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.
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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (Titus Flavius CLEMENS); Gentian HERVET, translator.
Omnia opera.
Paris, Sebastien Nivelle, 1572.
A thoroughly annotated copy of this early edition of the complete works of Clement of Alexandria, in the Latin translation of the theologian and humanist Gentian Hervet (or Hervetus, 1499–1584).
£4750
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CLEMENT VII.
Tröstliche vermanung Bapst Clements des VII. an Römische Kaiserlich und Künigliche Maiesteten &c. zu ernstlicher...
[Augsburg, Alexander Weissenhorn,] 1532.
First and only edition of this German translation of a papal bull addressing the Turkish threat in Europe.
£1500
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[COMMON PRAYER.]
The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,...
London, Millar Ritchie for J. Good and E. Harding, 1794.
A splendid copy of the Good and Harding Book of Common Prayer, in a striking masonic binding by John Lovejoy.
£1850
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[CONGREGATION OF RITES.]
Sacra Rituum congregatione … Card. Otthobono Veneta, seu Mediolanen. Beatificationis, & Canonizationis...
Rome, Tipografia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica, 1734.
A seemingly unrecorded volume supporting the beatification and canonisation of Girolamo Emiliani, the founder of the Somascan Fathers, bound in Rome for presentation to a member of the Mocenigo family of Venice, most likely the future doge Alvise Mocenigo while ambassador in Rome.
£1750
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[CONGREGAZIONE DELL’ORATORIO DI ROMA.]
Sammelband of fourteen libretti.
Rome, 1765–1768.
A sammelband of rare devotional libretti printed for the use of the Oratorians of Rome, many composed by Pietro Metastasio, in a handsome contemporary Roman binding matching a companion volume in the Henry Davis Gift in the British Library.
£1750
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CORTÈS, Gioacchino.
Dissertazione anti-Bolgeniana sopra la carità difesa dal suo autore l’abate Gioacchino Cortes contro...
Rome, Salomoni, 1793.
First edition of this response to and attempted refutation of Bolgeni’s Della carità o amor di Dio by the Spanish Jesuit Joachim Cortès. Della carità was the best-known work of the Jesuit theologian and controversialist Gianvincenzo Bolgeni, in which he had argued, against the Dominican...
£450
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COSTER, François.
Piarum et Christ. institutionum libri tres, in usum sodalitatis B. Mariae Virginis primum conscripti, nunc...
Douai, Jean Bogard, 1582.
Very rare Douai edition of this devotional work by the Belgian Jesuit François Coster (1532–1619), first published at Cologne in 1578, illustrated with woodcuts of the Crucifixion and Our Lady of Sorrows.
£675
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CYPRIAN.
D. Caecilii Cypriani episcopi Carthaginiensis, martyris Christi opera, quotquot perquirentibus reperire Dei munere concessum...
Paris, Guillaume Des Bois, 1564.
An attractive edition of the works of Cyprian (and indeed Pseudo-Cyprian) edited by the Parisian printer and scholar Guillaume Morel (d. 1564), with interesting marginalia.
£975
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CYPRIAN, Saint; Desiderius ERASMUS, editor.
Opera [– Alter tomus operum].
Lyons, Sébastien Gryphe, 1550.
A richly annotated copy of the works of the third-century martyr and bishop of Carthage, St Cyprian, with later Portuguese provenance.
£1800
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[DAMPMARTIN, Pierre de; Charles SOREL, editor.]
La fortune de la cour. Ouvrage curieux tiré des memoires d’un des principaux...
Paris, Nicolas de Sercy, 1642.
Rare second edition, revised and expanded with several new discourses, of this important political treatise dating from the French Wars of Religion.
£500
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DARRÉ, G.G.
‘Conferences diaconales données par Mr l’abbé Darré, Vicaire Général au GrandSéminaire d’Auch. Année...
Auch, 1864.
An attractively written manuscript of Abbé Darré’s practical manual for the use of young priests entering pastoral ministry, the text remaining unprinted, according to OCLC, until 1872.
£200
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DAVID, Jan.
Paradisus sponsi et sponsae, in quo messis myrrhae et aromatum, ex instrumentis ac mysteriis Passionis Christi colligenda,...
Antwerp, Balthasar and Jan Moretus ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1618 [(colophon:) 1617].
Second edition (first 1607) of an early Jesuit collection of emblems designed as spiritual and devotional exercises.
£850
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DELL’UVA, Benedetto.
Le vergini prudenti.
Florence, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1582.
First editions of three religious poems in ottava rima by the Capuan monk Benedetto dell’Uva, representative of Counter-Reformation poetry in southern Italy.
£650
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DE LUCA, Giovanni Battista.
Il Cardinale della S.R. Chiesa pratico di Gio. Battista de Luca nell’ozio Tusculano della Primavera...
Rome, nella stamperia della Reverenda Camera Apostolica, 1680.
Scarce first edition of this thorough work on the cardinalate by the Italian jurist and cardinal De Luca (1614–1683). De Luca studied and practiced law at Naples before moving to Rome in 1645, where he established his reputation as one of Italy’s pre-eminent jurists and worked closely with Innocent...
£300
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[DEVOTION.]
Meditation et preire du jeusne, seigneur ouvre me levres, & ma bouche announcer ta loüange. Ps. 51.v.17.
Se vend à Charenton, par Pierre Auvray, demeurant à Paris … [1670s?]
First edition, extremely rare, of a prayer in preparation for a fast, published for sale in Charenton, the first Protestant centre in the Paris region.
£850
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[DOMINICAN NUNS.]
Regola e costituzioni delle suore di S. Domenico riviste e ristampate d’ordine del rmo p. vicario generale...
Rome, Bernardo Morini, 1853.
Very rare first edition thus of the regulations governing Dominican nuns, published by order of Alexandre Vincent Jandel (1810–1872), who served as Master of the Order of Preachers from 1850 until his death.
£250
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DONI, Anton Francesco.
Mondi celesti, terrestri, et infernali, de gli academici pellegrini … mondo piccolo, grande, misto, risibile,...
Venice, Domenico Farri, 1567.
A handsome copy of the second edition of Doni’s collected utopian dialogues, with the addition of a full-page woodcut portrait, first owned by a German nobleman studying in Padua.
£850
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DRYDEN, John.
Religio Laici or a Layman’s Faith. A Poem …
London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1683.
First edition, second issue (with a few minor corrections; Macdonald located only two copies of the first): ‘a defence of the Anglican position, which shows his singular power of arguing in verse’ (Leslie Stephen, DNB). The inspiration for the poem was the translation of Richard Simon’s Histoire...
£400
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DU BOURGET DE CHAULIEU, Nicolas.
Nicolai Burgetii Cadomaei ex regia litteratorum academia opera miscellanea ad illustrissimum virum...
Caen, Guillaume Richard Poisson, [c. 1700].
Rare Caen edition of the Latin and French poetry and prose of Nicolas du Bourget.
£375
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[DUQUESNE, Arnaud-Bernard d’Icard.]
Vie de la vénérable mère Catherine de Bar, dite en religion Mecthilde du S. Sacrement,...
Nancy, Claude-Sigisbert Lamort; Paris, Le Berton and Herissant, 1775.
Uncommon biography of the French nun Mechtilde of the Blessed Sacrament (née Catherine de Bar, 1614-1698), founder of the order of Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, by the French theologian Arnaud-Bernard d’Icard Duquesne (1732-1791). Most copies lack the frontispiece...
£650