Dialogorum libri quattuor.

4to: [58] ff., 48 ll. (toned, some marg. dampstaining).

19th-c. quarter cloth, marbl. paper covers, gilt flat spine (rubbed, sl. loosening at end, a smaller work taken out of the binding?). Very good copy.

Later incunable ed. (1st 1472) of the popular Dialogues of Pope Gregory I or Gregory the Great (540-604). It is a collection of four books of miracles, signs, wonders, and healings done by the holy men, mostly monastic, of 6th-c. Italy, with the 2nd book entirely devoted to a popular life of St Benedict. Printed in gothic type, in 2 columns. Capital spaces with guide-letters. Rubricated throughout with penwork extending into inner margin. Ref. ISTC ig00407000. - GW 11403. - Goff G-407. - Polain 1704. - BMC III:784. - BSB-Ink G-300. - Not in CIBN. Prov. Old ownership entries on title, i.a. "Carmeli Freystadiani Anno 1730". - Collector’s stamp Ex Bibliotheca Hoffmanni Fallerslebens, i.e. the German poet and politician August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874), author of the "Deutschandlied" (national anthem of Germany). - Mod. bookpl. JFMS[terck], i.e. the Dutch collector and literary historian J.F.M. Sterck (1859-1941). - [Georges Petit].