[PLUTARCH IN THE ORIGINAL GREEK 1533]. Plutarchi quae vocantur parallela: hoc est, vitae illustrium viroum graeci nominis ac latini / Παραλληλα εν βιοις Ελληνωντε και Ρωνμαιων

Basel: Andreas Cratander (i.e. Hartmann) and Johann Bebel, 1533. First Edition thus. Very good. Folio, [4], 369, [1] ff., COMPLETE. Title-page in Latin, text in Greek, Bebel's woodcut printer's device on title and final leaf, woodcut historiated initials. Small wormholes scattered throughout, mostly marginal, occasionally touching characters but never affecting legibility. Bound ca. 1541 in contemporary South German pigskin over bevelled wooden boards, boards tooled in blind to a panel design with 3 roll-tools, spine in compartments with 4 raised bands, spine covered in the seventeenth century with paper, author and title in manuscript to first compartment and manuscript shelfmark to last compartment, fore-edge lettered 'ΠΛΟΥΤΑΡΧΟΣ' in elegant manuscript capitals; clasps perished. An extremely fresh and clean copy. A BEAUTIFUL COPY IN A CONTEMPORARY REGENSBURG BINDING, FEATURING A STUNNING CONTEMPORARY FORE-EDGE TITLE IN GREEK.

This is the first edition of Plutarch’s "Parallel Lives" in the original Greek as edited by Simon Grynaeus (1493-1541), professor of Greek at the University of Basel. Ours was the first Greek edition to be printed outside Italy, preceded by the editions at Florence in 1517 and Venice in 1519.

PROVENANCE: From the library of the Franciscan monastery of St. Anthony of Padua, Munich, with a somewhat later inscription "Monachii ad PP Franciscanos Bibl." on the title-page and the circular stamp "ST A M" (an abbreviation for Sancti Antonii Monacensis) on the top edge of the textblock. Founded in the early 13th century, this was a large and important monastery. Re-dedicated to St Anthony of Padua in 1392, the monastery played host to important scholastic figures such as William of Ockham (an inspiration for the creation of William of Baskerville, the main character of Umberto Eco's novel "The Name of the Rose"), Michael of Cesena, and Bonagratia of Bergamo. When, in 1802, the monastery was secularised (along with other monasteries in Bavaria and elsewhere), the Franciscan monastery buildings and church were demolished. On this site was built the new National Theatre which promptly burnt down -- twice in quick succession. Was this due to divine wrath? COMMENT: In 1802, when 77 Bavarian monasteries and 14 convents were secularized, thousands and thousands of early printed books passed into the vast Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. To a certain extent, the sales of BSB duplicates continue to fuel the antiquarian book trade today.

BINDING: The imposing contemporary binding may be confidently assigned to Regensburg, South Germany:
1. There are two distinctive rolls, both clearly reproduced in EBDB and assigned by the editors (following Kyriss 136) to the Blutenstengel IX, Regensburg workshop. The first roll depicts a DEVIL EMERGING FROM THE GROUND along with a full-length female figure holding a star and surrounded by 10 other stars (EBDB r000768). The second roll shows a figure sitting in a large cauldron; beneath him are two busts in profile positioned back-to-back (EBDB r000769). Kyriss (and subsequently the editors of EBDB) claim that the shop was active from 1481 to 1529, but our binding proves that the shop continued through at least 1533. Incidentally, EBDB records only one (out of 4,536) workshops that utilized a devil roll or tool ("Teufel"), namely THIS one.
2. The binder's blanks were also made in Regensburg: the watermark of a letter P crowned with crossed keys is identical to Briquet 8758 = "1541 Rastisbonne" which he deduced from paper found in the Memmingen Stadtarchiv.

TEXT: Plutarch's "Parallel Lives" is one of the earliest western works of Comparative Historical Research, and even after almost nineteen centuries, the "Lives" continues to inspire historians and humanists alike. It is effectively a collection of 48 biographies of distinguished Greek and Roman soldiers, orators, and statesmen. Unusually, for the purposes of comparison, Plutarch arranged the biographies in pairs (Greek vs. Roman) in order to illuminate their respective vices and virtues. For example, we find Demosthenes paired with Cicero, Pericles with Fabius Maximus, Alexander the Great with Julius Caesar, etc. Plutarch approached his "Lives" using vignettes and anecdotes and not as a rigid historical chronology; the work was very popular in the Elizabethan Age, and their translation into English by Sir Thomas North gave [The-Author-Known-As] Shakespeare the subject-matter for his Roman plays.

REFERENCES: Adams P-1611. USTC 684248. VD16 P-3756. For the monastic provenance, see Hellwig, Inkunabelkatalog des Germanischen Nationalmuseums Nürnberg (1970), p. 310 (referring to the subsequent name of the monastery, St. Anna) and MEI Owners of Incunabula (ID 00013531). (Inventory #: 4182)