On the title page of this book one can find clasped hands above the motto BONA FIDE: in good faith. Six hundred and eighty pages later, on the final leaf, there’s a wreathed ring stamped SINE FRAVDE: without fraud. The brothers Godefroy and Marcellin Beringen of Lyon opened and closed their books with an oath of honesty, which is a charming thing for any printer to do, and a witty one when the book in question is the Natural History. Pliny the Elder is the man who branded magic "the most fraudulent of arts," fraudulentissima artium, and then spent thousands of columns cataloging its claims anyway.
The Natural History is the oldest surviving encyclopedia of the Western world, and the most ambitious book any Roman ever attempted: thirty-seven books gathering, by Pliny's own count, twenty thousand notable facts from some two thousand volumes. Cosmology, geography, the human animal, beasts, fishes, insects, trees, agriculture, wine, medicine, metals, painting, sculpture, and at the last, gemstones. It is also the great ancient reservoir of what would become Western esoteric tradition. Book 30 gives antiquity's fullest history of magic, tracing the art back to Zoroaster and following the magi across the Mediterranean. The medical books preserve hundreds of amulets, charms, and folk remedies that Pliny often reports skeptically. Book 37, which closes the work, is a major source for later lapidaries: the powers, virtues, and frauds of gems, including the tests by which a counterfeit stone may be caught. Herbals, lapidaries, natural magic, alchemy: for fifteen centuries, anyone writing on the hidden properties of things was quarrying Pliny. The author himself died in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, sailing toward the disaster to investigate the eruption and aid people trapped along the coast, a death so perfectly in character that his nephew's account of it became one of the most famous letters of antiquity.
This is the text of the Natural History as the Renaissance perfected it. The preface is by Erasmus, addressed to Stanislaus Turzo, Bishop of Olomouc, first printed by Froben of Basel in 1525; behind the text stands Sigismund Gelenius (1497-1554), the Czech humanist and Froben's great corrector, whose emendations from ancient manuscripts appear in the margins and whose Castigationes fill their own section at the end. After them comes the vast alphabetical index built on the model of Joannes Camers, advertised on the title page, with justice, as "by far the fullest index ever." The Beringen brothers gave this scholarship a handsome Lyon dress: a large folio set entirely in italic, two columns to the page, with the text numbered by column, 1 to 976, in the Continental manner. Collectors of the occult may know the printers' names from elsewhere, since "per Beringos fratres" floated on title pages of Agrippa's collected occult works for decades, long after the real brothers were gone.
Our copy survives in its first binding, a contemporary limp vellum wrapper, sewn on thongs with the stubs of its ties still present, the title inked along the spine in an early hand and again across the head of the lower cover, the mark of a book once shelved flat in the old manner. An old ink shelfmark survives on the cover, and there are ink marginal annotations within. Inside, the leaves are fresh and crisp, with scattered spotting and some staining to the title leaf, and the whole is complete: all 342 leaves, collated against the digitized copy at the University of Seville, from the Erasmus preface to the final index leaf with its parting SINE FRAVDE.
PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Gaius (Pliny the Elder, 23/24-79 AD). C. Plinii Secundi Historiae mundi libri triginta septem, post omnes omnium editiones cum uetustissimis aliquot, ijsque manu scriptis exemplaribus diligentissime collati. Lyon: Godefroy and Marcellin Beringen, 1548. With the Castigationes of Sigismund Gelenius and the index after Joannes Camers.
Physical Description: Folio (34.5 x 22.5 cm). [32] pp.; text in 976 numbered columns; [36] pp. (Castigationes); [128] pp. (index, with its own divisional title page); 342 leaves in all. Set throughout in italic type, two columns to the page, with woodcut historiated initials. Woodcut printer's devices: clasped hands with motto "Bona Fide" on the title page, wreathed ring with motto "Sine Fraude" on the final leaf. Preliminaries include Erasmus's dedicatory preface to Stanislaus Turzo, Bishop of Olomouc. Collated complete.
Binding: Contemporary limp vellum, sewn on thongs, remnants of ties; title inked along the spine in an early hand and repeated across the head of the lower cover; old ink shelfmark to one cover.
Condition: Vellum wrinkled and stained, with wear at extremities; title leaf spotted and creased with some old staining; scattered foxing and occasional dampstaining within, the text generally clean, crisp, and fresh. A complete, unsophisticated copy in its first binding.
