[Rarebooks] FS: Chained incunable of the letters of Pope Pius II. Nuremberg: 1486

[karmbooks at aol.com]

(INCUNABULA) Pius II, Pope (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini). EPISTOLAE
FAMILIARES. DE DUOBUS AMANTIBUS EURYALO ET LUCRETIA. Descriptio Urbis
Viennensis. [Ed: Nicolaus de Wyle]. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger. July 17,
1486. 4to. (246) leaves (with the first blank leaf), complete. Black
letter; capital spaces left blank. Orig. beveled wooden boards with
remnants of four clasps with an iron ring (for chain) attached to wood
fore-edge. Rebacked with blind tooled calf at an early date, imitating
the original spine, vellum title label on front cover. Spine somewhat
worn but quite sound. Occasional faint foxing in blank margins. A very
nice wide margined copy.	$8,500.00
A very handsomely printed early edition of the collected letters of
Aeneas Sylvius (1405-1464) which cover a wide range of topics from his
early literary efforts in writing an erotic love romance (see below),
to a description of Vienna. Pius II was Pope from August 19, 1458 to
his death in 1464. His LETTERS, which were collected by himself, are an
important source of historical information as well as some of his most
important contributions to literature. Included are treatises on Europe
and Asia, on political & theological controversies of his day, his
Latin love poems, and the most famous of his writings, the HISTORIA DE
DUOBUS AMANTIBUS, a Boccaccioesque novella of some length (present here
as "Epi. CCCCXXXVII"), which gained wide circulation. He had been
crowned imperial poet laureate in 1442, and he obtained the patronage
of the emperor's chancellor, Kaspar Schlick. Some identify the love
adventure at Siena Aeneas related in his romance, THE TALE OF TWO
LOVERS, with an escapade of the Chancellor, while others identify it as
a Latin version of Boccaccio's Decameron IV.1. The present volume is
particularly interesting, having at an early date been part of a
chained library with the iron ring attached to the fore-edge of the
bottom oak board. A chain would have been attached here which was
sufficiently long to allow the book to be taken from the shelf and
read, but not removed from the library itself. There still exist a
number of chained libraries that have survived to the present day.
Goff, P-719; BMC II, 430; HC 154.

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