Tertullian: Opera Q. Septimii Florentis Tertulliani Carthagi...

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£600 - £800

Tertullian: Opera Q. Septimii Florentis Tertulliani Carthaginensis. Edited by Beatus Rhenanus.
Basel: per Hieronymum Frobenium et Nicolaum Episcopium, March 1539.
[20], 766, [34] pp. With full-page woodcut, historiated woodcut initials, and woodcut printer's device on title and verso of last leaf.
Contemporary Latin glosses in bister. Folio, bound in contemporary pigskin tooled in blind with half-length female Virtues, with metal clasps. 315mm x 220cm.
The collected writings of the great Church Father Tertullian in the corrected, third edition.
Published by the renowned Basle printing firm of Froben.
By his own admission Tertullian (ca. 160-230) had "drained the cup of lust to its dregs" before converting to Christianity in about 195 A.D., becoming a priest, and returning to his native Carthage to proselytize. He was the first Christian theologian to write in Latin; coining more than 900 new words, he was one of the most influential in the codification of a Latin vocabulary for Christian literature.
This edition of Tertullian's works corrects the editio princeps of 1521, which was edited by the learned Beatus Rheanus and also printed by John Froben. Froben's fame rests in large part on his flawless scholarly editions in Greek, Latin and German, as well as his fine publications of Erasmus' writings. An important text editor for Froben, Beatus Rheanus based the first collected works of Tertullian on manuscripts found in the German monasteries at Peterlingen and Hirschau.
Our edition of 1539 (the third, following the second, of 1528, all printed by Froben) interpolates corrections based on an additional manuscript (Graesse).
Froben's device, the crowned cadeucus held by cloud-born hands and surmounted by a dove, appears on both the title and last leaf. With an armorial bookplate on the inside back cover, and extensive bister annotations in German, with some Hebrew and Latin, on the inside front cover and flyleaf. Ink stain, p. 505, some shelf-wear to covers and spine; overall, a very fine copy in an elegant contemporary binding.