![LOPIS Stunica, Jacobus [Diego LOPEZ de Zuniga] (d.1531). Annotationes contra Erasmum Roterodamum in Defensionem tralationis Novi Testamenti. Alcalá de Henares: Arnaldo Guillén de Brocar, [before August] 1520.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2001/CKS/2001_CKS_06521_0033_000(035151).jpg?w=1)
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LOPIS Stunica, Jacobus [Diego LOPEZ de Zuniga] (d.1531). Annotationes contra Erasmum Roterodamum in Defensionem tralationis Novi Testamenti. Alcalá de Henares: Arnaldo Guillén de Brocar, [before August] 1520.
[Bound with:]
LOPIS Stunica, Jacobus. Annotationes contra Iacobum Fabrum Stapulen. Alcalá de Henares: Arnaldo Guillén de Brocar, 1519.
2 works in one volume, 2° (304 x 202mm). Roman and Greek types, some Hebrew. Large woodcut arms of the author (Rolland VI, plate 214) with his motto below on both titles within multi-part ornamental border, historiated initials and white-on-black floral initials. (Some light spotting.) Parisian gold-tooled calf of c.1543-47 BY JEAN PICARD FOR JEAN GROLIER, sides with elaborately interlacing black-painted ribbons, a narrow outer border formed by repetition of a single solid tool (Nixon 7), knot-work tools and corner fleurons (Nixon 10 and 14), 'Io. Grolieri et amicorum' lettered at foot, Grolier's motto 'Portio mea domine sit in terra viventium' at centre of back cover, compartments of spine tooled in the 17th century (title and fleurs-de-lis) possibly for Louis-Henri Loménie de Brienne, tooled board edges, gilt leaf edges (expert restorations at joints and corners, free endleaves renewed, bookplate removed from front pastedown), modern brown morocco pull-off case.
Provenance: Jean Grolier (1479-1565, Treasurer of France, collector) -- G.W. (19th-century collation note in Dutch) -- [Louis-Henri de Loménie, comte de Brienne (1636-98), owned at least two other Grolier bindings with spines similarly decorated for him (Nixon nos. 68 and 112); the present volume presumably dispersed, along with other books, before sale of the library, London 1724] -- Baron Achille de Seillière, Bibliothèque de Mello (sale Sotheby's, 28 February 1887, lot 1015 'in perfect preservation', £179 to Quaritch) -- Robert Samuel Turner (sale Paris, 12 March 1878, lot 22, 3000FFr to Techener) -- [Morgand, bookseller at Paris, sold to:] -- Louis Lebeuf de Montgermont (sale cat. part VII, 1914, no. 11, private sale to Edouard Rahir at Morgand, bookseller] -- Mortimer Schiff (sale Sotheby's, pt. III, 6 December 1938, lot 2493, £235 to Heilbrun) -- Maxime Denesle of Rouen -- present owner (acquired from Martin Breslauer Inc., cat. 111, no. 93).
Jean Picard, 'a binder of supreme talent' (Hobson, p.270), acted as agent for the Aldine Press at Paris, responsible to the press's Paris representative, Jean Grolier. Picard bound for Grolier from c.1540 to 1547, when Picard appears to have fled Paris in debt. The present binding probably belongs to Picard's later work for Grolier, typified by the intricate interlacing black-painted fillets. The present copy was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1924 (Wm. M. Ivins, A guide to an exhibition of the Arts of the Book) and at the Grolier Club in 1937 (Ruth Granniss, Catalogue of an exhibition of Renaissance bookbinding). A large copy, retaining some deckle edges. G. Austin, Grolier and his Library, no. 500; Hobson, Renaissance Book Collecting, appendix 1, no. 500.
FIRST EDITIONS of Stunica's vehement attacks on Erasmus and Lefèvre d'Etaples, which opened a long and heated public controversy about the authority of Jerome's Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, by Erasmus's most serious critic. The publication of Erasmus's new translation of the Bible into Latin, together with the first edition of the New Testament in Greek, entitled the Novum Instrumentum (Basel: 1516), met with warm approval in many circles, but immediately provoked this attack by the Spanish theologian Stunica. He was one of the team of scholars assembled by Cardinal Ximenes to work on the Complutensian Polyglot (Alcalá: 1514-17), and so was well prepared to judge Erasmus's translation and his Greek sources. Stunica saw in Erasmus's translation an assault on Jerome, the Vulgate, which had served the Church and its learned doctors for so long, and the authority of the Church at large. He therefore set out to detail mistaken interpretations by Erasmus, concluding that Erasmus's work was not only unnecessary, but inaccurate, subversive and even blasphemous. Although written in 1516, publication of the Annotationes was delayed by 4 years, in part on the strong advice of Cardinal Ximenes. When it did appear in 1520, Stunica left for Rome with copies in hand, in order to discredit Erasmus directly with the pope. Erasmus recognised the real danger Stunica posed and responded with a defense in 1521; there were 3 subsequent published exchanges between the two men before Stunica's death in 1531. Once the Spaniard was thus silenced, Erasmus acknowledged his former opponent as 'vir doctus et diligens'. Stunica attacked Lefèvre's translation of the Pauline Epistles (Paris: 1512) on similar grounds.
