totting of Oyta migrated to Vienna to establish the new university's theology faculty, they brought Gregory of Rimini with them, notably in their positions on divine foreknowledge. For the next half century, if not longer, Gregory, via Langenstein and Oyta, was the explicit basis for the Viennese doctrine. [...] His commentaries on the first two books of the Sentences provided a forum for discussion on a broad range of topics. There can be no doubt that Gregory's clear stance on the issues of divine foreknowledge, grace, and above all predestination remained current throughout the later Middle Ages. Gregory's position was more extremely predestinarian than that of any other major Scholastic, and the importance of his view at Vienna - arguably the leading university in Germanic lands - and beyond suggests that Martin Luther had to have known early on about the main later medieval advocate of the doctrine that he himself would famously defend. Indeed, Luther singles out Gregory as the one scholastic who upholds the true Augustinian doctrine of predestination." (Enc. of Medieval Philosophy, p.443)Gregory was born ca. 1300 in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast of Italy. "After completing his studies, he became professor and subsequently rector of the Augustinian seminary in his native city. But it was not long before he was called to Paris to take a professorship at the Sorbonne, where he achieved great distinction as a teacher. He was one of the chief leaders of the Nominalists in the controversy over the nature of "universals.", and his disciples conferred most respectful titles on him, such as Doctor acutus, Lucerna splendens, and especially Doctor authenticus. Many people even called him "beatus" not only out of esteem for his remarkable erudition, but for his heroic and virtuous qualities. As a theologian he belonged naturally to the older Augustinian school founded by the Augustinian Aegidius of Colonna [...]. In some respects, however, his views diverged from those of the founder of the school. [...] In 1357 he succeeded the equally famous Thomas of Strasburg as General of the Augustinian Hermits, but died the next year at Vienna." (Catholic Encyclopedia)Bibliographic references:Essling, Vol. II, Part 2, p.452; Camerini, Annali dei Giunti, I, 267.Physical description:Folio, textblock measures 304 mm x 207 mm. Bound in contemporary (early 16th-century) South-German full pigskin over wooden boards; both boards paneled in blind, with central panel with profile portrait of Jesus, within a rolled border with portraits of the Evangelists and further surrounded by concentric rolled borders of various floral motifs. Spine with four bands raised over binding cords; with early manuscript title in ink in top compartment. All edges rouged. Remnants of two brass clasps (no longer functional). Text printed in double column, in Gothic type. With printed marginalia and some printed maniculae ("pointing hands").Two volumes in one volume, with separate foliation and titles.Foliation: [10], 181, [1 blank]; [6], 129, [1 blank] leaves (forming a total of Signatures: ✠10 a-y8 z6 ✠✠6 aa-pp8 qq10. Collated and COMPLETE, with both blanks z6 and qq10 present.Separate title page for 2nd volume. Both title-pages printed in red and black, within a fine woodcut historiated border with a small portrait of Plato flanked bu two angels on top, and ten further portraits of philosophers (fine on each side) forming the side-panels, including Gregory of Rimini himself, Aristotle, Averroes, Themistius, Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, et al.; and with the bottom compartment comprising two allegories of sciences (philosophy and astronomy), with the arms of the dedicatee, cardinal Domenico Grimani (printed in red) between them.Numerous woodcut geometrical and logical diagrams in text.Numerous woodcut initials, including beautiful large (14-line tall) historiated initials 'C' and 'Q' at opening of Vols. I and II, respectively. Woodcut device of Luca-Antonio Giunta (Florentine lily flanked by initials "L" and "A") on the colophon page.Preliminaries to Vol.I include a dedication to cardinal Domenico Grimani by the editor, Agostino de Montefalco, on verso of the 1st title; this is followed by an extensive index (Tabula) to Vol.I (leaves ✠2r-10v) and prefatory verses (✠10v).Vol.II is preceded with its own index (leaves ✠✠2r-6v)Colophon and registrum with a woodcut printer's device at the end (leaf qq9v).Condition:Very Good antiquarian condition. Complete. Binding rubbed, with some soiling and wear to corners; small chip to top spine compartment (with minor loss of leather). Lower clasp and upper catch plate perished. First title-page with a small hole affecting a couple of letters (no loss of legibility) and a faded contemporary ownership inscription. Light to moderate water-staining to most of the leaves, a bit more noticeable in the beginning and the end of the book, but all quite harmless. Front hinge slightly shaken, but quite solid, binding tight. In all, a clean and solid, well-margined example of this rare, elegantly printed post-incunable edition of an important work of medieval scholastic philosophy from the renowned Giunta press, preserved in a pleasing Renaissance binding.
