De Animorum immortalitate, libri III

BOUND BY THE FLEUR-DE-LYS MASTER

8vo (164x100 mm). 87, [1] pp. Collation: a-e⁸ f⁴. Printer's device on the title page. Contemporary calf, blind-ruled and gilt fillets on the panels, gilt floral ornaments in the center and in the corners, gilt edges, vellum endpapers (the free endpaper in the front almost entirely cut away, rebacked, lightly damaged, a few wormholes, panel's corners repaired). The binding comes from a French workshop, the so-called Fleur-de-Lys Master, which had also worked for Jean Grolier (cf. H. Nixon, Bookbindings from the Library of Jean Grolier, London, 1965, p. 9 and plate B, tools 18 and 19). From the library of Charles de Castellan (d. 1677), prior of the abbey of Saint-Évre of Toul, whose gilt arms were added on both the panels above the center-piece (Olivier/Roton, pl. 802). Ownership inscription on the upper margin of the title page faded and partly erased causing damages to the paper. Wormhole to the lower margin of the first 25 leaves not affecting the text.

First dated edition of this masterwork of Neo-Latin poetry. It was first privately printed in December 1535 without date and printer's name. Of this edition only three copies are known. In a letter by Paleario addressed to Pier Paolo Vergerio, he asks him to introduce the work to King Ferdinand of Austria, to whom he intended to dedicate it, but he did not obtain the expected Habsburg patronage. Newly added to the present edition is the long letter by Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto to the printer Sébastien Gryphe, in which he warmly recommends Paleario's poem (cf. E. Gallina, Aonio Paleario, Vol. I: Bibliografia, biografia, opere, Sora, 1989, pp. 37-38).

Written in Lucretian hexameters, the De animorum immortalitate aimed to refute Lucretius' views of the nature of primordial matter and especially of the human soul. In it Paleario proofs that the existence of God imperatively postulates the immortality of the soul. Interesting is his explanation of the magnet and the lightning (Book III, verses 199-289).

Antonio della Pagliara (or Paglia) is best known under the humanist name of Aonius Palearius. He was born in Veroli near Frosinone. From 1520 to 1529 he studied humanities at the University of Rome. Then for one year he entered the service of Ennio Filonardi, governor of Perugia. In 1530 he moved to Siena, where he found employment as a teacher. Until 1536 he lived between Siena and Padua, where he continued his studies and in 1535 made the acquaintance of Pietro Bembo. In the same period he wrote his major work, the De animorum immortalitate libri III, first published in a private undated edition around 1535, then reprinted by Gryphe in Lyons in 1536.

In Padua Paleario involved himself in religious debates and read the work of Luther and Erasmus. In 1537 he married Marietta Guidotti and settled in Colle Val d'Elsa, where he acquired a property which he made the center of a small circle attended by sympathizers of the Reformation. In Siena he wrote his most significant theological work, the Actio in pontifices Romanos (posthumously printed at Leipzig in 1600), a vigorous indictment against what he believed to be the fundamental error of the Roman Church in subordinating Scripture to tradition. In 1542 he was charged with the accusation of heresy before the archbishop of Siena Francesco Bandini Piccolomini and was released through the intervention of Jacopo Sadoleto. In 1543 he defended himself writing an oration Pro se ipso, in which he praises Erasmus and many other reformers.

Because his orthodoxy remained suspect, he did not obtain the chair of Latin at the University of Siena, but in 1546 the city council of Lucca invited him there to teach humanities. He spent the following years dividing himself between Lucca and Colle, until 1555 when he decided to move to Milan. In 1559 he had to submit to another trial for heresy and in 1567, after the publication of his works in Basel (by Thomas Guarin) without the censorships required by the Church authorities, he was imprisoned and sent to Rome. Here after two years spent in the prison of Tor di Nona, refusing to abjure, he was condemned as impenitent heretic and, on 3 July 1570, he was hanged and burned in the square in front of Ponte Sant'Angelo, the same place where only three years earlier Pietro Carnesecchi had also been executed (E. Gallina, Op. cit., pp. 167-770; see also G. D'Onofrio & A. Gabriele, Aonio Paleario tra l'edito e l'inedito. Profilo biografico e documentazione notarile, Sora, 2008; and C. Quaranta, Paleario, Aonio, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, Rome, 2014, vol. 80, s.v.).

J. Baudrier, Bibliographie lyonnaise, Lyon, 1910, VIII, p. 89; H. Schüling, Bibliographie der psychologischen Literatur des 16. Jahrhunderts, Hildesheim, 1967, p. 197.

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