Lazari Bayfii Annotationes in legem II. De captivis & postliminio reversis, in quibus tractatur de re navali, per autorem recognitae. Eiusdem Annotationes in tractatum de auro & argento legato, quibus vestimentorum & vasculorum genera explicantur. His omnibus imagines ab antiquissimis monumentis desumptas ad argumenti declarationem subiunximus. Item Antonii Thylesii De coloribus libellus, à coloribus vestium non alienus. Colophon: Basileae apud Hier. Frobenium et Nic. Episcopium MDXXXVII

SAMMELBAND OF THREE HUMANISTIC WORKS

4to. 323, [i.e. 319], [9] pp. Pp. 301-304 omitted in pagination. Collation: a-r⁴ s⁶ t-z⁴ A-E⁴ F⁶ G-M⁴ N⁶ O⁴ P⁶ Q⁴. Froben's devices on the title page and at the end. Colophon on l. Q4v. Woodcut decorative initials. Roman, italic, and greek type. With 33 in-text woodcut illustrations: 23 (4 of which are repeated) of ships, 3 of clothing (a female figure, a senator in a toga and a soldier), and 7 of vases.

Second collected edition bearing the same dedication addressed by Lazare de Baïf to the King of France Francis I (Paris, 25 August 1536) and Charles Estienne's short preface as the first edition (Paris, Robert Estienne, 1536). Both editions include the De re navali, the De re vestiaria and the De vasculis by Baïf, as well as Antonio Telesio's treatise on colours, first published in Venice in 1528.

Baïf scholarly reputation rests on these three Latin works: De re vestiaria (first edition: Basel, J. Bebel, 1526), dedicated to Jean de Lorraine, which contains his annotations to the law Vestis, ff. de auro et argento legato (Digest xxXIV il 23-5) and at the time of its publication earned him the second rank after Budé among the French scholars; De vasculis (first edition: Basel, H. Froben, 1531), dedicated to the chancellor Antoine du Bourg; and finally De re navali first appeared in Robert Estienne Paris edition of 1536. This latter edition, as well as the present Froben edition, is accompanied by illustrations derived from sketches of the pillar of Trajan and other monuments which had been obtained for Baïf by the French ambassador to Rome, François de Dinteville. After Froben reprint, another edition, expanded and revised by the author, was published posthumously by Robert Estienne (Paris, September 1549). Charles Estienne rearranged Baïf's work for the use of young students (various editions, 1535-37).

Lazare de Baïf (Bayfius, Bayfus) was born around 1496 of a noble family of Anjou at the Château des Pins near La Fleche. After studying law, he went to Rome with Christophe de Longueil (c. 1516) and studied with Janus Lascaris and Marcus Musurus, no doubt at the recently established college on the Quirinal. After several years Baïf returned to France and taught law and letters at the University of Angers. In these years he laid the groundwork for his learned publications, investigating the practical side of ancient life on the basis of the Corpus juris, according to the method developed by Budé. In 1525 Baïf entered the service of Cardinal Jean de Lorraine. After taking part in the peasants war in Alsace, he followed the cardinal to Lyon. They were on their way to Spain, but the freeing of King Francis I made that further trip unnecessary. In 1527 he was named apostolic protonotary, a position which enabled him to receive two abbeys in commendam. In 1529 Francis I appointed him resident ambassador to Venice, and he left for his new post on 25 June. In Venice Baïf showed great zeal in producing scrupulous diplomatic dispatches. Baïf received Girolamo Aleandro, Giambattista Egnazio, and Lazzaro Bonamico, and appealed to Francis I in favour of Michelangelo. He also corresponded with Pietro Bembo, Jacopo Sadoleto, Germain de Brie, and Erasmus, and continued his philological and archeological research. He even began studying Hebrew, presumably with Elias Levita. From May 1530 Baïf employed as his secretary Pierre Bunel of Toulouse. In February 1532 his illegitimate son, Jean-Antoine, was born, a future poet of the Pléiade to whose education Baïf always paid careful attention, entrusting him to excellent tutors such as Charles Estienne and Jacques Toussain. At the beginning of 1534 Baïf was recalled from Venice at his own request. Returning to Paris, he set up house in the suburb of Saint-Marceau, keeping his son with him. On 17 November 1530 he had been appointed clerical councillor in the Parlement. In 1538 he was named master of requests in the royal household. In 1540 he was sent to the conference of Haguenau and departed for this important mission, accompanied by Charles Estienne, his friend and disciple, and by Pierre de Ronsard. He was to accomplish a feat of diplomatic ambiguity, namely to reassure the German Protestants at the same time as their co-religionists were being persecuted in France, and he was not, it seems, very successful. He nevertheless retained royal favour and was later charged with several other missions. Baïf died in 1547. Baïf tried his hand at French poetry and left a rhyme translation of Sophocles' Electra (Paris, 1537). From his correspondence we know that he also translated into French the first four Lives of Plutarch (M.-M. de la Garanderie, Lazare de Baïf, in: “Contemporaries of Erasmus”, Toronto, 1985, I, pp. 87-88).

