PHILELPHUS, Franciscus

Orationes et opuscula

      Bartholomaeus de Zanis 28 March 1491, Venice - Old boards (ca. 1800) 4to . Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), one of the greatest Italian humanists and pioneer for the coming age of Erasmus, first lectured on Latin literature at Florence at the age of 18. He was appointed secretary to the Venetian consul-general at Constantinople. Arriving there in 1420, he at once began the study of Greek under John Chrysoloras and was received with great favor by the Emperor John Palaeologus, by whom he was employed on several important diplomatic missions. In 1427 having received an invitation to the chair of eloquence at Venice, Filelfo returned there with a great collection of Greek books. The following year he was called to Bologna and in 1429 to Florence, where he was received with the greatest enthusiasm. During his five years residence there he engaged in numerous quarrels with the Florentine scholars and incurred the hatred of the Medici, so that in 1434 he was forced to leave the city. He went to Siena and later to Milan, where he was welcomed by the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. In Milan it was Filelfo's duty to celebrate his princely patrons in panegyrics and to salute them with nuptial and funeral orations. They are all found in the present finely printed volume, together with Giorgio Valla's translation of Galen's "Introduction to Medicine" (Introductio ad medicinam). This collection was first printed, by the same printer, in 1483-4 with this being its third appearance (see Stillwell, Awakening Interest in Science, III, 376.5) "He combined the accomplishments of a scholar with the insidiousness and brutality of a brigand. . His bitter feuds may however be forgotten, while we remember that in 1427 he brought from Constantinople the works of forty Greek authors, with reference to that Pope's collection of MSS, and to the translations from the Greek that had been executed under the papal patronage; - 'Greece has not perished, but has migrated to Italy, the land that was known of old as Magna Graecia' (Epp. xiii 1)" (Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, II, pp. 56-57) 166 leaves (Roman numbers); Roman type; 41 lines; capital spaces with guide letters; with generous margins and partly uncut with the outer deckle visible on a number of leaves; faint staining to first few leaves corner blank margin; two tiny round worm holes at beginning of volume (not affecting text, barely noticeable). Generally very nice copy. § Hain- Copinger 12923; Klebs 403.3; Pellechet 9262; Polain 3139; IGI 3907; Proctor 5327; BMC V, 431; Goff P 609; CIBN P-325; BSB P-447. [Attributes: Hard Cover]