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ALDE

7 - AUGUSTINE (Saint). *De civitate Dei*.
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Estimate €20,000 - €30,000
Sale commission
Description
AUGUSTINE (Saint). *De civitate Dei*. Rome, Konrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, 1470. Folio (365 x 250 mm), 291 folios, grained calfskin, plain spine with decoration, mottled edges (Late 18th-century binding). Fourth edition of *The City of God* and the second printed in Rome, published by Konrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, the city’s first printers. It was preceded by two editions published by the same publishers in Subiaco and then in Rome, in 1467 and 1468, and by a third published in Strasbourg by Johann Mentelin around 1468. Johann and Wendelin of Speyer published a fifth edition in Venice in the same year. In total, *The City of God* saw nineteen editions in the fifteenth century. A valuable print by the Roman proto-typographers Sweynheym and Pannartz. Having arrived from Germany around 1464, they had set up their first press at the Monastery of Santa Scolastica in Subiaco. Between 1465 and 1467, they printed Cicero’s *De oratore*, the works of Lactantius and the first edition of St Augustine’s *De civitate Dei*. In 1467, at the request of Cardinal Bessarion, they settled in Rome and founded the city’s first printing workshop at the Palazzo Massimo. The two printers were the first to use a Roman typeface engraved according to the humanist script styles in use on the Italian peninsula. A seminal work by one of the Church Fathers, *The City of God* is also one of the foundational texts of Western political culture. The work was written between 413 and 426 for apologetic purposes. In the first ten books, Augustine of Hippo refutes the accusations of those who, following the sack of Rome by the Visigoth king Alaric in 410, blamed Christianity for the decline of the Empire. In the remaining twelve books, he sets out his doctrine of the ‘two cities’, which establishes him as the founder of the philosophy of history: the evolution of human societies is likened to the great struggle between the City of God and the City of Man, between those who live according to God and those who live according to man. Beginning with the fall of Lucifer, this struggle will end with the Last Judgement and the definitive advent of the Kingdom of God. A copy with good margins, well preserved. It has previously been washed, with some faded handwritten marginalia. Of the four blank folios included in the edition, three are missing (ff. 1, 293 and 294). Wormholes, mostly in the margins, on the first and last leaves of the volume; a tear repaired on f. 17 (stained in the margin). A small scuff on one corner of the binding. ISTC ia01232000 – Goff A-1232 – HC 2049* – CIBN A-678 – BMC, IV, 1 – GW 2876.
See original version (French)
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About the sale Fine antique books – A library in the Languedoc
Auction location
Auction time 10/20/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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