VD16, B-157; Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\BVEE\013630; Adams, B-35.

(bound with:)

Tomasi (or TOMAI), Pietro (Petrus Ravennas, ca. 1448-1508). Petri Ravennatis Memoriae ars quae Phoenix inscribitur, utiliss. ad omnium scientiarum professores grammaticos, rhetores, dialecticos, leguleios, philosophos, medicos, & theologos. Vienne, Macé Bonhomme, 1541

4to. 16 pp. Collation: A-B⁸. Roman and italic type. Printer's device on the title page. Large historiated initial on black ground.

Extremely rare early editionof this important treatise on mnemonics which appeared for the first time in Venice in 1491 and was afterwards reprinted several times until the end of the sixteenth century. It also had a considerable influence on Giordano Bruno.

The Phoenix of Pietro da Ravenna affirmed itself as the best known of all manuals on memory. It had several editions in several countries, it was translated into many languages, included in Gregor Reisch's widespread general culture encyclopedia, and copied by enthusiastic admirers from the printed editions. Tomai was a formidable propagandist of himself, and this helped to spread his methods, but his fame as a master of memory was probably due, in large measure, to the fact that he brought mnemonics to the secular world: those who needed an art of memory for practical purposes, and not to remember the Hell's circles, they could turn to his Phoenix. Pietro gives practical advices. When he discusses the rule that memory loci must be formed in quiet places, he says that the best type of building that can be used for that purpose is an abandoned church. Tomai was probably a person with an excellent natural memory, who had practiced classical techniques to the point to really be able to do amazing mnemonic exploits. For the images, Tomai makes use of the classical principle according to which memory images should resemble, if possible, unknown people. Tomai laicized and popularized the art of memory. Many later writers of mnemotechnics mention him, including the Dominican Romberch, who cites him among the authorities (cf. F.A. Yates, The Art of Memory, London, 1966, ad indicem).

“In Peter of Ravenna's scheme a letter of the alphabet acts as the primary key or locus or file. The texts are placed in the file by a secondary key, a word beginning with the primary letter […] The key words are themselves arranged also by general topic: natural history, sacred subjects, vices and virtues, etc. And the confirmation of his orderly arrangement lies in his ability to replicate his lists. In other words, the memory in this scheme is organized like a subject concordance of texts” (M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 114-115).

Pietro Tomasi (or Tomai) from Ravenna was a jurisconsult and a poet. A pupil of Alessandro Tartagna in Padua, he taught civil and canon law in Italy and in Greifswald, Germany, where he probably died around 1508. “The great fame which this singular figure enjoyed in Italy and throughout Europe was not on account of his (by no means negligible) legal scholarship, but rather because he presented himself as a living example of the validity of an art in which many scholars had invested their hopes and aspirations […] As professor of law at Bologna, Ferrara, Pavia, Pistoia and Padua, Pietro Tomai doubtless contributed to the increasing interest in the ars memorativa throughout Italy […] Most of the Italian and German theorists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries owed a considerable debt to the work of Ravenna” (P. Rossi, Clavis universalis. Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz, Bologna, 1983, pp. 20-22).

M.N. Young, Bibliography of Memory, Philadelphia-New York, 1961, p. 276; Bibliotheca magica. Dalle opere a stampa della Biblioteca Casanatense di Roma (secc. XV-XVIII), Florence, 1985, no. 1174; P. Rossi, Op. cit., p. 27; Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\RAVE\058153.