Cf. H.J. de Jonge's introduction to vol. IX-2 of Erasmus's Opera Omnia, 1983, for a discussion of the Stunica-Erasmus polemic and bibliography of Stunica's printed editions (pp.35-43), where these are nos. two and one respectively; Adams S-1972 (on Lefèvre); cf. H. Nixon, Bookbindings from the Library of Jean Grolier, exhibition cat., London: 1965; F. Norton, Descriptive Cat. of Printing in Spain and Portugal, 1501-20, nos. 73 and 78; Palau 142051 and 142052 (citing this copy).
[Bound with:]
LOPIS Stunica, Jacobus. Annotationes contra Iacobum Fabrum Stapulen. Alcalá de Henares: Arnaldo Guillén de Brocar, 1519.
2 works in one volume, 2° (304 x 202mm). Roman and Greek types, some Hebrew. Large woodcut arms of the author (Rolland VI, plate 214) with his motto below on both titles within multi-part ornamental border, historiated initials and white-on-black floral initials. (Some light spotting.) Parisian gold-tooled calf of c.1543-47 BY JEAN PICARD FOR JEAN GROLIER, sides with elaborately interlacing black-painted ribbons, a narrow outer border formed by repetition of a single solid tool (Nixon 7), knot-work tools and corner fleurons (Nixon 10 and 14), 'Io. Grolieri et amicorum' lettered at foot, Grolier's motto 'Portio mea domine sit in terra viventium' at centre of back cover, compartments of spine tooled in the 17th century (title and fleurs-de-lis) possibly for Louis-Henri Loménie de Brienne, tooled board edges, gilt leaf edges (expert restorations at joints and corners, free endleaves renewed, bookplate removed from front pastedown), modern brown morocco pull-off case.
Provenance: Jean Grolier (1479-1565, Treasurer of France, collector) -- G.W. (19th-century collation note in Dutch) -- [Louis-Henri de Loménie, comte de Brienne (1636-98), owned at least two other Grolier bindings with spines similarly decorated for him (Nixon nos. 68 and 112); the present volume presumably dispersed, along with other books, before sale of the library, London 1724] -- Baron Achille de Seillière, Bibliothèque de Mello (sale Sotheby's, 28 February 1887, lot 1015 'in perfect preservation', £179 to Quaritch) -- Robert Samuel Turner (sale Paris, 12 March 1878, lot 22, 3000FFr to Techener) -- [Morgand, bookseller at Paris, sold to:] -- Louis Lebeuf de Montgermont (sale cat. part VII, 1914, no. 11, private sale to Edouard Rahir at Morgand, bookseller] -- Mortimer Schiff (sale Sotheby's, pt. III, 6 December 1938, lot 2493, £235 to Heilbrun) -- Maxime Denesle of Rouen -- present owner (acquired from Martin Breslauer Inc., cat. 111, no. 93).
Jean Picard, 'a binder of supreme talent' (Hobson, p.270), acted as agent for the Aldine Press at Paris, responsible to the press's Paris representative, Jean Grolier. Picard bound for Grolier from c.1540 to 1547, when Picard appears to have fled Paris in debt. The present binding probably belongs to Picard's later work for Grolier, typified by the intricate interlacing black-painted fillets. The present copy was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1924 (Wm. M. Ivins, A guide to an exhibition of the Arts of the Book) and at the Grolier Club in 1937 (Ruth Granniss, Catalogue of an exhibition of Renaissance bookbinding). A large copy, retaining some deckle edges. G. Austin, Grolier and his Library, no. 500; Hobson, Renaissance Book Collecting, appendix 1, no. 500.
FIRST EDITIONS of Stunica's vehement attacks on Erasmus and Lefèvre d'Etaples, which opened a long and heated public controversy about the authority of Jerome's Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, by Erasmus's most serious critic. The publication of Erasmus's new translation of the Bible into Latin, together with the first edition of the New Testament in Greek, entitled the Novum Instrumentum (Basel: 1516), met with warm approval in many circles, but immediately provoked this attack by the Spanish theologian Stunica. He was one of the team of scholars assembled by Cardinal Ximenes to work on the Complutensian Polyglot (Alcalá: 1514-17), and so was well prepared to judge Erasmus's translation and his Greek sources. Stunica saw in Erasmus's translation an assault on Jerome, the Vulgate, which had served the Church and its learned doctors for so long, and the authority of the Church at large. He therefore set out to detail mistaken interpretations by Erasmus, concluding that Erasmus's work was not only unnecessary, but inaccurate, subversive and even blasphemous. Although written in 1516, publication of the Annotationes was delayed by 4 years, in part on the strong advice of Cardinal Ximenes. When it did appear in 1520, Stunica left for Rome with copies in hand, in order to discredit Erasmus directly with the pope. Erasmus recognised the real danger Stunica posed and responded with a defense in 1521; there were 3 subsequent published exchanges between the two men before Stunica's death in 1531. Once the Spaniard was thus silenced, Erasmus acknowledged his former opponent as 'vir doctus et diligens'. Stunica attacked Lefèvre's translation of the Pauline Epistles (Paris: 1512) on similar grounds.
Cf. H.J. de Jonge's introduction to vol. IX-2 of Erasmus's Opera Omnia, 1983, for a discussion of the Stunica-Erasmus polemic and bibliography of Stunica's printed editions (pp.35-43), where these are nos. two and one respectively; Adams S-1972 (on Lefèvre); cf. H. Nixon, Bookbindings from the Library of Jean Grolier, exhibition cat., London: 1965; F. Norton, Descriptive Cat. of Printing in Spain and Portugal, 1501-20, nos. 73 and 78; Palau 142051 and 142052 (citing this copy).
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