The first world chronicle to include bio-bibliographies of Arab scholars

Foresti de Bergamo, Jacobus Philippus. Supplementum chronicarum. (With additions by Barillas Bergomas).

€ 65,000.00

Second edition of a popular world chronicle by an Augustinian cleric, a fine copy in a monastic binding. In his chronicle Foresti proposed to bring together the most important historical facts from each year, starting with Genesis. Although he often placed legend and myth on the same plane as documented history, Foresti's chronicle was the first world history to include short bio-bibliographies of Arab scholars. These were not taken over from any of the principal sources cited by the author (Vincent of Beauvais, Boccaccio, Platina, and St Anthony of Florence), attesting to the breadth of his scholarship (cf. Hasse, Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance [2016], p. 32). Six editions of Foresti's chronicle are recorded from 1483 to 1491, the last an Italian translation, all but the present edition printed in Venice. The author continued to revise and expand on the work: for the 1503 edition he would add an extra book bringing the account up to the present.

Bonino de Boninis de Ragusia, a Dalmatian cleric, had worked in Venice in 1479 before setting up a press in Verona (with Venetian types), then moving to Brescia. His productions were "dominated throughout by Venetian models and methods" (Scholderer, BMC). Beautifully printed, this edition contains numerous aids to the reader, presumably at least in part as instructed by the author. Two tables in quire aa comprise an alphabetical index of passages mentioning famous women (Foresti essentially plagiarized Boccaccio in his own work on the same subject, published in 1497), and an alphabetical index to cities named in the text. A double-rule chronological bar runs along every page, separating two calendars: on either side of the bar is printed, at the head of each annual section, the date since Creation and the Christian year. Finally, the quire register on the last leaf summarizes the contents of each gathering.