Milleloquium Veritatis
Very rare first edition of this work containing previously unpublished fragments of texts by Saint Augustine.
A very fine copy preserved in its contemporary stamped pigskin over wooden boards.
In-folio of (6) ff., 615 ff., (1) blank f.
Pigskin stamped over contemporary wooden boards.
350 x 243 mm.
Augustine. Milleloquium veritatis compiled by Friar Bartholomew of Urbino.
Lyon (Matthias Bonhomme), 1565.
Very rare first edition of this work containing fragments of an unlisted letter by Saint Augustine.
Adams, A 2183; Baudrier, VII, 423.
“Fragments of an unlisted letter by Augustine… These fragments appear in the Milleloquium veritatis sancti Augustini, the largest Augustinian florilegium of the Middle Ages. It was compiled during the second quarter of the fourteenth century by Bartolomeo Carusi, a friend of Petrarch who belonged to the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine.
The Milleloquium, of which several editions were printed between 1555 and 1734, contains about fifteen thousand extracts arranged under a thousand entries, from Abel to Zizania.
The scope and date of the Milleloquium probably explain why the fragments presented here have gone unnoticed. In 1994, I identified, precisely in the Milleloquium, the incipit and three extracts from another unpublished sermon by Augustine. It is therefore established that florilegia later than the ninth century, especially that of Bartholomew of Urbino, may have transmitted original extracts not recognized as such” (François Dolbeau, Little-known fragments of a letter by Augustine “To Adeodat and other servants of God”).
The Augustinian friar Bartholomew of Urbino, as he is usually called after the town of his birth where he served as bishop during the last three years of his life (1347–1350), is best known for his still valuable Milleloquium veritatis S. Augustini.
This monumental concordance contains some fifteen thousand excerpts from the writings of St. Augustine, grouped under about one thousand alphabetically arranged key words illustrating Augustine's doctrines on these topics. The work, for which Bartholomew's friend Petrarch furnished two poetical embellishments in the form of as many alternate sets of verses, was a success. Bearing witness to its wide diffusion and appreciation are over thirty MSS still extant in northern and central Europe (Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Germany, The Netherlands, and Poland), and about the same number in French, English, Italian, and Spanish libraries. It also went through five printings: Lyons 1555; Paris 1645, 1649, and 1672; Brescia 1734.
Fine copy preserved in its contemporary pigskin binding stamped over wooden boards.
Provenance: manuscript ex-libris.
