Three hundred notable books added to the Library of the British Museum under the keepership of Richard Garnett 1890-1899.

Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three hundred notable books added to the Library of the British Museum under the keepership of Richard Garnett 1890-1899. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PRINTED BY CAXTON Ferrariense bellum susceptum, conscripte sunt, Impresse per willelmum Caxton, et diligenter emendate per Petrum Carmelianum Poetam Lau- reatum, in westmonasterio. quarto. This unique Caxton was discovered in 1874 in the Hecht- Heine Library at Halberstadt, and purchased from the owners of that library in April 1890. The book is of a different character from any other printed by Caxton, and appears to be the earliest known separate publication of diplomatic correspondence. It was apparently published in the interest of the Venetians, who were angry with Pope Sixtus for making separate terms with the Duke of Ferrara. The last letter—a reply of the Venetians to a letter of the Pope—is dated 13th February 1483, and the correspondence was probably printed by Caxton later in the same year. Its editor, Petrus Carmelianus, was an Italian scholar and priest, who had settled in England, and afterwards became Latin Secretary to Henry Vll. A facsimile of the book was issued in 1892, with an introduction and translation by Dr. George Bullen, Dr. Garnett’s predecessor as Keeper of the Department of Printed Books. DOCTRINAL OF SAPIENCE. Begin. This that is written in this lytyl boke, etc. Colophon. Thus endeth the doctrinal of sapyence the whyche is ryght vtile and prouffytable to alle crysten men, whyche is translated out of Frenshe in to englysshe by wyllyam Caxton at westmesster fynysshed the .vij. day of may the yere of our lord M, cccc Ixxx ix Caxton me fieri fecii [sic]. folio. The French Doctrinal de Sapience, ascribed to Guy de Roye, from which Caxton translated the Doctrinal of Sapience, was itself a translation from the Latin Manipulus curatorum. of Gui de Mont- rocher, of which seventy-five or more editions were published before the end of the fifteenth century. Of Caxton’s edition, which is printed in his type 5, and contains two woodcuts, both first used in the Speculum vitae Christi, there are at least eleven existing copies, that in the library at Windsor Castle being printed on vellum, and having an additional chapter on the Cautels or Defects of the Mass. The present copy, bought at the sale of the first portion of the Earl of Ashburnham’s library in June 1897, wants the first and last leaves, which are supplied in facsimile.