[Western Monasticism - Carthusians]
[Early Book Illustration]
Guigues du Chastel (compiler); Gregor Reisch (editor); Urs Graf (illustrator)
Statuta [et privilegia] ordinis Cartusiensis [The Carthusian Rule]
Basel: printed by Johann Amerbach [in collaboration with Johann Petri and Johann Frohen], 18 February 1510. FIRST EDITION.
$7,600
Six parts in one volume. Edited by Gregor Reisch.
Illustrated with 5 large and 33 smaller woodcuts.
Offered here is a COMPLETE and attractively rubricated example of the RARE FIRST EDITION OF THE COLLECTED STATUTES OF THE CATHUSIAN MONASIC ORDER, including the particularly rare fifth and sixth parts, containing an alphabetical index of the statutes of the order and the Order's Privileges.
The manuscript for this edition was sent to the printers by Gregorius Reisch (ca. 1467 - 1525), a German Carthusian monk and humanist writer, the author of the famous Margarita Philosophica. From 1503 to shortly before his death Reisch was prior at Freiburg Charterhouse.
Clarke in his Bibliographical Dictionary writes about this book: "This work is very scarce, the Carthusians themselves having completely suppressed it. In the few; copies which are to be met with, the Privilegia, which is essential to the work, is sometimes wanting."
"First Edition of this interesting collection of rules and privileges of the Carthusian order, printed at the expense of the editor, Gregor Reisch, the famous author of the Margarita philosophica, and intended only for the order."(H.P. Kraus, Catalogue XXI: Fifty rare and important books, p.18)
The rarity of the work is due partly to the fact that it was meant to be owned only by members of the Order, and the edition didn't enter the book trade until much later; in fact, free circulation of the copies of this edition was actively discouraged, and even "suppressed" by the Carthusians:
"Livre extremement rare, et que les Chartreux suppriment autant qu'il peuvent." (Du Fresnoy).
The volume begins with the original Carthusian code and customs (known as "Consuetudines") compiled by Guigo de Castro (Guigues du Chastel, 1083 - 1137), the Fifth prior of the Grande Chartreuse and the legislator of the Carthusian Order, and includes also the Statuta Nova and Tertia Compilatio put forward by the Prior of the Grande Chartreuse François Dupuy in 1509. Guigo's compilation is still the basis of the modern statutes and has always remained the basis of all Carthusian legislation.
This splendidly produced post-incunabulum is embellished with fine woodcut illustrations, some partially colored (rather tastefully) in a contemporary hand. The full-page woodcut illustration in Part 1 is composed of nine scenes illustrating the foundation of the Carthusian Order ("Origo Ordinis Oartusiensis"). The large woodcut in Part 2 represents the 'Tree of Succession' of the Order's leadership (Priors General) beginning with St Bruno of Cologne (c. 1030 – 1101), the founder of the Carthusian Order. The large woodcut in Part 3 shows Prior General Guillaume Raynaud, with a book surrounded by several Carthusians, apparently in the act of teaching; a full-page woodcut in Part 4 portrays the Prior of the Grande Chartreuse François Dupuy in a similar context (holding a book and addressing other Carthusians). A full-page woodcut in Part 6 is composed of the 'Tree of Succession' block (repeated) surrounded with 17 smaller woodcut portraits of various Popes. These blocks of papal portraits are then used again (with some repetitions) for 33 woodcuts in text of Part 6.
All but one of the woodcut illustrations in this book are by Urs Graf (ca. 1485 - 1528), a notable Swiss Renaissance painter, printmaker and goldsmith (see R. Muther, Die Deutsche Bücherillustration, vol. 1, p. 195-196). The woodcut on q1v of Part 3 portraying Guillaume Raynaud addressing the monks is attributed by Kogler to the Master "DS."
Guigo de Castro, the fifth prior of the Carthusians, was the first to set out the customs and code of the Order (as introduced by St Bruno) in his Consuetudines. These were first approved by Innocent II in 1133 and are still the basis of the Order's modern statutes. In 1258 the general, Dom Riffier, issued a new edition, adding various ordinances passed by the general chapters since 1127: these are known as the Statuta Antiqua. The Statuta Nova with similar additions appeared in 1368. In 1509 the general chapter approved the Tertia Compilatio, consisting of a collection of the ordinances of the chapters and a synopsis of the statutes. The Carthusian Rule was printed for the first time by Johann Amerbach at Basel in 1510 in the fine illustrated folio edition offered here.
