On the title page of this 1548 Natural History, the Lyon printers Godefroy and Marcellin Beringen put clasped hands above BONA FIDE, “in good faith.” On the final leaf comes a wreathed ring and SINE FRAVDE, “without fraud.” The brothers opened and closed their book with a promise of honesty, a charming thing for any printer to do, and particularly apt here. Pliny the Elder called magic “the most fraudulent of arts” and then cataloged its claims at length.
The Natural History gathers thirty-seven books on the natural world and human arts. By Pliny’s own count, it drew twenty thousand notable facts from some two thousand volumes. For later writers on the hidden properties of things, it offered a great deal to work with. Book 30 traces the history of magic back to Zoroaster. The medical books preserve charms and remedies that Pliny often reports skeptically, while the final book treats gemstones and their supposed virtues, including ways to catch a counterfeit. A reader of Renaissance natural magic will keep encountering familiar material.
This edition draws on the work of Erasmus and the Czech humanist Sigismund Gelenius. Erasmus’s dedicatory preface was first printed at Basel in 1525. Gelenius’s corrections appear in the margins and in a separate section at the end, followed by the extensive alphabetical index after Joannes Camers. There is a practical pleasure in that apparatus: an enormous ancient collection has been made easier for a sixteenth-century reader to find a way through.
The Beringen brothers printed the text in italic, two columns to the page. Their name has an afterlife familiar to collectors of the occult: “per Beringos fratres” continued to appear on title pages of Agrippa’s collected works long after the actual brothers were gone.
This copy retains its contemporary limp vellum binding, sewn on thongs, with remnants of the ties. An early hand titled the spine and the head of the lower cover, the latter consistent with shelving the book flat. There are marginal annotations within and an old shelfmark on the cover. All 342 leaves are present, collated against the digitized copy at the University of Seville, from Erasmus’s 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 1548 Natural History, the Lyon printers Godefroy and Marcellin Beringen put clasped hands above BONA FIDE, “in good faith.” On the final leaf comes a wreathed ring and SINE FRAVDE, “without fraud.” The brothers opened and closed their book with a promise of honesty, a charming thing for any printer to do, and particularly apt here. Pliny the Elder called magic “the most fraudulent of arts” and then cataloged its claims at length.
The Natural History gathers thirty-seven books on the natural world and human arts. By Pliny’s own count, it drew twenty thousand notable facts from some two thousand volumes. For later writers on the hidden properties of things, it offered a great deal to work with. Book 30 traces the history of magic back to Zoroaster. The medical books preserve charms and remedies that Pliny often reports skeptically, while the final book treats gemstones and their supposed virtues, including ways to catch a counterfeit. A reader of Renaissance natural magic will keep encountering familiar material.
This edition draws on the work of Erasmus and the Czech humanist Sigismund Gelenius. Erasmus’s dedicatory preface was first printed at Basel in 1525. Gelenius’s corrections appear in the margins and in a separate section at the end, followed by the extensive alphabetical index after Joannes Camers. There is a practical pleasure in that apparatus: an enormous ancient collection has been made easier for a sixteenth-century reader to find a way through.
The Beringen brothers printed the text in italic, two columns to the page. Their name has an afterlife familiar to collectors of the occult: “per Beringos fratres” continued to appear on title pages of Agrippa’s collected works long after the actual brothers were gone.
This copy retains its contemporary limp vellum binding, sewn on thongs, with remnants of the ties. An early hand titled the spine and the head of the lower cover, the latter consistent with shelving the book flat. There are marginal annotations within and an old shelfmark on the cover. All 342 leaves are present, collated against the digitized copy at the University of Seville, from Erasmus’s 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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