ALBERTUS MAGNUS, (c. 1200-1280)

Summa de creaturis. Prima pars Summe Alberti Magni de quatuor coequevis una cum secunda eius que De Homine. [Colophon on l5v:] Venetiis Impressum per Simonem de Luere Impensis domini Andree Toresani de Asula. 19o. Me[n]sis Decembris. 1498. [Colophon on aa5v:] Venetiis Imp[re]ssa Impe[n]sis d[omi]ni Andree Torresani de Asula: arte u[n]o Simonis de luere. xvio februarii. 1498 [i.e. 1499]

Venice: Simon de Luere for Andreas Torresanus, 1498--99.
Folio: a2 b--k8 l6; n--z8 [et]8 [con]8[rum]8 aa8 (blanks l6 and aa6), 198 leaves, ff. [2] 1--77 [78]; 79--195 [1]. 69 lines in double columns, gothic type. Initial spaces for guide letters, unrubricated. [bound with:] ALEXANDER, of APHRODISIAS (fl. 2nd -- 3rd century AD); ARISTOTLE (384--322 BC; PLUTARCH (C. 50--c. 120 AD) *Problemata* *Venice: Albertinus Vercellensis, 1501. Problemata Alexandri Aphrodisei. Georgio Valla interprete. Problemata Aristotelis. Theodorus Gaza e graeco transtulit. Problemata Plutarchi per Ioannem pertrum Lucensem in latinum conversa. [Colophon:] Impressum Venetiis: Per Albertinum Vercellensem. Anno Domini. M. CCCCCI. Die. xxvi. Maii. Folio: a--c8 d--m6 n4, 82 leaves, ff. [i] ii--lxxxii. Roman letter, 56 lines with marginal commentary. 12, 9 and 6 line initials. Goff A-387a; GW 861; Klebs 44.2; CNCE 1033. (Pell and GW describe an imperfect copy lacking the last leaf and so give the date as 1489 or later; and Klebs gives [1495]). Second edition of this collection, first printed at Venice in 1488. The 1488 edition was the first of Alexander's Problemata; Aristotle's were first printed, in Gaza's translation, in 1473; Plutarch's in 1477. Another edition of the same texts was published 3 months later as Problemata Aristotelis cum duplici translatione antiqua ... & nova (Venice: Locatelli, 3 August, 1501). Leaf size and condition: 315 x 210mm. Small round worm holes in the text in the first ten leaves and another from sig. p to the end, another in the blank upper margins towards the end. Superb clean and fresh copies. Binding: Two works bound together in contemporary South German half pigskin over oak boards, pigskin straps and brass clasps, the attachments and clasps stamped 'MIN', staple hole where a chain was formerly attached in the top edge of lower board, early MS paper label on upper board, traces of paper labels on spine, contemporary contents list on front pastedown partially obscured by a later bibliographical note pasted over. Upper board cracked and sometime repaired, headcap frayed, otherwise in excellent condition. Provenance and annotation: Bookplate of Daniel Wilhelm Nebel (1735--1805), professor of chemistry and pharmacology at Heidelberg; Francis Edwards Ltd, cat 942/5; sold to Dr W. F. Spikes of Elmhurst, Illinois; Sotheby's New York, 26 June 2001, lot 55; private collection. References: Goff A-334; GW 779; Klebs 27.1; ISTC ia00334000; Hain--Copinger 569*; Procter 5621; Walsh 2726, 2727; BMC V, 574; Bod-inc A-148 and BSB-Ink A-166.
First extant edition. Panzer (1793--1803) listed an edition of part II, Venice, 1494, but there are no known copies and the present edition is usually described as the first. Reprinted at Venice (1519) and in Opera, 1651, XIX; and Opera, 1890, 34, 307--761 and 35, 1--661; three previously unpublished parts were printed in 1919. parts were printed in 1919.
§ A rare and little known Albertus Magnus title, one of his earliest physiological and psychological treatises. This is a very fine copy in a composite volume in a contemporary binding from a a chained library with another work covering medical topics. Albert, 'the father of Christian Aristotelianism', was canonised in 1931 and ten years later was declared patron of the natural sciences by the Catholic Church. Albertus Magnus. This is one of Albert' earliest works, a presentation of God's creation (omitting the topics dealt with in De vegetabilibus and De animalibus). The first part deals with creation, matter, time and eternity, the heavens and celestial bodies, angels (their qualities, functions and hierarchies); the second part, 'De hominis' deals with the relationship of the soul to the body, sense and perception, dreams and fantasies, emotions, the intellect and free will. The Summa de creaturis comes from Albert's first period of study and teaching, the period when he was living in Paris from 1243 to1248 where he met Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas. It was the first work in which Albert dealt with vision, sense physiology, perception and psychology. Experimental work on the nature of light, optics, sensation and perception, initiated by Alhazen (965--c. 1040) has held a central place in natural philosophy from the work of Albert, Bacon and Witelo in the middle ages. Summa de creaturis, the first contribution to the subject after Alhazen, has been little studied until recently. Now, through the work of Theiss and Grüsser, it can be seen as the first of the three works, including De anima and Parva naturalia, in which Albert set out his theories of vision, perception and psychology. Theiss and Grüsser note that in physiology Albert first described, in this book, the vitreous humour and the aequos humour in the eye. In psychiatry they conclude that 'he was willing to apply his quasi-mechanistic brain function model as a tool to understanding different symptoms appearing in acute or chronic psychoses'. Literature. Peter Theiss and Otto-Joachim Grüsser, 'Vision and cognition in the natural philosophy of Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus)', Documenta Ophthalmologica 86 (1994) 123--151. Alexander of Aphrodisias. The other work in the volume is the second edition of Alexander's Problemata, a series of questions about medical, scientific and everyday topics. It is printed with the work that initiated the genre, the Problemata attributed to Aristotle but probably not by him, and another imitation of the form, Plutarch's Problemata. Alexander was one of the most revered commentators on Aristotle but this is an original work, though treating many Aristotelian questions. Interestingly it is Alexander's work that is placed first in this edition, while another edition of these text published in Venice only a few months later put the Aristotle first. Literature. Ann Blair, 'The Problemata as a Natural Philosophical Genre' and John Monfasani, 'The pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata and Aristotle's De Animalibus in the Renaissance', both in Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, Natural Particulars. Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, MA 1999) pp. 171-204 and 205-247. Pieter de Leemans and Michele Goyens, eds, Aristotle's Problemata in Different Times and Tongues (Leuven University Press, 2006) has a useful bibliography. Provenance. The staple hole for chain attachment in the top edge of the lower board indicates that the book was originally stored flat on a lectern, with the chain going up to a rail along the top. This implies a fairly small library.The eighteenth-century owner, Daniel Wilhelm Nebel, also owned a copy of Gesner's Bibliotheca Universalis (1545). This was recently offered for sale by Susanne Schulz-Falster who notes that Nebel was descended from a family of scientists, pharmacists and academics, and suggests that the Gesner, well used and extensively annotated, could have been in the family library for a number of generations (Schulz-Falster, Catalogue 13, 2007, no. 60).

• GBP 14,000.00 > otras divisas
• nº de pedido: 18076

• librero: Roger Gaskell (GREAT BRITAIN)