Continental

Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison, Charlotte Miller or Sally Deegan

Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.

We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia.  Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.

 
  1. CADOGAN, William Bromley.

    The Felicity of God’s Children, considered in a Sermon, preached upon the Death of a Lady, in the parish...

    Reading: Printed and Sold by Smart and Cowslade; and sold by J. Rusher, Reading; Messrs. Robinsons, V. Griffiths ... & J. Matthews ... London;...

    First edition, a funeral sermon by the popular preacher William Bromley Cadogan, a friend of John Newton, for the local widow Maria Littlehales, printed at the request of her children.

    £75

  2. CALLINI, Bartolommeo.

    Arrolandosi sotto le insegne di Gesù Cristo col prender l’acqua del santo battesimo nell’insigne cattedrale...

    Vicenza, Tipografia Paroni, 1802.

    A seemingly unrecorded sonnet celebrating the conversion from Judaism to Catholicism of one Marco Mortera of Vicenza, written by his catechist, the Olivetan monk and lecturer in theology Bartolommeo Callini.

    £350

  3. CALMET, Antoine Augustin.

    Commentaire litteral sur tous les livres de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament. Les deux livres d’Esdras,...

    Paris, Pierre Emery, 1712.

    First edition of the commentary on the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, and Esther by the French Benedictine Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672–1757), from the library of the last male descendant of the distinguished Colbert family.

    £450

  4. [CAMBOUT, Sébastien Joseph du; John EVELYN, attributed translator].

    The moral Practice of the Jesuites. Demonstrated by...

    London, Printed for Simon Miller, at the Star at the West-end of St. Paul’s, 1670.

    First edition in English of La morale pratique des Jesuites (1669), a polemical Jansenist critique of Jesuit practices intended to ‘inspire the World, and the Jesuites themselves, with horror at their detestable Morality’ (p. [4]).

    £700

  5. [CANONS REGULAR OF THE LATERAN.]

    Regula et constitutiones Canonicorum Regularium congregationis S. Salvatoris, Ordinis Sancti...

    Rome, apud Paulum Bladum, 1592. 

    The most complete edition, rare, of the Rule and Constitutions of the Order of the Canons Regular of St Augustine of the Congregation of the Most Holy Saviour, printed on vellum, with two seemingly unrecorded cancels, from the library of a former Abbot General of the Order. 

    £18500

  6. CARLI, Paolo Francesco da Montecarlo.

    La Svinatura di Barbigi Mezzabarba (Paol Francesco Carli da Montecarlo) resa a miglior lezione...

    Campobasso, Stab. Tip. Del Progresso, 1878.

    Rare edition of a satire by poet and abbot Paolo Francesco Carli (1652–1725) ridiculing the work of his nemesis, the Tuscan priest and schoolmaster Giovan Paolo Lucardesi, who made a tremendous theological blunder in a sonnet in which he describes Christ as ‘crucified and triune’, thus undermining...

    £150

  7. [CAROLS.]

    Noels et cantiques nouveaux, où l’on voit l’histoire de ce qui a précedé, accompagné et suivi la naissance de...

    Metz, Jean Antoine, 1732.

    Very rare collection of carols and canticles celebrating Christ’s nativity, printed at Metz in northeast France.

    £575

  8. [CARTHUSIANS. GUIGO DE CASTRO, compiler.]

    Repertorium statutoru[m] ordinis cartusiensis per ordinem alphabeti.

    Basel, Johann Amerbach, 1510.

    First printed edition of the Statutes of the Carthusian Order, printed at the expense of the editor, Gregor Reisch (c. 1467–1525), author of the Margarita philosophica, for distribution to members of the Order only.

    £7500

  9. CASTELLESI, Adriano.

    Hadriani cardinalis de vera philosophia libri IIII ex quatuor ecclesiae doctoribus conscripti, varia eruditione...

    Cologne, Melchior von Neuss, 1540.

    A fine sammelband of theological works, with interesting provenance. The De vera philosophia (first published Bologna, 1507) is the most important work of the Italian cardinal and English agent in Rome, Adriano Castellesi (c. 1461–1521). ‘The dedication to Henry VII suggests that Castellesi...

