A typographical monument over the centuries
De Civitate Dei by the bishop Augustine of Hippo is one of the most influential works of Western thought, a book which “pervaded the whole Middle Ages” and “remained authoritative until the seventeenth and eighteenth century” (PMM 3). As a credit to its immense popularity, it was one of the first works to appear in print: its editio princeps was published in Subiaco as early as 1467, when it was issued, on 12 June, by the German clerics Conradus Sweynheym from Mainz and Arnoldus Pannartz from Cologne, who had introduced printing to Italy in 1465 with their first press at the Benedictine monastery of Santa Scolastica (Subiaco), some forty miles east of Rome. In the same year Sweynheym and Pannartz moved to Rome, at the behest of Cardinal Bessarion and the bishop of Aleria Giovanni Andrea Bussi. The first product of the newly established press – located in the house of noblemen ‘Franciscus and Petrus de Maximis’, near Piazza Navona – was Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares, followed a few months later, in 1468, by the second edition of De Civitate Dei, a sure commercial success. The text was set in more rounded type, replacing the semi-gothic font used for the 1467 edition, and the larger size of the volume (now in royal folio) reflects Sweynheym and Pannartz’s efforts to adapt the products of their new press to a milieu very distant from the learned simplicity of a Benedictine monastery: Renaissance Rome was at the time not only the centre of the Roman Catholic Church, but also a lively cultural city, populated by leading scholars and cardinals with a predilection for elegant books. The Roman edition had a print run of 250-300 copies; by 1470, the German printers had already published a third edition of Augustine’s treatise.
The earliest recorded owner of the finely illuminated and wide-margined copy of the 1468 edition offered by PrPh Books was Niccolò Fieschi (Nicolaus de Fliscus, ca. 1456-1524), whose coat of arms is painted on the opening leaf of text. Fieschi came from a prominent Genoese family, and was appointed Cardinal by Pope Alexander VI in 1503. He died as Vice-dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals in Rome in 1524, and was buried in the Roman church of Santa Maria del Popolo, which belonged to the Augustinian order. His arms are surmounted by the characteristic ecclesiastical hat with fifteen red tassels on each side, and supplemented with the inscription ‘NIC. CAR. DE FLISCO.’, both features attesting to Fieschi having come into possession of the volume following his election to cardinalate, in the first decades of the sixteenth century.
We have still no information about the books Fieschi collected, or about their possible fate. It also remains unknown when the Augustine came into the possession of the library of Saint Wenceslas Cathedral in Olomouc, North Moravia, whose ownership inscription, possibly in a seventeenth-century hand, is visible on the recto of the first leaf of the volume.
It is, however, possible to narrate the history of this finely illuminated copy in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
At the beginning of the 1880s, the volume was in London, in the hands of Frederick Startridge Ellis (1830–1901) and his partner David White. In 1860, Ellis had opened his company in Covent Garden, and in 1872 he moved to 29 New Bond Street, into the bookstore previously occupied by two other great names of the British book trade, Thomas and William Boone.
H. B. Wheatley, A Short History of Bond Street, Old and New (London 1911, p. 24).
Ellis’s business was specialized in manuscripts and early printed editions, above all incunables, and a precious image of his stock is given from the sale catalogue of November 1885, when he retired from activity for health reasons and decided to “offer the Books and Manuscripts collected […] to public competition”, in the rooms of Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge. During his long and successful career as a bookseller he had been the official buyer of the British Museum, and his private clientele was wide and distinguished as well.
In 1882, the company ‘Ellis & White’ offered this copy of De Civitate Dei to John Murray III, who was then running the influential publishing house established in London in 1768 by his grandfather John Murray I (1737-1793), and is universally known for having published, in 1859, the first edition of Charles Darwin’s On Origin of Species, as well as such masterpieces of exploration narratives as the Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingston, which appeared in 1857.
John Murray III, by George Reid.
The letter offering this fine book to Murray is still inserted in this copy of Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, and its content is highly interesting.
June 20. 1882
Dear Sir
As you said some time ago that you would like to secure from time to time fine specimens of Early typography [sic] I send a volume for your inspection. It is a magnificent specimen of the Early Roman press being the 4th book printed in that city by Sweynheym & Pannartz the introducers of printing there. By the Arms on the 15th leaf you will see that it belonged to Cardinal de Flisco, who was Cardinal during the Pontificate of Paul II. Subsequently it belonged to the Cathedral of Olmutz in Bohemia, whence it was lately purchased. The illumination of the first page & the initial letter of each book will I think commend themselves to you as extremely beautiful examples of Italian design.
