Les Meditations Des Zelatevrs De Pieté
Paris, O. L’Huillier 1568.
8vo (169 x 106 mm.). [xxiv], 384, [4] leaves. Woodcut L’Huillier title device.
CONTEMPORARY PARISIAN CALF DECORATED IN GOLD AND SILVER, WITH SIX LINES OF GILT-LETTERED TEXT ON THE FRONT PANEL AND EIGHT ON THE REAR (joints and two corners repaired, front cover nearly detached). Both panels have triple-rule outer frames, corner pieces of azured foliage and scrollwork, gilt tracery and azured foliage around the central medallion of small azured arches enclosing the text; gilt spine, all edges gilt and gauffered.
On 1 July 1568, Jean Henne (fl. 1563-82), bursar at the Collège de Fortet, gave this book to Wolfgang Frantz (fl. 1563-87), a Swiss student there: Henne’s presentation to and praise of Frantz are stamped on the binding panels. The flyleaf verso facing the title contains Henne’s hand-colored coat of arms and his inscription to Frantz, “a most learned man…a most faithful friend” (tr.).
Our luxurious binding may commemorate Frantz’s graduation or his departure from Paris. (Later, he was canon then provost of Augsburg’s St. Moritz.) Henne presented a nearly identical binding to Christopher Mantel, also a Swiss student at the college, but that example (now at the Sorbonne) does not have the donor’s painted arms nor his manuscript presentation to the recipient.
This is the FIRST EDITION OF GUITOT’S VERNACULAR DEVOTIONAL. He was Secretary of State to Charles III, duc de Lorraine, and he dedicated the Meditations to the duke’s sisters, Renata and Dorothea. Guitot addressed his final essay to Mme. de Mallhanne Ballifue d’Espinal, while Belleforest contributed a sonnet addressed to the author’s wife, Susanne Dugué. In good condition; intaglio bookplate of St. Moritz dated 1622, offered in 1920 by Maggs (Catalogue 397 185 & pl. XVIII), bookplate of DC, from the collection of T.K. Brooker.
¶Hobson & Culot, Italian and French 16th-Century Bookbindings 58; USTC 1487; see Cullière’s Les Écrivains et le pouvoir en Lorraine au XVIe siècle 805-6 (Guitot) and Der Liber Amicorum des Hans Jakob vom Staal edd. Kully & Rindlisbacher no. 191 & p. 326 (Frantz) & no. 595 & p. 340 (Henne).
Price: $37,500.00