CRESCENZI, Pietro

Opus Ruralium Commodorum

      Folio [27.9 cm x 18.4 cm], (147) ff., lacking final blank. I!6, A8, B-Y6, Z8. Bound in 18th-c. quarter vellum and speckled paper over boards, spine in four compartments, blind ruled, title inked at head of spine; rubbed but solid and attractive. Pinpoint wormhole in lower margin and mild dampstaining on a few leaves; early ownership inscription (16th c.?) at top of first leaf. Perfectly fresh and clean copy of this "practical" book, excellent. Early Strasbourg incunable edition and internally fine copy of the best-known account of medieval agriculture, and the most popular practical guide to farming until the 16th century. Crescenzi's work covered everything from estate management to hunting to viniculture; it was the first important work on European agronomy in the 900 years after Palladius and became the model for many gardening books of the 16th and 17th centuries. In deference to its calendrically concerned predecessors, Opus Ruralium Commodorum is arranged in 12 parts; but it is organized more scientifically, by subject matter rather than months of the year. Although he makes frequent reference to earlier authors such as Albertus Magnus, Palladius, Varro, and Columella, Crescenzi's approach is critical and draws on his own experience managing the countless difficulties of husbandry and agriculture relating to the maintenance of a great estate. The work is of wide interest, addressing for example fishing, the grafting of grapes, the making of wine, diseases of animals, and of course the cultivation of every sort of crop, drawing upon the procedures of the farmers of Milan, Tuscany, and the author's own Emilia-Romagna. Of additional note is the advice on the best location and arrangement of a manor, villa or farm, including every point from proper water supply to the dues of the head of the household. Perhaps in an attempt to compete with the herbals of his time, Crescenzi describes over 120 plants useful for medicine and nourishment.Crescenzi's ideas showed remarkable foresight in his own time and for the next century: for example, he made the first European reference to the "hotbed" method of extending the growing season (a technique from Moorish Spain) and advocated waiting until wine is at least a year old before drinking it-advice very contrary to the contemporary view! Pietro Crescenzi (c.1233-c.1321) was a university-educated Bolognese jurist who apparently decided to devote his time to agronomy rather than the practice of law. The Opus ruralium, finished around 1306, circulated in a rich manuscript tradition as late as the 16th century. The editio princeps appeared in 1471. While the present edition appears to have been the first and only Latin Strasbourg edition, the city's printers also brought out four later German editions.*See Greene, Landmarks of Botanical History (1983), I, 450, and Anderson,Illustrated history of Herbals (1977), pp. 66-72.