The Carthusian Order, also called the Order of Saint Bruno, is a Roman Catholic monastic religious order. The order was founded by Saint Bruno of Cologne in 1084 and includes both monks and nuns. The order has its own Rule, called the Statutes, rather than the Rule of Saint Benedict, and combines eremitical and cenobitic life. The name Carthusian is derived from the Chartreuse Mountains; Saint Bruno built his first hermitage in the valley of these mountains in the French Alps. The word charterhouse, which is the English name for a Carthusian monastery, is derived from the same source. The same mountain range lends its name to the alcoholic cordial Chartreuse produced by the monks since 1737.
The motto of the Carthusians is Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, Latin for "The Cross is steady while the world is turning."
Six parts in one volume. Folio; textblock measures 322 mm x 215 mm; wide margins, probably untrimmed (many deckle edges). Contemporary blind-paneled brown calf over wooden boards, spine with four prominent double-bands (neatly rebacked in 19th century retaining early endpapers.
[262], 50 ff (total of 312 leaves = 624 pages).
Signatures:
A8 B-D6 (Consuetudines); a-d8.6 e-g8 h-m6 n-p8 (Statuta antiqua); q-s6 t8 (Statuta nova); v8 x-y6 z8 (Tertia compilatio);
a8 b-h6 i-k8 (Repertorium); A10 b-h6 i8 (Privilegia Ordinis).
COLLATED AND COMPLETE (including internal blank D6).
Richly illustrated with fine woodcuts including full-page woodcut on A2r of Part 1 comprising nine scenes illustrating the founding of the Order, large woodcut (approx. 17 x 11 cm) on a1v of Part 2 showing the 'Tree of Succession' of the Order's leadership; large woodcut (approx. 15 x 11 cm) on q1v of Part 3 showing Prior General Guillaume Raynaud, with a book, surrounded by Carthusians; full-page woodcut on v1v of Part 4 showing the Prior of the Grande Chartreuse François Dupuy with a book addressing other Carthusians; full-page woodcut on A1v of Part 6 formed by the 'Tree of Succession' block (repeated) surrounded with 17 smaller woodcut portraits of various popes. 33 small woodcut portraits of Popes (with some repetitions) in text of Part 6.
All woodcuts are by Urs Graf, except the Raynaud cut attributed to the Master "DS."
Three of the larger woodcuts partially colored by a contemporary hand.
Printed in gothic types (colophon in Roman type), printed marginal notes, printed paragraph marks. Initial spaces with guide letters; rubricated throughout in strictly contemporary hand: fine blue and red Lombard initials (larger opening initials are divided in blue-and-red), capital strokes and paragraph marks in red.
Individual parts have their own divisional title-pages. Colophon on i6v (Part 6).
Gregor Reisch's dedicatory epistle to François Dupuy on leaf A2r,v (Part 6).
The final two leaves contain an address to the reader by François Dupuy (i7r), and the list of the Carthusian Provinces and Houses (i7r-i8r).
Formerly in the celebrated Bibliotheca Sussexiana, the magnificent private library of Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773 - 1843), with his large armorial bookplate on front pastedown.
Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, was the sixth son of George III and Queen Charlotte. The Duke of Sussex was elected president of the Society of Arts in 1816 and held that post for the rest of his life. He was president of the Royal Society between 1830 and 1838, and had a keen interest in biblical studies and Hebrew. The Duke of Sussex was the favorite uncle of Queen Victoria. He gave her away at her wedding to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Accounts of the Duke's formidable library emphasize that it was built-up volume-by-volume rather than by en bloc purchases of entire libraries. This process was largely undertaken from 1819 to 1830 by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, who was both the Duke's Surgeon and his Librarian. In the preface to the catalogue, he states that "The Library already consists of upward of fifty thousand volumes of MSs and printed books. Twelve thousand of these are Theological."
With signature of W[illiam] Maskell on the margin of the Duke of Sussex' bookplate. William Maskell (1814 - 1890), a notable liturgical scholar and medievalist, the author of The ancient liturgy of the Church of England," among other notable works on the subject, and a prominent collector of early service books (primarily English). Muskell "was instituted in 1847 to the vicarage of St. Mary Church, near Torquay, and appointed domestic chaplain to the Bishop of Exeter, Henry Phillpotts. [...] Maskell was a man of considerable literary and conversational powers, had a large and well-assorted library of patristic literature, and was an enthusiastic collector of medieval service books, enamels and carvings in ivory, which from time to time he disposed of to the British and South Kensington Museums." (DNB).
The label at foot of front pastedown ("E[x] Libris Collegii Sancti Spiritus / in Insula Cumbrensi") of the Cathedral of The Isles and Collegiate Church of the Holy Spirit on the Isle of Cumbrae, North Ayrshire, Scotland.