    £1750

  10. CATHERINE of Siena.

    Dialogo della serafica vergine, et sposa di Christo S. Catherina da Siena. Diviso in quattro trattati …...

    Venice, Giacomo Cornetti, 1589.

    An uncommon edition of Saint Catherine of Siena’s famous Dialogo, thought to have been composed between 1377 and 1378, and to have been largely dictated by the saint while she was in a state of ecstasy.

    £550

  11. CATTANI DA DIACCETO, Francesco. 

    Homelie … sopra la sequenza del corpo di Christo. 

    Florence, Lorenzo Ducale, 1559.

    Uncommon first edition of a collection of eleven sermons by Francesco Cattani da Diacceto (1531–1595), bishop of Fiesole, dedicated to Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. 

    £550

  12. [CHARITY.]

    Costituzioni della Congregazione della Carità di Parma sotti gli auspizi di San Filippo Neri rinnovate nell’anno...

    Parma, Stamperia Reale, [1778].

    Uncommon set of constitutions for the Congregazione della Carità of Parma, printed after its refoundation in 1777.

    £300

  13. [CHARTONNET, Antoine-François.] 

    Considerations sur les devoirs des personnes qui sont engagées par leur état à servir les...

    Paris, chez Edme Couterot, 1695. 

    Rare first edition of this religious manual of instruction aimed at those caring for the sick in hospitals, exhorting carers to look after the bodily and spiritual needs of their charges ‘with charity, gentleness, compassion, patience, diligence, zeal, respect and humility’. 

    £275

  14. CHEVALIER, André-Joseph, professor; A.J. BERENTS, compiler.

    ‘Tractatus De Fide, Spe et Charitate Dictatus ab...

    [Douai, 9 March–4 August] 1787.

    A manuscript treatise concerning the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity as expounded in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, compiled by a student at the University of Douai from lectures by André-Joseph Chevalier.

    £375

  15. [CHINA.]

    Business report written to a Mr Luo by two Chinese Christian employees.

    [China], 咸豐壬子年 [1852].

    An interesting mid-nineteenth-century report written by two employees (Andrew Zhu 朱安德肋 and Anna Pan 潘亞納) to their manager Mr Luo 羅當家大人, granting us an unusual glimpse into the personal lives of two nineteenth-century Chinese Christian converts.

    £750

  16. [CHOISY, François Timoléon, Abbé de.]

    Journal ou suite de voyage de Siam. En forme des lettres familieres fait en M.DC.LXXXV...

    Amsterdam, Pierre Mortier, 1687.

    Amsterdam edition, issued the same year as the first Paris edition, recounting a voyage to Siam by the prolific French writer, former cross-dresser, and Jesuit priest, the Abbé de Choisy.

    £300

  17. CHRYSOSTOM, John. 

    [Opera: Homeliae.]  Que in secundo Ioannis Chrisostomi volumine continentur: Super Mattheum homelie 89 …...

    Venice, Stagnino & de Gregoriis, 1503. 

    First edition of Chrysostom’s Opera omnia, the second volume (of two), annotated throughout by two critical readers. 

    £2800

  18. CHRYSOSTOM, John.

    [Opera] Que in secondo volumine continentur super Mattheum homiliae … super Joannem homiliae … de laudibus...

    [Venice, Bernardino Stagnino and Gregorio de’ Gregori, February 1503.]

    The second volume of the first collected edition of John Chrysostom’s sermons on the New Testament and the monastic life, a wide-margined copy with extensive annotations.

    £2500

  19. CHRYSOSTOM, John.

    Opera …

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Bernardino Stagnino and Gregorio de’ Gregori, 9 February 1503.]

    The first collected edition of John Chrysostom’s sermons, a wide-margined copy with sixteenth-century Bohemian provenance in a contemporary pigskin binding with bosses, neatly annotated and with two extensive additional manuscript indexes dated 1506.

    £3750

  20. [CHURCH OF ENGLAND.]

    The New Weeks Preparation for a worthy Receiving of the Lord’s Supper, as recommended and appointed by the...

    London, printed from the edition of the late Edwd. Wickstead, for T. Wilson and R. Spence, York, [c. 1780–1800?].

    An attractive copy of two later editions of these collections of prayers, hymns, meditations, and self-examinations, with a focus on Holy Communion.

    £250