Historia ecclesiastica.

Mantua: Johannes Schallus. [Not before 15 July 1479.] Folio. Eighteenth-century vellum over boards, gilt red morocco lettering-piece to spine; ff. [171], [1 (blank)]; roman letter, 2- to 6-line capital spaces with guide letters, initials and paraphs supplied in red and blue, running-titles in brown ink; lettering-piece chipped, slight wear to corners, a few small marks; washed (initials in blue faded to light grey, running-titles and annotation faded), occasional light marginal thumb-marks, slight soiling to blank first and final pages and to corners of first few leaves, old repair to f. 6~sup~v~sup~, a few pinhole wormholes to contents and dedication; overall a very good, wide-margined copy; near-contemporary annotation to f. 22~sup~r~sup~, eighteenth-century engraved armorial bookplate of Amadeo Svajer and eighteenth-century ink shelfmarks to front pastedown, later manuscript quiring in pencil. Fourth edition of Eusebius' (c. 260-339) important history of the church, the last book printed by the German physician and printer Johannes Schallus at Mantua, our copy from the library of the influential eighteenth-century Venetian merchant and bibliophile Amadeo Svajer, who funded the 1757-8 production of Zatta's important edition of Dante's Commedia, the first since 1544 to feature new illustrations.The dedication by Schallus - who worked primarily as a physician and printed seven books in Mantua between 1475 and 1479 - to Federico I Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua (1441-1484), praises Eusebius as 'shining like a moon amongst small fires' and hopes that the work will benefit 'modest and pious minds' (trans.). Schallus may have worked with an assistant of Mentelin; Dibdin writes that 'the volumes which issued from his press are of equal beauty and rarity; and it is seldom that we behold a more elegant specimen of ancient typography than that which is now before us' (Dibdin, Bibliotheca Spenceriana, on the present edition of Eusebius). Schallus presents Eusebius' work not only as a valuable historical resource, but also as a speculum principis of sorts, in which Federico could 'read of the excellent deeds of Christian princes' and 'marvel at their virtues and emulate their wisdom and piety', especially as Gonzaga was at this time 'fighting bravely and courageously for the Tuscans, and through frequent victories acquiring an immortal name for [himself] and [his] nation': shortly before publication, Gonzaga had been involved in the war that emerged in the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy of April 1478, Mantua having allied itself with the Florentine Republic against Pope Sixtus IV. Provenance: From the library of Amadeo Svajer (also Schweyer, 1727-1791), who financed Zatta's publishing endeavours and influenced the material he published, including 'Dante, the Church Fathers, and Petrarch's Rime, which appear to be amongst Svajer's interests at the time . Zatta had attempted to move, in 1752, to Rovereto, [Svajer's] place of residence' (Mangani, pp. 81-2). Svajer was a renowned bibliophile, and his collection of three thousand books in Latin, five thousand in Italian, twelve hundred in French, and fourteen hundred manuscripts (including the will of Marco Polo) was sold by Jacopo Morelli in 1794, significant portions being purchased by the Manins, the Biblioteca Marciana, the Museo Correr, the Republic of Venice, and the Paduan bookseller Scapin. Svajer's only known work, a biography of Frederick II of Prussia, was printed by Zatta in 1759. Morelli's catalogue indicates that Svajer also owned a copy of the 1476 third edition of Eusebius' Historia ecclesiastica.Hain 6711; Proctor 6908; GW 9437; Goff E-127; BMC VII 933; BSB-Ink E-112; ISTC ie00127000; USTC 995892; AGAPE 322. For this copy, see Morelli, Catalogo di libreria posta in vendita in Venezia nell'anno MDCCXCIV, (1794), p. 10 ('exemplar nitidissimum'). See Mangani, 'Antonio Zatta editore veneziano di libri geografici', in Gerardo Mercatore (1996).…