Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Login or subscribe to view price data

(1090-1153), OF CLAIRVAUX, SAINT.
OPUSCULA. [COLOGNE: PRINTER OF SALOMO ET MARCOLPHUS, C. 1478]

Chancery folio (280 x 195mm.), 112 leaves, double column, 40 lines, Gothic letter, 3- to 5-line initial spaces, first initial space with a red and blue initial pasted in, red initial-strokes, early manuscript foliation, early nineteenth-century red morocco gilt (perhaps by Storr of Grantham), spine gilt in compartments, gilt edges, morocco hinges, extremities very slightly rubbed

PROVENANCE

John Hayford Thorold and Syston Park, bookplates, sale in these rooms, 13 December 1884, lot 268, £3-10s.; J.W. Pease, bookplate; Howard Pease, bookplate, sale at Hodgson's, 19 November 1959, lot 231, £120, Charles W. Traylen, Guildford, Surrey, for Lord Wardington. A catalogue slip from Quaritch (signed by F.S. Ferguson and dated 14 July 1924) is pasted to the front flyleaf.

LITERATURE

HC 2920; GW 3905; BMC i 260; Goff B362

NOTE

St Bernard of Clairvaux, "dulcissimus & mellifluus doctor" as he is here styled, is one of the great medieval spiritual writers. A Cistercian, and the great reformer of that order, he was opposed to the growth of scholasticism, and was famously involved in the case accusing Abelard of heresy. The works contained in this volume, here gathered for the first time, are: De diligendo deum, De sacramento altaris, De vita solitaria, De concordantia statuum religiosorum, De dispensatione et praecepto, De gratia et libero arbitrio, De consideratione and the pseudo-Bernardan Meditationes de interiori homine. De consideratione was addressed by him to one of his monks elected pope as Eugenius III, and was first printed in Utrecht. It was recently quoted by Pope Benedict XVI, where he quoted St Bernard urging people to "watch out for the dangers of an excessive activity, whatever... the job that you hold, because many jobs often lead to the 'hardening of the heart,' as well as 'suffering of the spirit', loss of intelligence."