Scriptores rei militaris, Paris, 1532, blind-stamped vellum, Syston Park copy

[SCRIPTORES REI MILITARIS]

Vegetius: De re militari libri quatuor. Frontinus: De strategematis libri totidem. Aelianus: De instruendis aciebus. Modestus: De vocabulis rei militaris. Item picturae bellicae cxx passim Vegetio adiectae. Collata sunt omnia ad antiquos codices, maxime Budaei, quod testabitur Aelianus. Paris: Christian Wechel, 23 August 1532

folio (314 x 203mm.), woodcuts on title-page (recto and verso), woodcut initials, woodcut illustrations (mostly full-page), woodcut printer's device on final verso, eighteenth-century blind-stamped vellum, gilt edges, lacking Q1 (containing 2 woodcuts, one a repeat of the woodcut on a4v), occasional light staining

The large woodcuts are based on the Erfurt ones (see lot 444) though via the German text edition printed in Augsburg by Heinrich Steiner. Wechel also produced an edition of Valturio in 1532 (see lot 443) with similar illustrations.

The list of helpful terms from the 1515 Paris edition has been retained, but not the list of chapter headings for Vegetius.

LITERATURE:

BP16 107078; Mortimer, Harvard French 486

PROVENANCE:

Discalced Carmelite convent of Metz, inscription at start of text and stamp on verso of title-page, with shelf mark T34; Sir John Hayford Thorold of Syston Park, bookplates, sale, Sotheby's, 20 December 1884, lot 2014, £5, subsequently returned by T. Harvey as incomplete; Thomas Francis Fremantle, armorial bookplate, bought from Pickering & Chatto, 25 August 1899, £3-3s