Please right-click on thumbnails below and choose "open image in a new window" option to see larger images.
[Philosophy - Scholasticism] [Peter Lombard's Sentences - Commentaries]
Printed in Venice for Luca-Antonio Giunta, 10 January 1522. Two volumes in one. Complete. Text in Latin. Both title-pages within fine historiated woodcut borders incorporating portraits of philosophers (including the author himself, as well as Plato, Aristotle, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas,... Albertus Magnus, etc); as well as Giunta's woodcut device, and numerous woodcut diagrams in text.RARE and finely printed post-incunable edition of one of the most important works of medieval scholastic philosophy: the commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences by Gregory of Rimini, also called Gregorius Ariminensis (c. 1300 - 1358), one of the great scholastic philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. Gregory's work had a profound influence in the Late Middle Ages and Reformation.Gregory, whose scholastic nickname was Doctor authenticus, "may have been the last great scholastic theologian of the Middle Ages. He was the first thinker to incorporate substantially the developments of both the post-Ockham tradition at Oxford and the post-Auriol tradition at Paris, and his original synthesis had a long-lasting impact on European thought." (Christopher Schabel, "Gregory of Rimini, " in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Gregory's lectures on Books I and II of Peter Lombard's Sentences are the most important and influential of his writings. No manuscripts of his commentary on Books III and IV of Sentences are extant: they either have been lost, or never completed.This fine edition was produced at the press of Lucantonio Giunta (1457 - 1538), a celebrated Florentine book publisher and printer, and the founding member member of the Giunti dynasty of printers. He was born in the parish of Santa Lucia d'Ognissanti in Florence one of the seven sons of Giunta di Biagio, a weaver. In about 1477 with his brother Bernardo, he left Florence for Venice, where he set up as a stationer, and In 1489 he started publishing books. His publishing business was successful, and among the most important in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Initially, however, Giunta did not have his own printing workshop, and employed independent typographers, but starting about 1500 he started to operate as a printer, too. Giunta issued some 410 titles during his lifetime. Through partnerships, often with members of his family, he expanded the business through much of Europe. The edition is dedicated to cardinal Domenico Grimani (1461 - 1523), an Italian nobleman, humanist and theologian. Grimani exhibited an early predilection for humanist studies, which was encouraged by teachers in his native Venice and then in the Platonic Academy in Florence, where he moved in the circle of Lorenzo de' Medici among scholars like Ficino, Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola. In 1487 Grimani obtained a doctorate in canon law at the University of Padua, and was elected a Senator of Venice. After the election of Pope Julius II Grimani became cardinal priest of San Marco. After a period as apostolic administrator in Nicosia, he was Patriarch of Aquileia (starting from 1498), and In 1508 was named cardinal bishop of Albano, then served as the administrator of the diocese of Urbino (from 1514) and bishop of Ceneda (from 1517). Grimani was an avid collector, owning works by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Memling, Bosch, and others: his collection now forms part of the Museo d'Antichità in the Doge's Palace in Venice. Cardinal Grimani's coat of arms (also bearing his initials 'D G') printed in red are incorporated in the woodcut borders of both title-pages. Interestingly, at the time of the book was printed at Giunta's press, Venice was ruled by the dedicatee's father, Doge Antonio Grimani (1434 -1523), as mentioned in the colophon and in the dedication. Grimani was elected Doge in 1521 at the age of 86, the oldest elected Doge of Venice.
