[Contra haereticos et gentiles]. Translated by Omnibonus Leonicenus. With additions by Petrus Brutus and Barnabas Celsanus

Autore: ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA (Saint, 296-373)

Tipografo: Leonardus Achates de Basilea

Dati tipografici: Vicenza, 1 February 1482


EDITIO PRINCEPS OF ATHANASIUS' CONTRA HAERETICOS ET GENTILES

Folio (288x202 mm). [88] leaves. Collation a2 b–l8 m6. Colophon at l. m6r. Leaves a1r and m6v are blank. Roman type, 50 lines, blank spaces for initials mostly with guide-letters. 19th-century quarter vellum, lettering piece on spine. Tiny worm hole/track to the first five leaves slightly affecting the text, gutter of last leaf reinforced. A clean, wide-margined copy.

Rare first edition of Athanasius of Alexandria's apologetic treatises against Arianism, in the Latin translation by the Italian humanist Ognibene Bonisoli da Lonigo (Omnibonus Leonicenus, 1412-1474).

The edition contains: Letter by Petrus Brutus, bishop of Kotor, to Barnabas Celsanus (dated Vicenza, 2 December 1481 ) followed by the latter's reply (dated Vicenza, 28 December 1481); Athanasius Alexandrinus, Epistula I ad Serapionem; Epistula ad episcopos Aegyptii et Libyae contra Arianos; praise of Photius; Athanasius Alexandrinus, Oratio I contra Arianos; Oratio de incarnatione Verbi; Oratio III contra Arianos; Marcellus de Ancyra (attr. Athanasius), Tractatus de incarnatione Dei verbi et contra Arianos; Ps. Athanasius, Disputatio habita in concilio Nicaeno contra Arium.

Athanasius of Alexandria, also known as Athanasius the Great, was a Church Father, the 20th Pope of Alexandria (as Athanasius I), and a Christian theologian whose career was marked by the conflict with Arius (c. 250-336) and Arianism. His intermittent episcopate spanned 45 years, more than 17 of which were spent in exile, as he was replaced four times over the years by order of four different Roman emperors. His major works include The Life of St. Antony, On the Incarnation, and Four Orations Against the Arians. The first edition of his collected works in the original Greek was printed by H. Commelin at Heidelberg in 1601.

Born in Lonigo around 1412, Ognibene Bonisoli went very young to Mantua where he studied until around 1433 with Vittorino da Feltre. Later he was in Basel, perhaps for the Council, and then settled in Vicenza, where he ran a private school and married around 1436 Agnese di Bartolomeo Calderari. Between 1436 and 1438 he enlisted in the army with his fellow disciple Ludovico Gonzaga in the service of Filippo Maria Visconti. In January 1441 the Great Council of Treviso summoned him from Vicenza to teach grammar and rhetoric. Two years later, in 1443, he abandoned the chair in Treviso for the similar one left in Vicenza by Bartolomeo Borfoni. In 1449 Ludovico Gonzaga wanted him in Mantua as tutor to his eldest son Federico to succeed Vittorino da Feltre. In Mantua he stayed four years and had among his pupils Platina, to whom he left the chair in 1453, insistently called back to Vicenza. He spent the rest of his life in Vicenza, now considered a city glory, until his death in 1474.

As a teacher he devoted himself to the study and teaching of the classics, translating from the Greek the De venatione (Milan, 1467) and various homilies of St. John Chrysostom. But his most important translation was the clear and correct version of the most important anti-Arian and anti-pagan works of St. Athanasius, which he dedicated to Pope Paul II. In 1482 Barnaba da Celsano, a pupil of Leonicenus, amended the translation and had it published in Vicenza by Leonardus of Basel under the title Contra haereticos et gentiles.

Leonicenus, however, devoted himself primarily to Latin literature, teaching courses on Quintilian and Cicero from which he drew his later commentaries, which were printed several times. Among historical works he commented on Sallust's De coniuratione Catilinae and Valerius Maximus' Factorum dictorumque memorabilium libri. He also studied poetry, commenting on the Satires of Juvenal and Persius. While teaching in Mantua he dedicated to his pupil Federico Gonzaga a short Latin grammar taken from Priscianus, which was later published under the title De octo partibus orationis (Venice, 1473). He also dealt with metrics in the treatise De versu heroico liber (Milan, 1473) (cf. G. Ballistreri, Bonisoli, Ognibene, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 12, Rome, 1971, s.v.).

Goff, A-1172; Hain-Copinger, 1905; BMC, VII, 1032; GW, 2760; Ch. Leitner, Ognibene Bonisoli da Lonigo und sein Traktat uber Metrik und Prosodie, Vienna, 1988, pp. 57-58; S. Gentile, ed., Umanesimo e Padri della Chiesa: manoscritti e incunaboli di testi patristici da Francesco Petrarca al primo Cinquecento, 1997, p. 350, no. 93; S.W.F. Hoffmann, Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesammten Litteratur der Griechen, Leipzig, 1838, I, p. 390.


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