(bound with:)

BÉRAULD, Nicolas (1473-1550). Nicolai Beraldi De vetere ac novitia iurisprudentia oratio, cum erudita ad antiquorum lectionem ac studium exhortatione. Lyon, Sébastien Gryphe, 1533.

4to. [8] leaves. Collation: a-b⁸. Gryphe's devices on the title page and at the end. Woodcut decorative initials.

Printed in the same year also in Paris by Chrétien Wechel and Jérôme de Gourmont. An augmented edition of 12 leaves was issued by Gryphe in the same year.

Nicolas Bérault (Beraldus) was born into a family from the Bas-Poitou, established at Orléans since the fifteenth century. He studied the arts and civil law in his native Orléans. After a voyage to Italy (c 1494) he returned to Orléans and founded a private school. It says much for the reputation of this school that Erasmus spent a few days with Bérault on his way to Italy in the autumn of 1506. The exact date when Bérault began to study Greek is unknown, but he was taught by Girolamo Aleandro, who visited Orléans from December 1510 to June 1511 at the invitation of Jean Pyrrhus d'Angleberme, a friend and fellow-student of Bérault. At about the same time, Bérault lectured at the University of Orléans on the Corpus juris, and Guillaume Budé saw in him a disciple who would continue his own work. In 1512 Bérault left for Paris to continue his studies. At first as an avocat and later as a conseiller in the Parlement, he became one of the most important members of the Paris humanist circle. At his home and in different colleges he gave public lectures on the classical authors, many of which were subsequently published. He also edited, translated from Greek to Latin, or at least prefaced a considerable number of publications. Bérault is notably the first editor of Lucretius in France (Paris, 1514). His edition of Pliny's Historia naturalis (Paris, 1516) gained the admiration of Erasmus. While this edition was being printed late in 1514, the printer, Jean Barbier, died. Bérault took charge of his press and later married Barbier's widow, but his career as a printer was short-lived. However, he remained in business as a bookseller until 1518, when Bishop Etienne Poncher engaged him as his secretary and took him with him on his diplomatic missions to England (August 1518) and Montpellier (April 1519). Around 1525 Bérault resumed his teaching, and Etienne Dolet, Melchior Wolmar, and François Poncher were among his students. When Etienne Poncher died in February 1525 Jean d'Orléans, archbishop of Toulouse, became Bérault's new protector. In 1529 Bérault succeeded Paolo Emilio as the royal historiographer and, on the occasion of the treaty of Cambrai, published an Oratio de pace restituta (Paris, 1529). In 1531, Louise de Montmorency, the widow of Gaspard de Coligny, chose Bérault to tutor her three sons. He stayed several times at Châtillon-sur-Loing in the Orléanais and remained particularly attached to the eldest Coligny son, Odet, the future cardinal of Châtilion. With Odet he followed the movements of the court, accompanying him in 1533-4 to the south of France, on the occasion of the marriage of the future Henry II to Catherine de' Medici. A speech entitled De vetere ac novitia jurisprudentia that Bérault had in vain hoped to deliver to the students of Toulouse was printed in no fewer than four editions in 1533. For a part of the summer of that year, Bérault resided near Avignon at the home of François de Clermont-Lodève and there wrote his most personal work, a dialogue entitled Dialogus quo rationes quaedam explicantur quibus dicendi ex tempore facultas parari potest deque ipsa dicendi ex tempore facultate (Lyon,1534). In the spring of 1537 he participated in a banquet given to celebrate Etienne Dolet's release from jail. Little is known about him after this date (cf. P.G. Bietenholz, Nicholas Bérault, in: “Contemporaries of Erasmus”, Toronto, 1985, I, pp. 126-128).

OCLC, 77217372; Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\CFIE\040687.

Three works in one volume (205x145 mm). Contemporary limp vellum, inked title on the lower edge (traces of ties, slightly soiled and rubbed). Manuscript shelf marks and annotations on the front flyleaves and purchase note (“Emptus Patavii 2 die Octobris A° p70 [i.e. 1570] 32 sol.”) on the back pastedown. Several contemporary or slightly later marginal annotations by different hands. Small worm track to the first two leaves of the first work not affecting the text, uniformly browned throughout, some occasional marginal staining, all in all a good, genuine copy.

[14016]