Antiquariat Jürgen Dinter

Aristoteles - Faber Stapulensis

Politicorum libri … — Paris 1526

In hoc libro contenta. Politicorum libri Octo. Oeconomicorum Duo. Hecatonomiarum Septem. Oeconomiarum publ. Unus. Explanationis Leonardi in oeconomica. Duo. — Parisiis, ex officina Simonis Colinaei, 1526 [Colophon: Absolvit Simon Colinaeus Anno M.D.XVI. Pridie Calen. Maii [30. April 1526].

Folio (300 x 203 mm). *6 a-z8 &10 (but lacking blank &10): (6) leaves, 193, (1) pp. Title within Colines’s Aristoteles border showing Aristotle, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Seneca, used only on his editions of Aristotle. Arms of the University of Paris at the top and Colines’s rabbits at the bottom. 19th century blindstamped calf.

First quire with a small hole and loss of a few letters (see photo). Slight watemargin to outer margin of the first 30 leaves, and to the very last leaf.

Provenance: L. Desmoulins in manuscript and a repeated stamp in black and red Ludovicus DeMoulins on title. A few contemporary marginal annotations at the beginning – to me these seem to be written in the same hand as the name on title.

Each chapter of Aristotle’s text followed by the large commentarius and annotationes by Lefèvre d’Etaples. – Moreau III 914; Renouard (Colines) 76f. and p. 32 with a reproduction of the woodcut title-border, which was used for Colines‘ philosophy books only; not in Adams.

After the death of Henri Estienne in 1520 his widow, Guyonne Viart, married Simon de Colines, who already had a long-standing collaboration with Henri, to manage the Estienne firm. A little sign of this collaboration is a peculiarity – as far as I know – of Henri’s setting of printed marginalia in a vertical line. Colines did not change that (ses photo), but took it over from Henri’s 1506 and 1511 editions and used it at least in the present edition – found here in the Hecatonomiae, a Leonardi Bruni compilation of texts of Plato’s Laws and Republic.

Whereas the horizontal printing marginalia in most cases just repeat a name or term of the line where it is placed, the vertical printed ones are commentaries of the editor, i. e. Lefèvre d’Etaples, on a certain passage. For example in his 1505 Hermes Trismegistus edition you can read as vertical printed marginalia Lapsus Hermetis, and in our edition (or the 1506 and 1511 edition) you can read Platonicae leges absurdae – both telling something about the editor’s judgement of a passage, and not repeating a term or name of the text. In his 1543 edition of Aristotle’s Politics Colines has changed the vertical into horizontal setting.