CYPRIAN or CYPRIANUS, Caecilius

Sermo de oratione dominica Elegantissimus.

      1523 - In Officina Servatii Cruphtani [Kruffter], Coloniae [Köln], 1523. 8° of [13]-[1 bl.] leaves (notes in margins and underlinings in pen, little soiled). 19th c. Italian cloth, recycled from a c.1844 binding, marbled boards, sprinkled edges (little worn). VERY RARE POSTINCUNABLE, by an EQUALLY RARE PRINTER, of this exposition on the Lord's Prayer by Saint Cyprianus , the third century bishop of Carthage. First separately printed only twice before, in 1490 and 1497. Translated by Thomas Paynell in 1539 into English. The rebellious Kruffter of Koeln worked with Adam Petri before 1518, then on his own between 1520 and 1538. In 1521 he published an unauthorized book against Reuchlin and was imprisoned, and again for nine months in 1535 for breaking the censorship rules. He worked in association with Cratander. cf. Hartmann. Much of his work was printed in small 4tos, most surviving, like this, in few institutional copies. He was famous as an orator and pleader, had considerable wealth, and held, no doubt, a great position in the metropolis of Africa.On the whole his beauty of style has rarely ben equalled among the Latin Fathers, and never surpassed except by the matchless energy and wit of St. Jerome." [Catholic Ency.] And it is not surprising that at the dawn of the Reformation, Cyprian's words on this most famous of Christian prayers would be for the first time separately printed in the postincunable period, as he argues that the words of the prayer are given for the people to use in their supplications. Nor surprising that the tract would be separated from his works in general, for he was a strong supporter of a unified Church and of the role of Churchman in it, for example arguing that baptism could only be performed by the bishop. This is one of only three existing ante-Nicene treatises on the prayer, the others by Tertullian and Origen. STC German 525; VD-16 ZV 4219; Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche III-99/ 102; Biogr. univ. IX-604/606; Index Aurel. n° 149.037; not in Adams, Machiels; Matagne; BN Cat. (only three copies located, at Wolfenbuettel, Oxford and BL) Nice copy with a clean typography, a handsome initial capital 'E' animated with a prancing lion, and a beautiful woodcut bordered titlepage, complete with a rabbit nibbling at fruit within a wreath, mermaids, and in the lower cut a scene of a proud Judith displaying a severed head to two diners, the decapitated body in the foreground.