Vergerius's De ingenuis moribus

Vergerius's De ingenuis moribus
Guy Marchant, 1494
VERGERIUS, Petrus Paulus (1370-1444). De ingenuis moribus ac liberalibus studiis, edited by Johannes Calphurnius (1443-1503), and other texts. Paris: Guy Marchant, 21 November 1494.

The Fairfax Murray copy of a rare, highly influential treatise on education from the cusp of the Renaissance, complete with the final leaf of woodcuts, the very existence of which was long in doubt. Taking the form of a letter to his pupil, the son of the lord of Padua, Vergerius's text outlines the ideal liberal education. Alongside the standard elements of the Medieval curriculum (the trivium and quadrivium), it emphasizes the importance of rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy—features which ensured the book's continuing relevance for Renaissance Humanists. This edition contains several other short pedagogical texts, some translated from Greek by Aretinus, confirming its place in the Humanist tradition. Although almost 30 editions appeared by the end of the 15th century, only a single copy of any edition has appeared at auction in over 50 years. The Fairfax Murray sale catalogue describes the final leaf as “bibliographically unknown”—and indeed, some bibliographies today still report it as a blank. In fact, the leaf contains several woodcuts of various sizes, including a knight fighting a snail. ISTC records no other copies in America, and it is not in the Bavarian State Library or the British Library. HC 15995; Bod-inc V-069; CIBN V-100; Goff V-138; ISTC iv00138000.

Chancery quarto (198 x 120mm). 38 leaves. Woodcut printer’s device on title, woodcut illustration of shepherds on title verso, woodcut of the Trinity on colophon leaf, several woodcuts in various sizes on both sides of final leaf (title page worn and repairs at inner margin, numerous leaves with small repairs, especially at bottom corner, some light toning and soiling, final leaf repaired at inner margin). 19th-century green morocco. Provenance: occasional marginalia – Charles Butler, Warren Wood, Hatfield (1821-1910, his sale, Sotheby’s 5 April 1911, lot 1180) – Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919; British dealer, and art historian associated with the Pre-Raphaelites; his sale, 18 March 1918, lot 819) – acquired from Lathrop C. Harper, Inc, New York, 27 December 1957.