"Gregory of Rimini was an Italian member of the Augustinian Hermits active toward the middle of the fourteenth century. His major work of theology and philosophy, his commentary on the first and second book of Peter Lombard's Sentences, reveals a powerful and organized mind, widely read in the philosophical and theological literature from antiquity to his own time, and unafraid of taking seemingly radical views on pressing issues of the day. He had a large impact on many areas of the Scholastic debate right into the sixteenth century. [...]"Perusal of Gregory's Sentences commentary reveals a thinker who routinely draws razor-sharp distinctions, constructs arguments and analyses of impressive logical rigor, and offers coherent and often startling positions on a great number of issues. [...] Thus, he argued, against most of the Aristotelian tradition, for the possibility of actual infinites [...], and in defending this view and the consequences of it for the continuum, Gregory develops an analysis of the infinite that 'represents a huge advance on that of his predecessors and contemporaries' (Cross). In philosophical theology, Gregory argues for a fully deductive science of theology, he stresses God's absolute simplicity to such a degree that he denies any distinction whatsoever between the divine attributes and the divine essence, and he develops a Trinitarian theology of radical minimalism on which person, personal property, and essence are all strictly identical, while nevertheless the one God is three really distinct persons."Gregory of Rimini developed a detailed theory of cognition that would be the subject of critical discussion into the sixteenth century. The foundation of his view is that cognition comes in two varieties: intuitive cognition involves no representational intermediaries, whereas abstractive cognition does involve representational intermediaries. The intermediaries at issue here were called "species." Species were taken to be representational entities that came in several kinds. 'Species in the medium' were held to convey information about some extramental thing from the thing itself to a cognizer's external senses; "sensory species" were posited to convey that information further through a series of internal senses in the brain (e.g., common sense, imagination); and finally, as what was called an 'intelligible species, ' the relevant information was conveyed in immaterial form further still to the immaterial intellect. In addition to their role in conveying information, species were appealed to as the means by which we could recall information that we had earlier obtained; thus, the species of, say, gold found in the imagination could be recalled even when not in the presence of gold, and upon recollection it could be used, for example, in creating an image of a golden mountain. Gregory's theory of cognition is predicated upon the adoption of the theory of species. This was not an entirely obvious move: many Scholastics in the 13th and 14th centuries had rejected species outright, perhaps most famously William of Ockham. Gregory takes Ockham to task on several grounds. First, he claims that Ockham contradicted explicit and implicit testimony of the saints, and particularly St. Augustine. Second, he argues that certain cognitive functions that we know we have, like memory, are impossible to explain without the preservation of some representational entity; the representational entity in question is a species. [...]"Gregory's doctrine and impact on the interrelated problems of divine foreknowledge and predestination have been well documented, and in addition, his view on God's power to change the past has received some attention. Gregory's treatment of foreknowledge is primarily in reaction to [the French Franciscan] Peter Auriol's radical position from the 1310s. [...] Gregory agreed with Auriol on some of [his] points: that how God knows the future is incomprehensible; that, contrary to the view of some prominent theologians, Aristotle had indeed denied that propositions about the contingent future are true or false; and even that true (and false) propositions about the future would always and immutably be true (or false) up until the time to which the propositions refer. But Gregory's conclusion is the opposite of Auriol's, for Aristotle and Auriol are mistaken: all propositions about the future are either true or false, since de facto either the Antichrist will exist or will not exist at time x, and therefore either 'the Antichrist will exist at time x' is determinately true and 'the Antichrist will not exist at time x' is determinately false, or vice versa." (Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500, p.439-442)In his commentary on Book II of Lombard's Sentences, Gregory includes an interesting discussion on angels, which he often uses to talk about motion of bodies and other physical questions. "Gregory of Rimini posed a number of questions about angels, including questions about the motion of angels from place to place. [...] Thus, in distinction six of his second book, Gregory poses three questions: 'Whether an angel could be moved locally by itself.'
'Whether an angel could be moved from place to place successively in some time.'