On the title page of this book one can find clasped hands above the motto BONA FIDE: in good faith. Six hundred and eighty pages later, on the final leaf, there’s a wreathed ring stamped SINE FRAVDE: without fraud. The brothers Godefroy and Marcellin Beringen of Lyon opened and closed their books with an oath of honesty, which is a charming thing for any printer to do, and a witty one when the book in question is the Natural History. Pliny the Elder is the man who branded magic "the most fraudulent of arts," fraudulentissima artium, and then spent thousands of columns cataloging its claims anyway.
The Natural History is the oldest surviving encyclopedia of the Western world, and the most ambitious book any Roman ever attempted: thirty-seven books gathering, by Pliny's own count, twenty thousand notable facts from some two thousand volumes. Cosmology, geography, the human animal, beasts, fishes, insects, trees, agriculture, wine, medicine, metals, painting, sculpture, and at the last, gemstones. It is also the great ancient reservoir of what would become Western esoteric tradition. Book 30 gives antiquity's fullest history of magic, tracing the art back to Zoroaster and following the magi across the Mediterranean. The medical books preserve hundreds of amulets, charms, and folk remedies that Pliny often reports skeptically. Book 37, which closes the work, is a major source for later lapidaries: the powers, virtues, and frauds of gems, including the tests by which a counterfeit stone may be caught. Herbals, lapidaries, natural magic, alchemy: for fifteen centuries, anyone writing on the hidden properties of things was quarrying Pliny. The author himself died in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, sailing toward the disaster to investigate the eruption and aid people trapped along the coast, a death so perfectly in character that his nephew's account of it became one of the most famous letters of antiquity.
This is the text of the Natural History as the Renaissance perfected it. The preface is by Erasmus, addressed to Stanislaus Turzo, Bishop of Olomouc, first printed by Froben of Basel in 1525; behind the text stands Sigismund Gelenius (1497-1554), the Czech humanist and Froben's great corrector, whose emendations from ancient manuscripts appear in the margins and whose Castigationes fill their own section at the end. After them comes the vast alphabetical index built on the model of Joannes Camers, advertised on the title page, with justice, as "by far the fullest index ever." The Beringen brothers gave this scholarship a handsome Lyon dress: a large folio set entirely in italic, two columns to the page, with the text numbered by column, 1 to 976, in the Continental manner. Collectors of the occult may know the printers' names from elsewhere, since "per Beringos fratres" floated on title pages of Agrippa's collected occult works for decades, long after the real brothers were gone.
Our copy survives in its first binding, a contemporary limp vellum wrapper, sewn on thongs with the stubs of its ties still present, the title inked along the spine in an early hand and again across the head of the lower cover, the mark of a book once shelved flat in the old manner. An old ink shelfmark survives on the cover, and there are ink marginal annotations within. Inside, the leaves are fresh and crisp, with scattered spotting and some staining to the title leaf, and the whole is complete: all 342 leaves, collated against the digitized copy at the University of Seville, from the Erasmus preface to the final index leaf with its parting SINE FRAVDE.
PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Gaius (Pliny the Elder, 23/24-79 AD). C. Plinii Secundi Historiae mundi libri triginta septem, post omnes omnium editiones cum uetustissimis aliquot, ijsque manu scriptis exemplaribus diligentissime collati. Lyon: Godefroy and Marcellin Beringen, 1548. With the Castigationes of Sigismund Gelenius and the index after Joannes Camers.
Physical Description: Folio (34.5 x 22.5 cm). [32] pp.; text in 976 numbered columns; [36] pp. (Castigationes); [128] pp. (index, with its own divisional title page); 342 leaves in all. Set throughout in italic type, two columns to the page, with woodcut historiated initials. Woodcut printer's devices: clasped hands with motto "Bona Fide" on the title page, wreathed ring with motto "Sine Fraude" on the final leaf. Preliminaries include Erasmus's dedicatory preface to Stanislaus Turzo, Bishop of Olomouc. Collated complete.
Binding: Contemporary limp vellum, sewn on thongs, remnants of ties; title inked along the spine in an early hand and repeated across the head of the lower cover; old ink shelfmark to one cover.
Condition: Vellum wrinkled and stained, with wear at extremities; title leaf spotted and creased with some old staining; scattered foxing and occasional dampstaining within, the text generally clean, crisp, and fresh. A complete, unsophisticated copy in its first binding.
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