Footnotes

Extremely rare second edition of the first printed book with figurative verse, only one incomplete copy of which is recorded in auction records (lacking the second explanatory part). First published two years earlier in Pforzheim, it reproduces a manuscript of the De laudibus sanctae crucis (the Oration of the Saint Cross) by the ninth-century German theologian Rabanus Maurus.

In addition to ttwo large woodcuts which depict the author presenting his book to Pope Gregory IV, the work contains 30 full-page figurative verses, representing Emperor Louis I, Christ, cherubs, crosses, symbols of the Evangelists, animals from the Apocalypse, cabalistic signs and geometrical figures. These are formed in a pattern of letters printed in red and black placed without separation between the words and which reproduce the poem printed on the facing page. The red letters, sometimes underlined, form a design included in the woodcut. The more complicated images are entirely xylographic, while others are a combination of woodcuts and letters set in type; the simplest ones are purely typographic. The second part of the work explains each figure.

The sixteen-page manuscript bound in at the end, written in an attractive later hand, comprises a poem in the form of a dialogue on the passion of Christ, by Benedict Chelidonius (or Caledonius, c.1460-1521), abbot of the Scottish Monastery at Vienna. The text was published in 1511 with woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer.

Provenance: Claude Enoch Virey, conseiller secrétaire to Louis XIII and biliophile, gilt arms on lower cover; his son, Jean Christophe Virey, secrétaire to Louis XIII and bibliophile, inscription in memory of his wife ("Bonne Galoys. Ne Morte ne Tempo. 1644") at foot of title-page, and his signature ("Joann. Christ. Virey") above (Virey inherited (and added to) a collection of 4,000 volumes from his father, but following the death of Galoys, he took orders and often inscribed books or had them bound in her memory); Geo. Brown, later signature at head of title.