Crinito, Pietro

DE HONESTA DISCIPLINA

      Henricus Petrus Basel 1532 - DE HONESTA DISCIPLINA IS NOW BEST REMEMBERED AS A SOURCE BOOK FOR NOSTRADAMUS It contains extracts from several esoteric texts, including Michael Psellus's De Daemonibus, and the De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum [Concerning the mysteries of Egypt.], a book on Chaldean and Assyrian magic by Iamblichus, a 4th century Neo-Platonist. Both texts were always very difficult to obtain. Handsomely printed, with a woodcut device to the title and the final leaf depicting Vulcan's forge. Interesting and fine historiated initials throughout the text, some rather large. Pietro Crinito [1475-1507] known as Crinitus, or Pietro Del Riccio Baldi was a Florentine humanist scholar. The 16th centuryElogia Doctorum Virorum of Paolo Giovio, contains a brief biography of Crinito, translated below: "Pietro Crinito, an agreeable and cultivated youth, hated his Italian name of Riccio, which was given him because his father had curly hair, and preferred to be called Crinito. He was rightly considered the most fluent of all Poliziano's pupils [Angelo Ambrogini, best known as Poliziano (July 14, 1454 ? September 24, 1494) was a Florentine classical scholar and poet]; for we have, besides some poems that are not without charm, more than twenty books De Honesta Disciplina, interesting and delightful from their great variety, and also five painstaking and learned volumes of the Latin poets. On Poliziano's death, though he was inferior in rank and fortune to the young nobles who were cultivating the study of literature, he came deservedly to be their friend and teacher. But such intimacy, kept within no fixed bounds of dignity and restraint, opened the way to disgrace and even to ruin. For after a. dinner in Pietro Martelli's villa at Scandiano, when in the course of a playful quarrel a saucy guest drenched him with a goblet of cold water, he got a chill and died in a few days overcome with grief at the rude insult. He left his friends a feeling of deeper penitence and more bitter loss because he was not yet forty years old." Crinito, Pietro De honesta disciplina libri XXV. De poetis Latinis eiusdem libri V. Poematum quoq(ue) illius libri II. Basel, Henricus Petrus, Aug. 1532. 4to, [lx], 575, [iv]. Later blanks & yap edged vellum binding with a gilt lettered red leather label. Measurements: 22 x 17cm 8.25 x 6.5" Condition: A very pleasing copy. The binding very tight and sound,with two ring marks and typical toning to the vellum. The contents with occasional minor signs of handling. A few marginalia now very faded. The colophon leaf with an erasure affecting a few letters. Generally only very slightly toned & the top margin more than adequate, with the other margins quite large. [Attributes: Hard Cover]