Diodorus's work is here accompanied by Justinus’s abridged version of Trogus Pompeius’s history. Both books feature striking capitals and title-page devices. The typography of the first book is Jean Marchant’s, done for Jean Petit whose lion-and-leopard device is prominently displayed. The second book’s device shows initials of two of the three de Marnef brothers (E and G) beneath a pelican in her piety. This second book collates exactly like the Jean Petit edition of Justinus, printed sometime after December of 1507, and appears to differ from it solely in its title-page, probably reset only for insertion of the de Marnef device.

While one copy of Diodorus bound with Petit’s Justinus was found at Harvard, no record of the apparently extremely scarce de Marnef variant could be located.

Provenance: Charles Spencer, Third Earl of Sunderland, lot 3934 in the Sunderland Library sale (1882).

•  Diodorus: Moreau 1508:64; not in Schweiger. Justinus: not in Moreau, not in Schweiger. On Diodorus, see: Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, 146. 17th-century English calf, panelled, with gilt fleurons and elaborate front and back gilt floral center motifs, each worked with a minute WE. (You need a magnifying glass, but this is THERE.) Overall, showing wear with some leather chipped from spine, covers abraded, and joints starting. Pages mostly clean, with slight staining to inner margins from binding supports. Gilt cover lozenges still bright and the whole safe to be worked with.

The work was edited by Jacques Goupyl, and is laid out with the Latin translation by Jean Ruel in side-by-side columns with the Greek text.

Provenance: Early title-page inscription, “F.M. ex dono Eduardi Davenant.”

•  Adams D656; Durling 1135; Index aureliensis 154.341; Pritzel 2295.   18th-century speckled calf (front cover) and sheep (back cover) rebacked with lighter-colored sheep preserving original gilt-stamped leather title-label; boards scuffed and worn. Title-page with inked inscription as above (and in same hand, “Illuminat mentem Lectio.” First two leaves creased; first and last few leaves with light to moderate waterstaining. A very few marginalia in a tiny, neat, early inked hand. (20639)

Present here are 76 sermons, being vol. 4 of Eck's Christliche Auslegung der Evangelien. The volumes were all issued separately over the course of several years, by different publishers, and all are treated as stand-alone productions by VD16 and all bibliographies as well as library catalogues.

Provenance:  Ownership signature of Joannes Bintengerber (1579); unidentified 16th- or early 17th-century ownership mark in ink on top edge of volume (resembling a brand mark); Howard Osgood (late 19th-, early 20th-century collector and Baptist minister and teacher); later in collection of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (deaccessioned, with their old circular pressure-stamp partially discernable on title-page).

Evidence of readership: Scattered marginalia (e.g. 68r, 96v, 97r, 120r, 137r, 140v, 155v), usually short but not always.

Rare: Via OCLC and NUC Pre-1956 we trace only 4 copies in U.S. libraries.

•  VD16 E288.   Full modern calf old style: Round spine with raised bands, accented with gilt rules; red leather title label; rules in blind extending onto covers from each band to terminate in trefoils with blind double fillets beyond. Title-leaf with repairs to foremargin and to small losses in five places at or within the borders; same instances affect four places in the text on the verso. Foremargins of some other early and late leaves a little tattered and irregular, with some repair; endpapers soiled and one other leaf soiled in outer margin; leaf A6 repaired in inner margin. Pin-hole type worming, not serious, in the text at times; waterstain in inner margin of some leaves; outer corners, especially upper ones, bumped/creased in first part. Ownership inscriptions and marginalia as noted. Despite flaws that must be recounted, a sound and handsome book.  (25415)

Schrodt and Vogelstein offer a different summary: “The letters refer to an invitation sent to Eck by Zwingli, Haller and Kolbe, all of them evangelical preachers, to participate in a religious disputation scheduled to take place in Bern. The first letter, addressed to the confederation, explains courteously enough that he, Eck, does not intend to follow the call of the three proven heretics individually, a call not issued by the civic authorities. Not that he is afraid of their arguments; but he insists on an authoritative invitation and presence.

The other letters are framed in very aggressive and personally offensive language but carry the same message. Eck challenges the evangelical disputants to appear with him before any of the Catholic potentates, spiritual or secular, or any of the great (Catholic) universities, and he would shatter their heretical arguments.”

This pamphlet is type-signed, “Johan. Eck. inquisitor.”

WorldCat locatesonly one copy in North America and one in Great Britain; COPAC locates an additional one in Britain.

•  VD16 E422; Kuczynski 650; Hohenemser 3352; Pegg, Swiss Libraries, 1496; Schrodt & Vogelstein 64.   Removed from a nonce volume. Spine with a reinforcing strip of 19th-century German scrap paper. Title lightly dust-soiled and evidence of old erased pencilling. A clean, good copy.  (25964)