Antiquarian Books including a series of views of Milan

Antiquarian Books including a series of views of Milan

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 43. [Bible] Gospels in Church Slavonic, [Tirgoviste], Macarius, 1512, contemporary stamped binding.

[Bible] Gospels in Church Slavonic, [Tirgoviste], Macarius, 1512, contemporary stamped binding

Lot Closed

October 4, 09:13 AM GMT

Estimate

60,000 - 80,000 EUR

Lot Details

Description

Bible. Gospels. Church Slavonic


[Tîrgovişte]: Macarius, 26 July 1512


folio (297 x 200mm.), 282 leaves (of 293), 20 lines, printed in red and black throughout, white vine-stem initials and headpieces, large square white vine-stem woodcut headpiece at the start of each book containing the symbol of that evangelist, manuscript text written opposite the start of each Gospel, bound at end is the woodcut title-page from a 1696 edition of the Gospels in Church Slavonic with a woodcut on the verso (by Nikodemus) of the Dormition of the Mother of God, and a further 5 printed leaves from this work, contemporary blind-stamped goatskin over wooden boards, lighter patch on upper cover showing where there was a metalwork stepped cross, watermark of a balance within a double circle in endleaves (similar to Briquet 2480, found in Habsburg lands in Slovenia and Hungary, 1507-1521, and to Briquet 2517, also found in the early sixteenth century in Hungary), lacking 11 leaves (initial blank and three final blank leaves, and text leaves 34/8 and 36/2-7), several leaves repaired at edges (particularly at beginning and end), occasional staining (sometimes severe), binding rebacked and repaired with new endpapers


ONE OF THE FIRST BOOKS TO BE PRINTED IN ROMANIA. The first printing press set up in Romanian territory was established by the command of the Prince of Wallachia, Radu cel Mare, most likely in his main town of Tîrgovişte. The printer, Macarius, had previously worked in Venice, plausibly with Andrea Torresano, and in Cetinje, where in the 1490s he had printed service books commissioned by the Prince of Montenegro, Djordje Crnojević, using a typeface from Venice. It is thought that he arrived in Wallachia in around 1506, and he printed his first book there in 1508.


This edition of the Gospels was the third production from that press, following editions of the Missal (1508) and the Octoechos (1510), though none of them give the location of the press. It is also considered possible that the books were printed in the monastery of Bistriţsa, which also has connections with Macarius. After the printing of this Gospels (or Tetravangelion) in 1512, the press stopped production and printing in Romania did not resume for more than thirty years.


This work was commissioned by Neagoe Basarab, who became Prince of Wallachia early in 1512; he was a noted patron of Orthodox churches as well as author of an early non-religious text in Church Slavonic. The production of Church Slavonic books in Wallachia, in contrast to the Lutheran books printed elsewhere in Romanian territory later in the sixteenth century, indicate that the Slavonic tradition held firm in Wallachia (and in Moldavia).


The binding is most likely a local one. The small shuttlecock stamp also appears on a Romanian binding in the British Library (Add MS 57524, an early seventeenth-century manuscript in Church Slavonic made in Romania) which was from the monastery of Bistriţsa in Altenia, though that is in a Greek-style binding.


LITERATURE:

Bianu and Hodoş, Bibliografia românescă veche 1508-1830, no. 3; Nemorovskij, Kyrillische Fruhdrucke 11, listing 25 copies; Dennis Deletant, "A survey of Rumanian presses and printing in the sixteenth century", The Slavonic and East European Review 53 (1975), 161-174


PROVENANCE:

Various annotations in Church Slavonic on endpapers (detached but retained), dating 1651, 1726, 1729, and one in Greek dated 1664 by Father Stephanos of holy Mount Sinai