Juvenalis Anton.Manci. Domici(us) Geor. Val. Argumenta Satyrarum Iuuenalis per Antonium Mancinellum.
Nuremberg ( Nurnberge ): Koberger, 1497. A copy profusely annotated (up to satire 6) by a German reader in the first decade of the sixteenth century. This copy is bound in its original * blind stamped half pigskin over wooden boards, lacking clasps. A copy profusely annotated (up to satire 6) by a German reader in the first decade of the sixteenth century, as indicated by the diacritical sign above the u's, its spelling Yason (for Jason), apoptegmata (withouth). This incunabulum is found in its interesting first binding, Rhenish, half pigskin stamped inbound over wooden boards.
****Our German reader most likely annotated the work while it was still in quires or paperback: indeed, some notes are in the inner margin. The work was probably annotated before being bound, which caused some minimal outside marginal cuts.****
The sources used by the annotator betray a strong anchorage in Rhenish humanism, around 1511. This reader obviously evolved in a circle close to the young Beatus Rhenanus and mmost likely Jakob Wimpfeling at the crossroads of classical and Christian culture. His reading is indeed a mixture of Italian philological and historical commentaries and works of northern humanism (Reisch, Erasmus). Several notes reveal the use of a series of editions published in Strasbourg in 1511: the Hymni heroici tres of Jean-François Pic de la Mirandole with the annotation of Beatus Rhenanus, the collection of ps. Bérose published by Grüninger (with a false text of Xénophon). Our anonymous reader reads Erasmus' Adages in an edition by Schürer (c. 1511) and the Praise of Folly, the first editions of which also date from 1511 (Paris, Gilles de Gourmont and then M. Schürer). XXI v. The annotator also has recourse to contemporary Italian encyclopedias (Enneades by Sabellico, Commentarii by Volaterranus) to which he adds the reading of Reisch's Margarita philosophica, the jewel of northern humanism (the editio princeps dates from 1504). The annotator refers to a passage of this work (Book VII, chapter VII) where Atlas is presented as the inventor of astronomy (note on f. CXIIIr: "Atlantem caeliferum fuisse negat Lucrecius. Lege, invenies in Margarita ex Plinio, li 7 ca 2" etc). These readings and references to editions of 1511 make us think that the annotator plausibly followed a university course held in Strasbourg around 1511, always in the close circles frequented by Beatus Rhenanus.
The humanist commentary here focuses on word radicals, lexicon and context (the annotator mobilizes printed commentaries), with little interest in figures. He shows a predilection for natural history (Pliny and Solinus very much in demand) and Roman history in general (the annotator resorts as well to Suetonius as to modern commentaries such as Philippe Béroalde and Sabellico, whose Enneads he quotes several times, f. XXIV v for example).
This erudite reader sometimes commits approximations in his references: he confuses for example a title of the pseudo-Xenophon with a collection of the pseudo-Beroses. A long quotation of a passage that he attributes to Philip Beroalde (the Elder) on f. XXVIIr comes in fact from the Annotationes centum and not from his commentary on Suetonius (see Anthony Grafton, "On the Scholarship of Politian", Journal of the Warburg, 1977, p. 166). He recopies from memory (incorrectly) on f. VI a licentious epigram by Martial (book VI, 67) & notes in the margin, still on this verse but this time about eunuchs: "Martialis / Cur tantium eunuchos uxor tua Caelia quaeris / Pannice vult futui (Caelia) non parere."
The annotator also has recourse to the vast Latin poetic heritage: Ovid and Seneca on f. II (Vide Ovidium Transformationum… Vide Senecam in Agammemnone); Horace, Satire VI, I (on f. XVr). Also to some poets of late Latinity like Sidoine Apollinaire through an incunabula edition (1498) with commentary. He also gives some suggestions for corrections to the text: f. LIX r to the lemma "caldum", he refers to the Attic Nights of Aulu Gelle: "emendatius caldus haud (…) quam calidum apud Gellium caldam saepeponitur li 19 ca 4".
Some more developed notes are to be noted:
• a reference to the practice of hunts (venationes) in the circus under Domitian, with an anecdote of a certain Maevia descended the pointrine naked in the arena (f. V r). It reproduces the words of an ancient scholiast of Juvenal: " Alia indignatio in mulierum impudentiam quae temporibus Domitiani descendebant (?) in venationes et pugnas theatrales " (words of the scholiast of Juvenal).
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• on the title page, two references to Italian miscellanea from the end of the 15th century.
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• On the title page, two references to Italian miscellanea of the end of the 15th century: one to the freedom of poets to slander, which refers to Pietro Crinito's De honestis disciplinis (lib. 20 ca. IX), and the other to a complicated passage of Juvenal explained in chapter 33 of the Miscellanea of Ange Politien (Expositio hujus carminis Juvenalis scilicet occidit miseros Crambe repetita magistros in Miscellaneis ca. 33) This chapter of the Miscellanea explains the very graphic proverb Occidit miseros Crambe repetita magistros which appears in Juvenal's Satire VII (v. 154), which can be translated literally by "It is from this cabbage unceasingly re-served that unhappy masters die" to denounce the repetition to which masters are forced.
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• To the last page the reader has affixed a note with references to ancient authors and poetic formulas (perhaps beginnings of unfinished verses) related to Pindar and the Pindaric writing: "E Salaminiaco gesta (?)… cothurno… / Pindarici… enthea plectra (inspired poetic writing) / Juvant…" Below we read: Plutarchus. Then below the list of the Latin agronomists: Varro, Columella, Palladius. Let us note that the beginning of verse "E Salaminiaco" is found in Petrarch in the poem "Ad Benedictum XII Pont. Rom." Item #879
Folio 30.8 x 21.5 cm. Signatures : A8 a–z8 &6. This copy is bound in its original * blind stamped half pigskin over wooden boards, lacking clasps. This copy has been strongly annotated by a German humanists circa 1511. Important edition with 3 commentaries from the end of the 15th century by great figures of Italian humanism and following the Venetian edition of Tacuio, 1494/1495- ISTC ; ij00663000. Mancinelli; Domizio Calderini and finally, the one by Giorgio Valla, which has a philological importance: it reproduces ancient scholia from a now lost manuscript.
1. German reader, early 1510s. 2. Transfer stamp " Vend. ex bibl. acad. Rhen." ("Sold by the Prussian Academy Library," former library of the University of Bonn, the stamp "Bibliotheca Accademiae Borussicae Rhenanae", was apparently used in the period 1818-1828. 3. 17th century owner (note on title page with reference to the in-12 Juvenal-Perse published in Amsterdam with Farnabius' notes in 1631). 4. Marquis Giuseppe Terzi of Bergamo (1790-1819). It does not appear in the catalogs of the sales held in Paris between March 11 and 23, 1861. 5) Joseph Nève, lawyer and bibliophile from Brussels (1857-1940) 6). The book is later in the collection of Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Beaulieu (1905-1995) (ex-libris). 7). It is then in the collection of Jean Stefgen, Joinville le Pont (1927-2017, bookplate).
Price: $31,000.00