Ca. 1850 British bookseller's ticket of "J[ohn] Leslie, 58 Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London" to top outer corner of front pastedown.
Very Good antiquarian condition. COMPLETE. Binding rubbed with several small wormholes, some scuffing and some edge-wear; old sympathetic reback and old repairs where clasps were removed. Interior with a number of small wormholes, mostly rather tiny and with their number diminishing towards the end of the volume (due to diminutive size of the holes compared to rather large type, legibility is unaffected). Occasional light soiling, mostly marginal. First part with light and unobtrusive waterstaining to bottom margin (text not affected). In all a pleasing, complete, wide-margined (probably untrimmed) and internally unrestored example of this beautiful post-incunabulum, with an attractive contemporary rubrication and with tasteful partial coloring to some of its fine woodcuts.
Adams G-1559; Muther 1285; Panzer, vol. VI, p. 186: 84; Heckethorn: Printers of Basle, p.45; Hieronymus: Petri, No. 16; Hollstein XI, 99-105 no. 160-180; VD16 G-4071; Bibliotheca Sussexiana 5066 (this copy?).
The Sibyls were female oracles in ancient Greece believed to possess prophetic powers. The earliest Sibyls (who admittedly are known only through legend) prophesied at certain holy sites (such as Delphi and Pessinos), under the divine influence of a deity, originally one of the chthonic deities. A number of sibyls of later antiquity are attested by various writers, in Greece and Italy, but also in the Levant and Asia Minor. From the high Middle Ages on, theologians interpreted the prophecies of some of the sibyls as announcements of Christ's birth, death, and resurrection.
In the first treatise of this compilation Barbieri appeals to the authority of the pagan sibyls to resolve doctrinal differences between Jerome and Augustine on the validity of prophecy coming coming from outside Christian tradition. The author appears to be an adherent (or at least a sympathizer) of the fashionable humanist idea of the Prisca Theologia (the ancient, or primordial theology) propounded by the great Italian Renaissance neo-platonists such as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, who allowed that Christianity was merely the latest and best form of divine revelation to the human race. They argued that pagan religious traditions had also been based on revelations to great religious thinkers such as Plato and Hermes Trismegistus, and that high paganism conveyed divine truths essentially identical to those of Christianity, though more obscurely. Drawing parallels between the female prophets of the pagans - the sibyls - and the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament, like Barbieri does in this book, fit well within this tradition.
Barbieri's admiration of Plato is obvious as he is the only philosopher whose woodcut portrait is included in the book, alongside Christ, St John, Hebrew prophets, and the sibyls: "Plato philosophies" is depicted on verso of f.[24] (recto being occupied with a woodcut of the Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child), with a truly perplexing caption: "Plato dicit: In principio erat verbum & verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat verbum, etc. [...]", i.e. attributing to Plato (?!) the famous opening of John 1:1.
Barbieri also speaks rather favorably of astrology, saying in effect that the astrological "science of the stars" is rooted in divine revelation.
Before Barbieri's work appeared, the main source of information on the Sibyls had been Lactantius' Divine institutes, who (quoting from a lost work of Varro) describes ten sibyls: Persian, Libyan, Delphic, Cimmerian, Erythraean, Samian, Cumaean, Hellespontine, Phrygian and Tiburtine. However, Barbieri's treatise, which systematically describes the twelve [sibyls], noting their place of origins and providing for each of them an attribute, a fragment of their oracular prophecy, and a corresponding prophet, "in Italy, at any rate, quite superseded Lactantius and ... had an extraordinary influence on the art of all Europe. In this treatise, which is entitled Duodecim Sibyllarum Vaticinia, Barbieri adds two new Sibyls, Agrippa, and Europa, and gives the age, appearance, costume, and attributes of nearly every Sibyl. Moreover, the prophecies which he assigns to them differ completely from those of Lactantius. AS THE RESULT OF THIS TREATISE THE SIBYLS HAD A VERY GREAT VOGUE IN ITALIAN ART, CULMINATING WITH THE STUPENDOUS FIGURES OF MICHELANGELO IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL." (Arthur A. Tilley, The Dawn Of The French Renaissance, p.547)
A remarkable typographical error that occurred in this edition is believed to have been responsible for the presence of Jonah among the seven prophets depicted by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. A. H. Mayor remarks that Barbieri "was probably in Sicily when a relative [Lignamine] in Rome published his manuscript, [...] [as] Gideon's request to God in Iudici (Judges) was printed as from "Ione” - for which the illustrator [...] copied the whale spewing up Jonah from a northern block-book Bible of the Poor [Biblia Pauperum]. [...] 27 years later, when Michelangelo started to fresco the Sistine Chapel with five of the sibyls and seven of the prophets illustrated in Barberiis' book, he put Jonah thrown up out of the whale's jaws (instead of Gideon and the fleece) centrally over the altar." (Alpheus Hyatt Mayor, Prints & People: A Social History of Printed Pictures, p. 67-8).
