Beda the Venerable Pseudo Bede (1 results)
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Published by [Peter Wagner], [Nürnberg (Nuremberg)], 1491
- Hardcover
- First Edition
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Add to basket1st Edition. Title page with full page woodcut illustration. First edition. Spine rubbed, with minor wear to corners. Bound in a later half-leather binding, spine with gilt fillets; buckram-covered boards. 4to. a-m8, n10 [= 106 unnumbered leaves]. One of only three incunable editions transmitted under the name of Bede, combining… a late medieval scholastic core with a humanist Ciceronian addendum. The Repertorium auctoritatum Aristotelis, traditionally attributed to Bede the Venerable, is an alphabetically arranged florilegium of philosophical auctoritates. It consists of brief excerpts, drawn primarily from Aristotle, each accompanied by a short explanatory or paraphrastic comment. Conceived as a practical tool for reference and instruction, it was well suited to late medieval scholastic teaching and preaching. The attribution to Bede is made explicit on the opening page, which states "a reverendissimo et venerabili Beda presbitero edita", a formulation that contributed to the work's long-standing acceptance under his authorship. The title page is illustrated with a full-page woodcut depicting a scholastic lecture scene, showing a master reading at a lectern before a group of students, visually underscoring the book's pedagogical function. The main scholastic compilation is followed by the appended Auctoritates Ciceronis, introduced separately and preceded by a dedicatory epistle to Sebald Schreyer by Peter Danhauser, and the volume concludes with a short Latin poem, functioning as a conventional closing piece. The Aristotelian material is presented without distinction between authentic and spurious works, a feature characteristic of medieval Aristotelian transmission. Aristotle is treated as a unified authority, without philological discrimination. Alongside him, the compilation draws extensively on other philosophical auctoritates, notably Boethius, Avicenna, Averroes, and Porphyry, with Seneca also cited, particularly in moral contexts. In later manuscript and printed traditions, Senecan material becomes increasingly prominent. The present Nuremberg edition, printed by Peter Wagner, was prepared under the direction of Peter Danhauser of Nuremberg, an editor and organizer of learned texts active in the 1490s and connected with the humanist and scholarly circles of Nuremberg and Vienna, including Hartmann Schedel, Conrad Celtis, and Sebald Schreyer (see Worstbrock). In this edition, Danhauser appended the humanist Auctoritates Ciceronis to the scholastic Repertorium. This Ciceronian section is introduced by the standard preface praising Cicero as studii humanitatis maximus cultor, taken verbatim from Albrecht von Eyb's Margarita poetica, and is preceded by a dedicatory epistle addressed to Sebald Schreyer, church administrator of St. Sebald and a prominent Nuremberg patron. In the dedication, Danhauser presents the Ciceronian excerpts as a moral and pedagogical aid for students and young readers and frames the addition as a humanist offering connected to Schreyer's cultural and bibliophilic activity. The Repertorium was later reissued without the Ciceronian appendix and continued to circulate independently into the sixteenth century. Bede the Venerable (ca. 673-735), an Anglo-Saxon monk of Wearmouth-Jarrow, was among the most influential scholars of the early Middle Ages, best known for the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and numerous biblical and chronological works. Modern scholarship has demonstrated that the attribution of the Repertorium to Bede is untenable: its reliance on Aristotelian texts, Arabic commentators such as Avicenna and Averroes, and later scholastic authorities places its composition firmly in the late Middle Ages. The work is therefore regarded as Pseudo-Bede. This book is one of only three known incunable editions transmitted under the name of Bede the Venerable. According to the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC), these comprise the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and two editions of the Repertorium: the present first edition, which includes the appended Auctoritates Ciceronis, and the later Cologne edition issued by Quentell in 1495. Although the Repertorium is now recognized as a pseudo-Bedan work, it nonetheless belongs to this strictly delimited incunable corpus and occupies a defined position within the earliest printed tradition of works attributed to Bede, offering a clear example of late medieval scholastic compilation with a limited humanist overlay. Scarce. ISTC records 45 surviving copies, of which only four are held in the United Kingdom (Glasgow University Library; British Library; Wellcome Collection, imperfect; Bodleian Library, Oxford) and three in the United States (Southern Methodist University, Bridwell Library; University of Rochester, Rush Rhees Library; Library of Congress). With the exception of the present copy, no other example appears to have been offered for sale according to Rare Book Hub (RBH). References: ISTC ib00294000; Goff B-294; HC 2733* = H 1926; GW 3757; Klebs 164.1; Grabmann, M. (2022). Methoden und Hilfsmittel des Aristotelesstudiums im Mittelalter (Der Text des Neusatzes folgt der Ausgabe »Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften«, Philosophisch-historische Abteilung, Jahrgang 1939, Heft 5, Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, München 1939). Boer Verlag; Worstbrock, F. J. (2015). Deutscher Humanismus 1480-1520, Verfasserlexikon. Walter de Gruyter, De Gruyter . Bookplate of Joseph Prill (presumably the German theologian and scholar, 1852?1935) on the inner front board. Spine rubbed, with minor wear to corners. First and last leaves reinforced, probably at the time the present binding was made. 19th-century shelf marks and pencil annotations on the pastedown; old collection stamp on the title page and the date ?1490? added in pencil. Occasional early marginal annotations throughout. Some light browning, mostly marginal. Complete and internally sound, overall a very good copy. Bound in. Title page with full page woodcut illustration. (illustrator).
