LAURENT D'ORLEANS, Frère).

A lively picture of daily life in thirteenth-century France, (Somme le roy.) Sconincx summe. Ende leert hoemen die sonden biechten sal.

      Henrick Eckert, 1519., Antwerp, - 4to. Contemporary limp vellum. Woodcut of a man in confession on title. (156) lvs. Rare Dutch postincunable edition of the very popular Somme le roy by Laurent d'Orléans (d. ca 1325), Dominican friar and confessor of the French King Philip III, `Le Hardi'. Completed in 1279 at the request of the King, this treatise on the vices and virtues was inspired by the works of Hugh of Saint-Victor, Guillaume Peyraut and the anonymous work Le miroir du monde. The Somme is divided into five sections: on the Ten Commandments, the Twelve Articles of Faith, the Seven Deadly Sins, an Ars Moriendi, and a treatise on the Seven Virtues derived from the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost. This final section also includes a commentary on the Lord's Prayer. Instead of the dry scolastic style commonly used for theological works at the time, the Somme le roy is written in a vivid style, illustrating the moral instructions with descriptions of all the virtues and vices of the time, but also with fables, such as the fable of the dog and the donkey, anecdotes, exempla and parables taken from ancient and contemporary history, legends, saint's lives, the bible, and bestiaria. The Somme was very popular as apparent by the huge number of circa one hundred manuscripts in French and the many manuscripts with translations into Flemish, English, Italian, Provençal and Catalan. The influence of the text on ascetic and didactic literature is incontestable. In 1408 the sections one to four were translated into Dutch by the Dutch Carthusian Jan van Rode, from the monastery at Zeelhem in Brabant. The fifth section was translated into Dutch in 1478, for the first printed edition (Delft, 1478). The present book is the second known complete copy, the other is at the University Library Amsterdam. Two incomplete copies are preserved at Brussels and Utrecht. Laurent's work remains a source of information, full of amusing details, especially in the lively descriptions of vices and contemporary anecdotes giving a clear picture of daily life in thirteenth-century France. Fine copy, with some contemp. ms. notes, including an ownership's entry on the verso of the first fly-leaf: `Tanneken van Sanouts(?)', dated 1552; on the blank verso of the last leaf another ownership's entry: `Iste liber pertinat (sic) Anna Lisdüne. Nijhoff-Kronenberg 1333; not in Adams, nor in STC Dutch; See D.C. Tinbergen, Des Coninx Summe. Leiden, (1900). [Attributes: First Edition]