Arnoldus de Villanova, De vinis, [Strassburg, 1484], contemporary stamped pigskin

Arnoldus de Villa Nova

A volume containing three printed and manuscript works in a contemporary pigskin binding, from the monastery of St Godehard, Hildesheim, comprising:

ARNOLDUS DE VILLA NOVA. De vinis [German:] Von Bewahrung und Bereitung der Weine [translated by Wilhelm von Hirnkofen]. [Strassburg: Martin Schott, c. 1484], 12 leaves, [a-b⁶], 40-41 lines, gothic type, inhabited woodcut initial and border on first page, some deckle edges

HENNING KALBERG, abbot of St Godehard. Oratio... in capitulo Annali in Monasterio Reynhardesborn[ensi] de promptus. [Hildesheim, early sixteenth century], 9 pages, manuscript on paper

HRABANUS MAURUS. De laudibus Sanctae Crucis opus. (Pforzheim: Thomas Anshelm, March 1503), printed in red and black, woodcut illustrations and typographical diagrams, with final blank, with an additional manuscript poem and acrostic at end (by Henricus Vischer?), lacking a1, small tear in A2

3 works in one volume, Chancery folio (296 x 215mm.), contemporary German blind-stamped pigskin over wooden boards, two clasps, later lettering-pieces, some worming in binding

A RARE EARLY WORK ON WINE. The Catalan physician Arnoldus de Villa Nova composed this treatise on wines in around 1310, based on Greek and Arabic sources and detailing medicinal wines and preparations.

The sermon by Abbot Henning (1493-1535) of Hildesheim was given in the Benedictine abbey of Reinhardsbrunn.

FIRST EDITION of Hrabanus Maurus's diagrammatic poems about the Cross. The manuscript acrostic at the end of the third work, by Henricus Vischer with the title De laude Heningi Abbatis (according to the list of contents), begins "Quid maius poterit ulli hic donarier" and the diagram contains the figure of Abbot Henning holding a cross; Vischer was presumably a monk of St Godehard.

There is a manuscript list of contents on the inside front cover, in the same hand as the ownership inscription; the first six items on the list are astronomical or calendrical and are no longer within the volume, though the small gap in the binding indicates that these were all short works of perhaps a few pages.

LITERATURE:

ISTC ia01082000 (listing 11 copies, of which 2 are lost); VD16 H 5271

PROVENANCE:

Monastery of St Godehard, Hildesheim, inscription on inside front cover "Liber monasterii Sci Godehardi Hildn pro abbate"; Ampleforth Abbey library, bookplate and ink stamp