At the Sunderland sale a very inferior copy sold for £ 101 - & is since priced by Quaritch at £ 150 – and some years since the late Mr. Huth gave for a copy in a fine old binding no less than £ 400.
You can have this volume for £ 80.
I am Dear Sir
Yours faithfully
F.S. Ellis
P.S. I have ascertained that not only is it perfect, but it contains two more leaves than Brunet describes and one more than mentioned in Hain’s Repertorium, besides the two original blank leaves.
The London bookseller refers here to two others copies of the De Civitate Dei of 1468, which at that time were either on the market or still in private hands: the first was once preserved in the superb library amassed by Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland, in Blenheim Palace. The first and more remarkable portion of this library had been offered for sale by Puttich and Simpson in 1881. The Sunderland copy of this Roman edition – which the catalogue describes as “nearly as rare as the first” – was purchased for the sum of 101 pounds, against the 90 pounds payed for the Subiaco edition princeps. Like the copy offered to Murray, “the first page of the text is beautifully illuminated as are also the 22 large initials at the head of the books” (Bibliotheca Sunderlandiana. Truly Important and Very Extensive Library of Printed Books Known as the Sunderland or Blenheim Library, London 1881, lot 728), suggesting therefore that both copies may have been illuminated in the same Roman atelier that often collaborated with the German printers Sweynheym and Pannartz. Further, the compiler of the 1881 catalogue added that “this is very large (16x10 7/8 in.) and beautifully clean copy but 1 or 2 leaves are slightly wormed” (ibid.). Ellis underlined that the Sunderland Augustine is “a very inferior copy”, but nevertheless put on sale by Bernard Quaritch for the notable sum of 150 pounds.
The second copy mentioned by Ellis for persuading his client was owned by another outstanding English collector, Henry Huth (1815-1878), who, in about 1871, had entrusted the cataloguing of his prestigious library to the bibliographer and bibliophile William Carew Hazlitt (1834-1913) along with Ellis himself. The five-volume catalogue appeared only after Huth’s death, between 1880 and 1885: the English books were described by Hazlitt, the editions in other languages – including an impressive series of incunables – by Ellis. The London bookseller was therefore well acquainted with the Huth copy: it is “the dedication copy presented to Cardinal de’ Medici, whose arms are emblazoned in the centre of the binding, on the gauffered edges, and in the first page of text”, features which can justify the very high price payed by Huth for the Roman De Civitate Dei, “no less than £ 400”, as indicated in Ellis’s letter to Murray. Further, the Huth copy is illuminated as well: “The first page of text is decorated with a half border of chaste design in gold and colour, and the initials are very skillfully illuminated throughout” (A Catalogue of the Printed Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, and Engravings, collected by Henry Huth, vol. I, London, Ellis & White, 1880, p. 62).
In his postscript, Ellis adds a few bibliographical notes, wherein he relies on the standard reference works used by nineteenth-century booksellers, i.e., the Repertorium Bibliographicum by Ludwig Hain (no. 2047), and the Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur de livres by Jacques-Charles Brunet (vol. I, pp. 558-559), who mentions copies of the edition once preserved in celebrated private collections like those of Louis-Jean Gaignat, Duke of La Vallière, Pietro Antonio Bolongaro-Crevenna, or Dmitri-Petrowisch Boutourlin: the 1468 edition of Augustine’s De Civitate Dei printed in Rome by Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz is not only – as Ellis writes – “a magnificent specimen of the Early Roman press” or more generally one of the finest “specimens of Early typography”, but also a veritable mark of the most exquisite taste in book collecting.
