In hoc libro contine[n]tur haec Bebeliana opuscula nova. Epistola ad cancellarium de laudibus et philosophia veterum Germanorum Elegia Cimonis stulti qui ex amore factus prudentissimus. BEBEL, Heinrich.

Small 4to, pp.[199], [1, blank]; text in Latin with passages in Greek, woodcut initials, woodcut arms to N1r; very light foxing, very small marginal hole to last few leaves, very neat marginal repair to lower outer corner of N8, but a very good copy; bound in nineteenth-century calf by Charles Petit (front free endpaper signed in black), centrepieces blocked in blind, spine blind-tooled in compartments and lettered directly in gilt, edges gilt, marbled endpapers; superficial cracks to front joint, some wear to extremities and a few small abrasions.First edition of a compendium of works by the noted Swabian humanist Heinrich Bebel (1472 1518), including his Facetiae, Proverbia Germanica, and selected verse. The son of a farmer, Bebel studied at Kraków and then at Basel under Sebastian Brant. In 1496 he moved to Tübingen to teach rhetoric, becoming a highly respected teacher noted for his enthusiastic advocacy of German patriotic sentiment, and in 1501 was made poet laureate by Emperor MaximilianI. He numbered Johannes Reuchlin and Konrad Peutinger among his friends, and Philipp Melanchthon and Johann Eck amongst his pupils. Bebel's extremely popular Facetiae, written in 1506, is 'a curious collection of bits of homely and rather coarse-grained humour and anecdote, directed mainly against the clergy' (Encyclopedia Americana), and 'a valuable contribution to the cultural and moral history of the German peasantry' (Deutsche Biographie, trans.). This is followed here by his Latin translation of hundreds of German proverbs. The verses rounding off the volume encompass old age and death, poetry, music, and love. Johann Grüninger (c.1455 c.1533) was one of the most outstanding Strasbourg printers of the period. His output was extremely varied, including editions of the classics, collections of sermons in Latin and German, folk tales and legends, novels, works of popular medicine, and dictionaries. USTC 669002, VD16 B1207. No copies traced in the UK, and only two in the US (Newberry, University of Minnesota). A variant is found with a slightly different colophon (VD16 ZV1167). Language: Latin