This observation has apparently been first made in early 20th century by the French art historian Émile Male (1862 - 1954), director of the Académie de France à Rome: "That the splendid figure of Jonah in the painting by Michaelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel of the Vatican, is due to a typographical error seems to be clearly demonstrated by Émile Male, a French savant. Up to now the art critics have been wondering how the 'minor prophet' Jonah came to be placed among the company of more illustrious prophets and sibyls in this composition of Michaelangelo's. M. Male gives this explanation: A Dominican, Philippo Barbieri, in 1481, wrote a treatise on the sibyls and prophets, whose presentation coincides in a remarkable manner with that of Michaelangelo in his picture. In this work Barbieri puts words into Jonah's mouth which were borrowed from the sixth chapter of Judges (verses 37-39), and which refer to the fleece of wool of Gideon. This quotation was supposed, in the Middle Ages, to prophesy the coming of the Messiah and was always placed among the predictions of the prophets and sibyls. The explanation of this mistake in Barbieri's treatise is to be found in a gross compositor's error, as it is not to be supposed, since Barbieri was a learned theologian, that he would be guilty of the misprint. Very likely, in his Latin manuscript he had written 'Judic. VI,' of which the compositor made 'Jona VI.' (The Book of Jonah has but four chapters.) The illustrator of the treatise, who, it seems, did not inquire into the correctness of the text, added a woodcut representing Jonah and the whale. [...] And Michaelangelo, being perhaps a better painter than Bible student, queried nothing and took Barbieri's prophets as he found them and incorporated Jonah with the rest in his immortal work in the Sistine chapel, thereby confounding the art critics." ('Incidents in Foreign Graphic Circes', in Inland Printer, Vol. LXV (1910), pp. 877-8)
Regarding the bibliography of this edition and the relation between its two issues Alfred W. Pollard writes: "The bibliographical puzzle which this book presents has recently been cleared up by the discovery that there are two issues identical as regards 52 of their leaves including that which gives the register and colophon. The earlier issue consisted of only 70 leaves, of which the first two were added after the book was printed while the other nine quires agree with the register... Either to meet the competition of Riessinger's edition or because his fellow countryman and kinsman the author supplied him with additional copy, Lignamine must have determined to enlarge the book almost as soon as it was issued. The 12 woodcuts of the Sibyls were replaced by new ones, and each is now followed by a cut of a prophet, and the double series of 24 woodcuts by pictures of Christ, John Baptist, the Virgin adoring the Holy Child, and Plato, the designs, which must themselves have been rather fantastic [and] often full of life, being sadly spoilt by bad cutting. The prefatory letter to the Pope takes note of these additions." (Alfred W. Pollard, Italian book-illustrations and early printing [...] in the library of C. W. Dyson Perrins, no.23)
The printer of this fine illustrated incunabulum, Giovanni Filippo De Lignamine, born in Messina in 1428, "became papal physician to Sixtus IV. He printed some forty books in the years 1470-6, and then ceased work for some time, possibly because the death of the Pope obliged him to leave Rome to escape the numerous enemies to whom he alludes in the dedication of the Chronica Summorum pontificum which he edited and printed in 1474. In 1481 he resumed printing, but only issued two books in addition to this. Filippo de' Barbieri, a Dominican and an inquisitor, was a contemporary and like his printer a Sicilian." (Pollard/Dyson Perrins, no.23)
Lippmann writes about Lignamine: "Amongst the chief promoters of the new art of Typography, was Joannes Philippus de Lignamine, a physician who had achieved distinction in various branches of literature, and one of the most intimate friends of Cardinal Francesco della Rovere (afterwards Pope Sixtus IV). He set up a press in Rome, and worked at it himself, rather as an enthusiastic dilettante than for the purpose of gain. [...] Besides directing his efforts to the procurement of a handsomer and more tasteful Latin type than had yet been employed in Rome, Lignamine also conceived the idea of sending out his books - mostly of small size and extent - decorated with woodcuts." (Friedrich Lippmann, The art of wood-engraving in Italy in the fifteenth century, p.12)
The author, Filippo Barbieri (1426 - 1487), a relative of the printer, de Lignamine, was a noted Dominican historian, theologian and a member of the Dominican order, and chief inquisitor of Sicily, Malta, and Sardinia. He was born in Syracuse, travelled much in Spain, where he was involved in the prosecution of the Jews in 1479-80.