'Whether an angel could be moved from place to place in an instant?'"Gregory divides the first of these questions into four articles, of which the third is [...] not concerned with angels, but with bodies. It asks whether simple bodies are moved locally by themselves. [...] In the third article, Gregory specifies that he is concerned only with the natural motion of simple - that is, elemental - bodies. There is no mention of angels. In this article, Gregory presents six conclusions, by means of which he discusses many common problems of motion drawn from Aristotle and Averroës. He shows that simple bodies are not moved directly by the heavens (first conclusion); that they are not moved actively by the places toward which they tend (second conclusion); that they are not moved by the media in which they happen to be (third conclusion); that they are not moved by the things that generated them (fourth conclusion); but that they are moved by some mover that lies within themselves, and not by something external (fifth conclusion); and, finally (sixth conclusion), that these simple bodies move themselves per se and not accidentally. In this lengthy article, Gregory includes many basic problems of natural motion that were normally considered in treatises on natural philosophy." (Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle Ages, p.263)"Gregory's thought had a tremendous impact in the century after his activity. Thus, he exerted a pervasive influence on several leading Parisian theologians of the late fourteenth century, for example, the Cistercians Pierre Ceffons and James of Eltville and the secular Peter of Ailly. When Ailly's colleagues, Henry of Langenstein and Henry Totting of Oyta migrated to Vienna to establish the new university's theology faculty, they brought Gregory of Rimini with them, notably in their positions on divine foreknowledge. For the next half century, if not longer, Gregory, via Langenstein and Oyta, was the explicit basis for the Viennese doctrine. [...] His commentaries on the first two books of the Sentences provided a forum for discussion on a broad range of topics. There can be no doubt that Gregory's clear stance on the issues of divine foreknowledge, grace, and above all predestination remained current throughout the later Middle Ages. Gregory's position was more extremely predestinarian than that of any other major Scholastic, and the importance of his view at Vienna - arguably the leading university in Germanic lands - and beyond suggests that Martin Luther had to have known early on about the main later medieval advocate of the doctrine that he himself would famously defend. Indeed, Luther singles out Gregory as the one scholastic who upholds the true Augustinian doctrine of predestination." (Enc. of Medieval Philosophy, p.443)Gregory was born ca. 1300 in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast of Italy. "After completing his studies, he became professor and subsequently rector of the Augustinian seminary in his native city. But it was not long before he was called to Paris to take a professorship at the Sorbonne, where he achieved great distinction as a teacher. He was one of the chief leaders of the Nominalists in the controversy over the nature of "universals.", and his disciples conferred most respectful titles on him, such as Doctor acutus, Lucerna splendens, and especially Doctor authenticus. Many people even called him "beatus" not only out of esteem for his remarkable erudition, but for his heroic and virtuous qualities. As a theologian he belonged naturally to the older Augustinian school founded by the Augustinian Aegidius of Colonna [...]. In some respects, however, his views diverged from those of the founder of the school. [...] In 1357 he succeeded the equally famous Thomas of Strasburg as General of the Augustinian Hermits, but died the next year at Vienna." (Catholic Encyclopedia)Bibliographic references:Essling, Vol. II, Part 2, p.452; Camerini, Annali dei Giunti, I, 267.Physical description:Folio, textblock measures 304 mm x 207 mm. Bound in contemporary (early 16th-century) South-German full pigskin over wooden boards; both boards paneled in blind, with central panel with profile portrait of Jesus, within a rolled border with portraits of the Evangelists and further surrounded by concentric rolled borders of various floral motifs. Spine with four bands raised over binding cords; with early manuscript title in ink in top compartment. All edges rouged. Remnants of two brass clasps (no longer functional). Text printed in double column, in Gothic type. With printed marginalia and some printed maniculae ("pointing hands").Two volumes in one volume, with separate foliation and titles.Foliation: [10], 181, [1 blank]; [6], 129, [1 blank] leaves (forming a total of Signatures: ✠10 a-y8 z6 ✠✠6 aa-pp8 qq10. Collated and COMPLETE, with both blanks z6 and qq10 present.Separate title page for 2nd volume. Both title-pages printed in red and black, within a fine woodcut historiated border with a small portrait of Plato flanked bu two angels on top, and ten further portraits of philosophers (fine on each side) forming the side-panels, including Gregory of Rimini himself, Aristotle, Averroes, Themistius, Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, et al.; and with the bottom compartment comprising two allegories of sciences (philosophy and astronomy), with the arms of the dedicatee, cardinal Domenico Grimani (printed in red) between them.Numerous woodcut geometrical and logical diagrams in text.Numerous woodcut initials, including beautiful large (14-line tall) historiated initials 'C' and 'Q' at opening of Vols. I and II, respectively. Woodcut device of Luca-Antonio Giunta (Florentine lily flanked by initials "L" and "A") on the colophon page.Preliminaries to Vol.I include a dedication to cardinal Domenico Grimani by the editor, Agostino de Montefalco, on verso of the 1st title; this is followed by an extensive index (Tabula) to Vol.I (leaves ✠2r-10v) and prefatory verses (✠10v).Vol.II is preceded with its own index (leaves ✠✠2r-6v)Colophon and registrum with a woodcut printer's device at the end (leaf qq9v).Condition:Very Good antiquarian condition. Complete. Binding rubbed, with some soiling and wear to corners; small chip to top spine compartment (with minor loss of leather). Lower clasp and upper catch plate perished. First title-page with a small hole affecting a couple of letters (no loss of legibility) and a faded contemporary ownership inscription. Light to moderate water-staining to most of the leaves, a bit more noticeable in the beginning and the end of the book, but all quite harmless. Front hinge slightly shaken, but quite solid, binding tight. In all, a clean and solid, well-margined example of this rare, elegantly printed post-incunable edition of an important work of medieval scholastic philosophy from the renowned Giunta press, preserved in a pleasing Renaissance binding.
Please right-click on thumbnails below and choose "open image in a new window" option to see larger images.
