Adventure and Art

23. Maffeus, Celsus (1425-1508).

Monumentum compendiosum pro confes-
sionibus cardinalium et prelatorum.
Venice: Petrus de Quarengiis,
22 March 1498. Chancery 4°.

Entry 24, Figure 8.

Orígenes.

[In Evangelium Ioannis Explanationum.¡

Venice: Andrea & Giacomo Spinelli, 1551.

Actual size of block 4.8 x 4.1 cm.

Celsi Maffei was a member of a prom¬
inent family of Verona, a number of
whose members rose to significant
positions within the Italian church. He
was the prior of the Augustinian house
of San Giovanni Battista inVerdara,
outside Padua, and served repeatedly
as General of the reformed Lateran
Congregation of Augustinians. He
wrote a number of brief works pub¬
lished in his lifetime, including a
defense of the dignity of the Canons
Regular against that of the monastic
orders. This is the latest of four incun¬
able editions of Maffei's brief tract (in
his colophon he called it a Scrutatori-
olum, or "little examination book") on
hearing confessions from cardinals and
other prelates of the church.

A dozen copies of this edition are
recorded in Italian libraries, including
three in Verona, but the Rutgers copy
is the only one in America.

Reference: Goff (SuppL) M-19a

24. Origenes.

In Evangelium Ioannis

Explanationum, tomi xxxii.

Venice: Andrea & Giacomo Spinelli,

1551.4".

46

A figure of considerable learning, a
dedicated pedagogue and a person
of powerful intellectual energies,
Origenes, var., Origenis Adamantius,

The First One Hundred Years of Printing

of Alexandria (ca. 184—ca. 253), was the most impor¬
tant theologian and Biblical scholar of the early Greek
Church. However, colorful beliefs (his hypothesis of
the préexistence of souls, for example) severely
damaged his posthumous reputation. In Evangelium
Ioannis Explanationum, printed in Venice by Andrea
(£1.1549-1555) and Giacomo Spinelli (fi. 1551-1555),
in 1551, forms a part of the beginning of Origen's
immense commentary on St. John, written to refute
the commentary of the Gnostic followers of the
Egyptian, Valentinus.

The Rutgers copy from WR.H.Jeudwine, with
his ex libris.

Reference: BN v. 127, c2130

Loaned by Leonard Hansen, Class of '43

25-6. Homer. Iliad and Odyssey, Greek (with pseudo-
Homer, Batrachomyomachia, and the Homeric
Hymns). Florence: Demetrius Damilas, for Bernar-
dus and Nerius Nerlius and Giovanni Acciaiuoli,
9 December 1488 [but shortly after 13 January
1488/89]. Median F°.

FIRST EDITION. The editio princeps of Homer was the

most ambitious piece of Greek printing until Aldus

Manutius's five-volume Aristotle (1495-1498).The

editor was Demetrios Chalcondylas (ca. 1424—1511),

the Athenian-born humanist who taught Greek in

Florence. The Greek font, designed by Demetrius

Damilas of Crete, is a recasting ofthat used for

the 1476 Milan edition of Constantine Lascaris,

Erotemata (Goff L-65).The colophon date is

9 December 1488. Bernardo Nerli's dedication to

Piero de' Medici is dated 13 January 1488/89, and

was apparently added to the hitherto blank first

page more than a month after the edition proper

was completed.

The Florentine Homer would have been a

very expensive project; it included a limited issue

printed on vellum. It is doubtful, however, that it

47