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4° (272x178 mm). Collation: [a-o10, p8, q-r10, s8]. 137 of 176 leaves. Text in one column, 37 lines. Type: 89R (see ISTC, type-face has the same dimensions as Han's 1468 Cicero ). Blank spaces for capitals, with printed guide letters. Nineteenth-century half-calf, marbled covers. Spine with five raised bands, underlined by gilt fillets and narrow ornamental roll. In the second compartment, the title COMMENTARIA IN APOCALIPSI' in gilt lettering. Covers somewhat rubbed, sewing slightly weakened. A wide-margined copy, marginal water stains; some spots, tiny wormholes, and marks of use. Chapter numbers and headings added in red ink in a contemporary hand. Early Latin and Italian marginalia; some underlining and reading marks in the same hand. Nineteenth-century bibliographical notes on the verso of the rear flyleaf: vedi Jansen Origine de la Gravure en Bois Tom. 1.er Pagina 390. figura 49. Plancia [sic] XVIII. Sull'origine delle Cartiere; questo volume sarebbe sortito dalla Pressa di Schweynheim, e Arnoldo Pannartz. Vedi signatura B. pagina 13. RICERCHE DI F. PEZZI ', referring to the Essai sur l'origine de la gravure en bois et en taille-douce by Hendrik Jansen (Paris 1808). Provenance: from the library of the Franciscan monastery of St. Bernardino of Siena at Morano Calabro, near Cosenza, suppressed in 1811 (sixteenth-century ownership inscription De Apocalipsis S.ti Joanni è S.ti Bernd.ni Morani' on the lower margin of fol. [a]2r); traces of an early small ex libris on the front pastedown; the Italian bookseller, collector and scholar Tammaro De Marinis (1878-1969; pencilled bibliographical notes in his own hand on the front pastedown, E' il più antico testo italiano a stampa'; loose and preserved inside is a one-leaf letter written by the wife of Umberto of Savoy, and last Queen of Italy Maria José of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1906-2001) to De Marinis himself, dated Merlinge Gy (Genève), 27 January 1951; on the upper margin of the recto, De Marinis noted the date of receipt of the letter giunta il 31.I.51.', and that of his answer to Maria Josè, 1.II 51'. The celebrated first edition of the commentary or Expositione in lingua volgare on the Apocalypse of St. John by the Dominican Federigo from Venice, one of the earliest books printed in Rome, competing for priority along with the St. Bonaventura version of the Legenda maior S. Francisci as the first book printed in the Italian vernacular. Federigo Renoldo (or de Raynaldis), better known as Federigo from Venice, wrote the commentary in 1393-1394, while teaching at the University of Padua, on behalf of Francesco Novello da Carrara (1359-1405), the last Signore or prince of Padua. The work is however intended not for academic teaching, but rather for a larger vernacular audience. Federigo's work, written in a rather literary version of his native Venetian speech, was one of the very biblical commentaries composed directly in an Italian tongue rather than in Latin (A. Luttrell, Federigo da Venezia's Commentary , p. 61). Mainly relying on Dominican authorities and especially the Expositio in Apocalypsim, then still attributed to Albertus Magnus, the text is also supplemented with glosses by Nicolaus de Lyra. In his commentary, Federigo anticipated the advent of the Antichrist in the year 1396 and predicted that the end of the world would occur in 1400. After having been widely circulated in manuscript form, the vernacular commentary first appeared in print in Rome around 1469, entitled Apocalypsis cum glossis Nicolai de Lyra. Two editions followed in the early sixteenth century, the first printed in Venice in 1515 by Alessandro Paganino, and the second in Milan in 1520 by Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler. As Marston states, while the history of the introduction of printing to Italy is clear, that of the first presses in Rome is rather confused ( The First Book Printed in Italian , p. 180). This uncertainty extends to the present vernacular commentary, with the identity of. Seller Inventory # ABE-1658700819311
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