EUCHERIUS, SAINT.

LIBELLUS ELEGANS AD VALERIANUM PROPINQUUM SUUM DE CONTEMPTU MUNDI CULTUQUE DEI. (ZWOLLE, PIETER VAN OS, BETWEEN 26 MARCH 1493 AND 1 DECEMBER 1496).

      4to. Modern light-brown calf, with the sides of the (a?) contemporary brown calf binding pasted on; the sides are blind-stamped in panel designs, with floral stamps in between. With large woodcut of a bishop holding a book in his hand (St. Eucherius?) on title, and full-page woodcut of Christ as Salvator mundi on verso title, the first initial supplied in blue, all other initials in red, rubricated throughout. 40-42 lines. (8) lvs. Collation: (a)-b4. Finely produced and nicely illustrated incunable, published without address or date by Pieter van Os at Zwolle, on the ground of the abrasion of the woodcuts dated between 26 March 1493 and 1 December 1496. It contains a letter by Saint Eucherius, bishop of Lyon (born ca. 380 - died ca 449), one of the great neglected spiritual writers of Western Orthodoxy and a high-born and high-ranking ecclesiastic in the Christian Church of Gaul. He is remembered for his letters advocating extreme self-abnegation. On the death of his wife he withdrew for a time to the monastery of Lerins, on the smaller of the two islands off Antibes , to live a severely simple life of study and devote himself to the education of his sons. Soon afterward he withdrew further, however, to the neighbouring island of Lerona (now Sainte-Marguerite), where he devoted his time to study and mortification of the flesh. It was at this time (ca 428) that Eucherius wrote his epistolary essay De laude Eremi ('In praise of hermits').To his kinsman Valerian, he wrote this Epistola paraenetica ad Valerianum cognatum, de contemptu mundi (Epistle on the contempt of the world) an expression of the despair for the present and future of the world in its last throes shared by many educated men of Late Antiquity, with hope for a world to come, at the same time to persuade him to let go of the riches and vanities of the world. Erasmus thought so highly of its Latin style that he edited and published it at Basel (1520).The fame of Eucherius was soon so widespread in South-eastern Gaul that he was chosen bishop of Lyon in 434. In 1654 the letter translated into English by Henry Vaughan. Fine copy, with ample margins. Hermans, Zwolse boeken, pp. 167-8, nr. ZD 88 (copies a.o. in The Hague and Deventer); Kok, pp. 416-19, 919; GKW 9427/30; IDL 1730; ILC 967; HPT II, 450; Hain-Copinger 6692; Campbell 709; Polain 1424; Abbot 234; Oates 3622; NK 0476.