Beschreibung
nunc primum & conscriptus & aeditus. Accedunt aliquot epistolae serijs de rebus, in quibus item nihil est no[n] novum ac recens.Froben printer's device on the title and final page in 2 states (the latter larger), woodcut initials by Urs Graf. Rubricated throughout. 4to (202 x 155mm). 167, [1]pp. Rebound in modern boards covered with a fragment of a printed and rubricated leaf from an early printed Concordance. [Colophon:] Basel: In officina Frobeniana per Hieronymum Frobenium, et Nicolaum Episcopium, First Edition. Erasmus's De praeparatione ad mortem was written in response to a request in June 1533 from Anne Boleyn's father, Thomas Boleyn, for whom Erasmus had already written two works. Boleyn, to whom as Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde ("Vuiltisheriae & Ormaniae") the work is dedicated, had asked for "libellus aliquis de praeparatione ad moriendum", in other words an up-to-date version of the medieval Ars moriendi. The autograph manuscript survives in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and is entitled Liber quomodo se quisque debeat praeparare ad mortem. It was written at speed and printing was almost completed at Christmas 1533, although the preliminaries were still not ready. The book was not distributed until mid-February 1534 and it was not until 11 March that two copies ("libelli aurati") were sent to England but not, it seems, to Thomas Boleyn, who had to wait for a handsomely bound copy. The book was well received in London and strange to relate Queen Catherine of Aragon who died on 7 January 1536 and who had, as every schoolboy knows, been ousted to make room for Anne Boleyn, read her copy, literally to death (see letter 3090 from the Imperial Ambassador Chapuys, also mentioning the death of More). Whoever received the second copy sent to England, Anne, Catherine or even More, would not, one hopes, have realised quite how of evil augury such a gift was! It was an immediate success work and between its first appearance and 1540 some twenty editions were published in Latin, in Cologne, Paris, Cracow, Antwerp, and Lyons, and the work was translated into French (1537-39, 4 editions), Spanish (Burgos, 1535), German (1534), Dutch (1534) and English (1538 & 1543). See Erasmus, Opera omnia . ordinis quinti tomus primus (Amsterdam & Oxford, 1977). The work consists of 10 quires (A-K inclusive of the title and the dedication to "Thomae comiti Vuiltisheriae & Ormaniae" on the verso of A1) or 80 pages. To make the work more substantial Froben has added a number of letters from and to Erasmus, all recent in date. The letters by Erasmus are mostly connected with some aspect of death, and the mottoes on the title in Hebrew, Greek and Latin are all connected with death, and are taken from Isaiah (xxxviii), the Revelation of St. John (xiv. 21 'Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord') and St. Paul (Phil. i.21 'For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain'). The presence of the three languages is possibly meant to remind one of the trilingual inscription placed above Christ on the cross by order of Pilate, with the sub-text 'quod scripsi, scripsi'. The first letter is to the Spanish humanist scholar Juan de Vergara (1492-1557) about the deaths of Archbishop Wareham and of Christopher a Schidlowitz (Krzystof Szydlowiecki, 1467-1532, Chancellor of Poland) to whom Erasmus dedicated his Lingua (Basel, 1525). He tells us that Wareham's successor at Canterbury is Thomas Cranmer "by profession a theologian, a most upright man and of unimpeachable morals" who will, like Wareham, help Erasmus. The next letter to Johann Fabri or Faber (1478-1541), Bishop of Vienna, is particularly interesting for the information it affords us about Sir Thomas More, his origins and family. Probably to be dated to the end of 1532 (see Allen, Opus ep., letter 2750) or more likely early 1533 as it mentions that More has been deprived of the chancellorship and his place taken by a "nobilis" [Thomas Audley, later Baron Audley of Walden was appointed Lord Keeper o.
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