Beschreibung:

SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS, Gaius Sollius (Saint, 430/1-ca.479). Epistolae et carmina . [Utrecht: Nicolaus Ketelaer and Gerardus de Leempt, not after 1474]. Chancery 2° (278 x 192mm). Collation: [1-10 10 11-14 8 . 10 15 10 16 6 ] (1/1 blank, 1/2r text, 16/5r explicit, 16/5v verses by Decimus Magnus Ausonius (ca.310-ca.393) from De xii Caesaribus , 16/6v blank). 151 (of 152, without first blank) leaves. 33 (quire 1) or 32 (quires 2-16) lines. Type 1:122G. 6-, 4- and 2-line initial spaces with guide-letters, supplied with red initials, red paragraph marks, underlining and capital strokes. (Small wormholes in first two leaves, partially filled in the first, light stain in lower corner of fos. 18-25, 28-30, small stain over 2 letters in fo.89.) Gold-tooled red straight-grained morocco, sides with roll-tools, Botfield arms added at centre, spine tooled in compartments, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, blue silk ribbon marker, by François Bozerian (Bozerian jeune), with his stamp at foot of spine. One roll was used also by his brother, Jean-Claude Bozerian (no. 9 in Culot, Jean-Claude Bozerian (1979)). Provenance : pencilled price of #21.0.0 on front flyleaf, presumably the price paid by Botfield. FIRST EDITION. Sidonius Apollinaris was the chief literary figure of the fifth century. Up to the time he became bishop of Clermont in about 470, Sidonius wrote in verse. Upon accepting the bishophric, however, he changed to writing letters, believing that poetry might be seen as inappropriate to the strictness of the priesthood. This book is an early production from the first identified press in the Netherlands. To print the Sidonius Apollinaris a new fount was cut, probably by de Leempt, who was the typographer of the partnership. Although most of the books printed by Ketelaer and de Leempt are undated, the present edition may be dated to 1474 on typographical grounds (HPT I, 12). In addition, a copy in the Royal Library, The Hague, bears a rubrication date of 1474. The typesetters did not quite understand their copy, as verses on fos. 87v-88, 90, and 130 are out of order. Those passages in the exemplar apparently had two or more lines of verse written on one line and punctuated by a mark of rubrication, but the compositors interpreted the punctuation as a separation into columns, and thus set these verses in double column. The result is that reading down each column one finds alternate verses, with some further transpositions of text occurring. The strange sequence of letters found on fos. 54v and 91v, which puzzled the editors of BMC, were decoded by the Hellingas as simply revealing the author's name (HPT I, 12). A FINE, FRESH COPY. HC *1286; BMC IX, 7 (IB. 47049-49a); CA 1542; IDL 4117; CIBN S-249; Cinquième Centenaire p.92