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47 - PIE II (Pope). In Europam. [Memmingen, Albrecht Kunne, befor…
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Estimate €3,000 - €4,000
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Description
PIE II (Pope). In Europam. [Memmingen, Albrecht Kunne, before March 1491]. In-4 of [86] ff. (sign. a6 b-l8) ; half-brown basane with corners, spine decorated with cold fillets, smooth edges (Binding of the end of the 18th century). First edition of this important geopolitical essay on quattrocento Europe, written in 1458 by the Tuscan humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464), a few months before his accession to the pontificate as Pius II. The edition, edited by Michael Cristan, includes a dedicatory epistle to Otto von Sonnenberg, Bishop of Constance, which allows it to be dated before March 1491. A very rare incunabulum printed in Gothic on the presses of Albrecht Kunne (1435-1520) in Memmingen, Upper Swabia, where this former Gutenberg apprentice from Duderstadt settled in the early 1480s after working in Trento, and where he published some sixty works, many of which bear no mention of place of printing or date. The edition is missing from the BnF. Only two French institutions hold a copy: the Musée Condé in Chantilly and the Bibliothèque d'Orléans. The main ambition of Piccolomini's treaty was geopolitical and cultural, because for him, "the Turkish advance into Europe was the main problem facing Europe in 1458", writes Serge Stolf. "The European space is first and foremost that of the Europeans, the heirs of classical culture and the daughter of Christianity. Its destiny is sealed by this dual heritage". As a result, the book "reveals a humanist's conception, after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, of the new relationship between a European identity and a world hostile to its values. Europeans" now became a reality defined by their cultural, human and spiritual identity, which it was important for him to affirm and defend. An unmarked copy with numerous old handwritten annotations in the margins of the text. From the library of the Premonstratensian monastery of Steingaden, Bavaria, with a handwritten bookplate dated 1649 on the title. Light spotting in the margins of a few leaves. Minor rubbing, small paper loss on first cover. ISTC ip00727000 - HC 258* - Goff P727 - Pr 2781 - BMC II 605 - GW M33717 - S. Stolf, " Espace géographique et espace culturel : le De Europa d'Enea Silvio Piccolomini ", Camenæ, n°14, 2012 - S., " L'Europe et ses "Européens" vus par Enea Silvio Piccolomini ", Cahiers d'études italiennes, n°27, 2018.
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About the sale Antiquarian books from the 15th to the 19th century - Astronomy
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Auction time 06/24/2026 at 2:00 PM
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