AUGUSTINUS, Aurelius.

Mainz, Peter Schoeffer, 5 Sept. 1473. Large folio (39,5 x 27,5 cm). 364 ll. Final blank is missing. Large margin copy. Text in double columns, richly rubricated in red and blue (sometimes in green) and with 44 large initals coloured in red, blue and green. Two leaves with colophons with the printer’s device of Fust and Schoeffer printed in red. Some marginal ink annotations. Stain in inner margins on the first 30 leaves. 17th century vellum spine with raised bands, boards renovated with vellum manuscript in red and black over wooden boards, red edges, modern fly leaves. Old handwritten title on bottom edge. Several leaves with gilt metal markings on front edge, tear on front hinges and a crack on rear hinge. Owner’s ink notation on first page: ”Conventus Tremesn[ensis] canonicum regularium” and ”Inscriptus catalo. conventij Tremesnensis” (Canons regulars of Trzemeszno in Poland?), owner’s signature of Hans Meyer, Leipzig on front paste down and with book plate of Victor von Stedingk. ISTC ia01240000. Goff A1240. HC 2057. GW 02884. PMM 3 for the 1467 editio princeps.This is the sixth edition of ”De civitate Dei” (The City of God). It was printed only six years after the editio princeps by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Subiaco in 1467, and was the first edition printed in Germany. It was the second edition with the fourteenth-century commentaries by the Oxford Dominicans Nicolaus Trivet (Trevetus) (fl.1297-1334) and Thomas Waleys (Wallensis) (d.1349), first printed in Mentelin’s Strasbourg edition of c. 1468. The text is also printed with two of the earliest types ever cut. The text of Augustinus, which goes to leaf 284 recto and ends with the first colophon, is set in 45 lines with the text type first used for the 1462 Bible. At leaf 284 verso the commentaries by Thomas Waleys and Nicolaus Trivet begin. They are set in 60 lines with a smaller type originally made for the 1459 Durandus. At the last leaf is the second colophon with the printer’s device of Fust and Schoeffer printed in red. In this Schoeffer gives important information on the history of printing, and boasts with pride of the invention of printing ”...with much labor completed in the famous city of Mainz in Germany, not by tracing with the quill-pen, but ingeniously composed from the heads of type-letters, by Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim ...”. Saint Augustine (354-430) Bishop of Hippo, was one of the four great Fathers of the Latin church and perhaps the most influential. In ”The City of God”, which is one of the most important books in Christianity, he puts theology in relation to the history of mankind and explains God’s action in the world, ”God’s gouvernment on Earth” as PMM label the book, and it remained authoritative until the seventeenth century. It was printed seventeen times during the fifteenth century, which also is an indication of how profoundly influential it was of the Christian church. But it was not only theologically important. Much of the medieval regulations of commerce and prices were derived from his ideas as well as the contrasting descriptions of a just ruler and a tyrant. Later on the idea of international law was also partly derived from the book and it is cited by Hugo GrotiusPeter Schoeffer the elder (1425?-1502) worked with Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, but after Gutenberg’s loss of his officin to the creditor Johann Fust, Schoeffer become a partner to Fust and co-owner, he also married Fust’s daughter. They formed the officin Fust and Schoeffer” in 1457 and after the death of Fust in 1466 Schoeffer continued himself, but kept the firm’s device. He is considered one of the best and most innovative among the early printers and bookseller in Europe.Trzemeszno in Poland was a property of the monastery of Canons Regular of St. Augustine from the 12th century. The wealthy Leipzig publishing heir Hans Meyer (1858-1929) was an explorer and editor, and from 1885 director of the ”Bibliographisches Institut” in Leipzig. He owned around 200 incunables.