ERASMUS, Desiderius (1466-1536). De recta Latini Graecique sermonis pronunciatione Des. Erasmi Roterami Dialogus [And:] Ciceronianus [And other short works]. Basel: heirs of Froben, 1528.

The rare first edition of Erasmus's most important work on the subject of Classical education and its possibilities. In a contemporary binding and with learned marginalia. This text comprises several important works by Erasmus on Greek and Latin pronunciation and style, arguing for their use as living languages of a pan-European scholarly community. The first work, while a feat of erudition based on the respected authority of Quintilian and other ancient writers, is less interested in painstaking reconstruction of ancient phonetics for their own sake, but rather more concerned with the Utopian ideal of establishing a truly international scholarly dialect based on ancient tradition. In classic witty Erasmian style, it is expressed in the form of a dialogue between animals, who discuss the shortcomings of various vernacular pronunciations of ancient languages. This text also includes an encomium of quintessential Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. Erasmus’s controversial Ciceronianus, also printed here for the first time, is written in the same spirit, arguing for humanists to develop their own contemporary Latin style inspired by the example of Cicero, rather than simply slavishly worship a “dead” language.

This was a carefully planned volume, overseen by Erasmus at the press and strategically composed as a manifesto of Erasmian Humanism as well as a defense of the contributions of Northern European scholars, often ridiculed as “barbarian” by the Italian Ciceronians. This edition was printed just after the death of Johann Froben, Erasmus’s longtime printer and collaborator in Basel, and includes several epitaphs of him and other Northern humanists, as well as the first edition of a work by Rudolphus Agricola. An essential work of humanist scholarship and educational philosophy which set off a flurry of arguments, responses, and edited editions, this book is rarely seen at auction; only three other copies are recorded by ABPC, none in a contemporary binding. Bibliotheca Erasmiana 74-76; Adams E-351. See Judith Rice Henderson, “Language, Race, and Church Reform: Erasmus' De recta pronuntiatione and Ciceronianus,” in Renaissance and Reformation 30.2 (2006), pp. 3-42 and Erwin Panofsky, “Nebulae in Pariete; Notes on Erasmus' Eulogy on Dürer,” in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14 ½ (1951), pp. 34-41.

Quarto (162 x 110mm). Greek and Latin types. Hand-colored printer's device on title, device repeated on final page, initials (a few stains, mostly at end, dampstain at end, small rust hole). Contemporary alum-tawed pigskin over thin boards with stamp-signature of binder "HANS", with manuscript fore-edge title, pasteboard made with a mid-15th-century German Breviary (flyleaves and rear pastedown detached, lacking ties). Provenance: marginalia throughout in several hands, including a letter of Osiander to Petreius dated 1527 copied out in manuscript on the flyleaves [printed in Osiander, Gesamtausgabe II, edited Gerhard Muller, pp. 521-2] –"G. Borromeo" (inscription from Italian bookseller dated 1843, incorrectly identifying one of the annotators as Andreas Osiander himself) – sold Christie’s, 3 April 1996, lot 88.