BERCHEUR, PIERRE (Petrus Berthorius, Berchorius, Bersuire, Bercheure, Berchoire).

MORALE REDUCTORIUM,

      Lugduni 1520 - super tota[m] Biblia[m] fratris Petri Berthorij Pictavie[n]sis ordinis divi Benedicti divinaru[m] litteraru[m] studiosissimi, quattuor [et] triginta libris consummatu[m], singulisq[ue] ([cu]m materie exigentia[m]) capitibus aptissime distinctu[m], vbi notabiliorum historiaru[m] ac figuraru[m] veteris [et] novi testamentoru[m], premissa co[m]pendiosa textus summa, tropologica seu allegorica atq[ue] no[n]nun [quamquam?] anagogica subnectit[ur] explanatio, adiectis Biblie [con]corda[n]tijs .". Lugduni, Impressum in officina libraria Jacobi Marechal, 1520, date taken from colophon. 8vo, 250 x 175 mm, 10 x 7 inches, Latin text, title page printed red and black, architectural border with portrait of Bercheur at the top and 14 portraits of scholars reading or writing at the sides and along the bottom, plus the printer's pictorial device below the text, numerous pictorial and decorated initials large and small, black letter printed in two columns, leaves (12), CCXVIII (misprinted CCVIII), leaves LI to LIIII bound out of order, bound in later vellum, no label or lettering, all edges red, marbled endpapers. Vellum lightly marked, spine slightly darkened, original front endpaper slightly creased and slightly torn, repaired, remains of small label to lower margin of title page, small ink number in fore-edge margin, some pale damp staining to lower margin of first 32 leaves, the same to upper margin of first 12 leaves, both recurring occasionally, name of Bible book in faint tiny hand in upper corner of rectos, small area of worming to fore-edge margin of 7 leaves, 1 with small piece missing, nowhere near text, 10 of the last leaves in the volume have pale water staining all over the page, showing worst on the final leaf which also has an old repair to a hole in the lower margin. Binding tight and firm. A good copy of a scarce early printing of this work. Pierre Bercheur (ca. 1290-1362), a French Benedictine scholar was a translator, encyclopaedist, and the author of several works, including the Ovidius Moralizatus (Ovide Moralise) (1340), a work of mythography. The Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales, is sometimes attributed to him. In the 1340s, Bercheur became a student at the University of Paris and met Petrarch there again, having first met him in Avignon in the 1320s. The Italian poet was on an embassy to the French court. Bercheur translated into French Petrarch's reassembly (in Latin) of Livy's history of Rome. He was an eloquent preacher and a voluminous homiletical writer. His most important work is the Repertorium morale, for the use of preachers, a kind of Biblico-moral dictionary, in which the principal words of Scripture are arranged alphabetically and moral reflections attached thereto. His Reductorium morale to the Sacred Scriptures in thirty-four books, embraced all the books of the Bible and was first printed at Strasburg in 1474. Brunet, I, 819. Image attached with this item, more images sent on request.