These arguments – pertaining to the copy’s rarity and beauty, distinguished provenance, wide margins and excellent condition (compared with the Sunderland copy), and of course price – were persuasive, and John Murray bought the volume offered by Ellis & David, apparently for the sum of 80 pounds. The copy of the De Civitate Dei remained in the library of the Murray family until the beginning of the 1960s, when this precious book was offered for sale at Sotheby’s London on 11 June 1963, described in the Catalogue of Valuable Printed Books, Autograph Letters, Literary and Musical Manuscripts, Comprising… Early Italian Books (London 1963, lot 123). The title of the edition is already printed on the cover of the catalogue, included among the highlights offered for sale: along with rare works by Savonarola, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and an uncut copy of Newton’s Principia mathemathica of 1687, we find the mention of “a finely illuminated copy of St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, Sweynheym and Pannartz, 1468”. The description of the copy occupies all of page 70, and begins with these lines:
“Augustinus (Saint Aurelius) De Civitate Dei, 273 leaves (with blank leaves ff. 1, 16 and 273, but lacking the last blank), 46 lines, type 2, in the first half of the book the numbers and headings of the chapters have been supplied in a contemporary manuscripts, in the second half the numbers only have been written in the upper margins, nineteenth-century vellum, gilt paneled sides, vellum end-leaves, a large and fine copy”.
Bibliographical information on the edition follows, along with the description of the “border of white vineleaf ornament round two sides of the page”, the Fieschi coat of arms painted in the lower margin, and the large initials in gold on white vineleaf panel: “This illumination is Roman and is characteristic of Sweynheim and Pannartz’s books”.
The final section devoted to the provenance is especially precise, evidently deemed appropriate given the rarity and importance of the book:
“1. Nicolas, Cardinal de Flisco, Bishop of Fréjus, appointed Cardinal by Pope Alexander VI (Borgia) on May 31, 1503; died as Archbishop of Ravenna 14 June 1524.
2. The Cathedral at Olmütz in Austria [sic], with inscription at the foot of the first page.
3. Acquired by John Murray III from Ellis & White in 1882; their letter offering the book inserted”.
After 1963 the precious volume – originally preserved by Cardinal Niccolò Fieschi in his private library, subsequently landing in remote Olmütz, and reappearing on the English market at the end of the nineteenth century – went travelling again, this time crossing the ocean and reaching New York City: from the marked-up copy of Sotheby’s catalogue of 1963 preserved in the British Library, we know that it was purchased by the leading bookseller John Francis Fleming (1910-1987), for the sum of 1,800 pounds.
After having worked for the ‘Napoleon of Books’ Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach (1876-1952) – the most famous American antiquarian bookseller of the first half of the twentieth century, also known as Dr. R – Fleming bought the legendary apartment at 322 East 57th Street which had once been the residence and showroom of his mentor, as well as his remaining stock. Fleming ultimately became in turn the leading American rare-book dealer, as attested by the extraordinary quality of the books offered by him to the greatest bibliophiles in the United States and Europe or preserved in his own personal library.
Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach
From our archives
On 7 November 1934, Rosenbach had bought a copy of the 1468 edition at Anderson Galleries, on the occasion of the sale of the remarkable library of Roderick Terry (1849-1933), on behalf of the great American collector Estelle Doheny (1875-1958). In the 1934 catalogue the copy is described as “a large and magnificent copy of this typographical masterpiece, with a superb border and with illuminated capitals by a contemporary rubricator […] the leaves measuring 15 1/4 by 10 5/8)” (The Library of the Late Rev. Dr. Roderick Terry of Newport, Rhode Island, New York 1934, lot 10). On 11 June 1963 his successor, the keen antiquarian bookseller and passionate collector Fleming came into possession of another illuminated and even wider copy of this great rarity, from the sale of the likewise remarkable library of John Murray III.
In 2000, the Terry-Rosenbach-Doheny copy was acquired by the Italian bookseller Arturo Pregliasco – owner of the long-running Turin bookshop opened in 1912 by his father Lorenzo – in partnership with the newly founded Philobiblon of Filippo Rotundo, and first presented as no. 10 in the catalogue Philobiblon. Mille anni di Bibliofilia.
The Fieschi-Murray-Fleming copy is a great source of pride for PrPh Books, established in New York in 2013 by Arturo Pregliasco’s son Umberto along with Filippo Rotundo, who once again could not let another copy of this veritable typographical monument escape on the market. It is presently offered, as no. 9, in the catalogue Philobiblon. One Thousand Years of Bibliophily (for the complete description click here).
The book market can often surprise us with such unexpected and lucky coincidences!
How to cite this information
Margherita Palumbo, "A Typographical Monument over the Centuries," 30 October 2019, www.prphbooks.com/blog/typographicalmonument. Accessed [date].This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.