Recuperationes Faesulanae

Matthaeus BOSSUS (Matteo BOSSO)
Recuperationes Faesulanae
Franciscus (Plato) de Benedictis | Bologna 20th july 1493| in-folio (20.5 x 30 cm)| 184 f. (+6 a-g8 h6 i4 A-O8)| full sheepskin
Second edition enriched with a dedication letter to Pietro Barozzi, bishop of Padua, the original was published the year before in Florence.
The work is entirely rubricated in blue and red and has beautiful gilt letter “Q” on the a3 leaf, as well as a gilt illumination representing an ecclesiastical blazon with a star and a laurel crown in the center, at the bottom of the same leaf. Printer's mark on the last leaf. Large margin copy, printed on heavy laid paper with round characters, 36 lines per page.
19th century binding imitating the 15th century's in full brown blind stamped sheepskin recapturing the decoration of the Renaissance binding. Reused parchment endpapers from the 13th century presenting a register of county names.
Ex-libris from the Paolino Gerli collection (Manhattan College, New York), a second from the Giorgio di Veroli library and the last from Gianni de Marco, all glued on the inside of the first board. Dry stamp of the latter at the bottom of the following endpaper. Two inventory numbers printed in the body of the text. Paolino Gerli (1890-1982) was a prosperous American silk merchant, director and honorary graduate of Manhattan College, to which he donated many works from his library. Giorgio di Veroli (1890-1952) was a New York banker.
A very beautiful copy of this incunabula from Bologna, produced by one of the finest Italian publishers-typographers of the Renaissance, and having belonged to two great Italian figures of New York high society.
Humanist, talented orator, Fiesole abbot and canon regular of the Lateran, Matteo Bosso (Verona 1427, Padua 1502) is a significant figure of the Italian Christian Renaissance. Close to the greatest minds of his time, he is a member of the Platonic Academy of Marcilio Ficino, friend of Ermolao Barbaro and Pico della Mirandola and enjoys the esteem and protection of the Medici. Lorenzo the Magnificent, to whom he is the confessor, choses him to array his son Giovanni, the future Leo X, in his Cardinal ornaments, while Cosimo de' Medici charges him with the restoration of the Fiesole abbey, which Bosso entrusts to Filippo Brunelleschi. Bosso will also attempt, at the request of Pope Sixtus IV, to reform the female monasteries and will refuse the honours and bishoprics that were offered to him as a reward, preferring to remain in poverty.
This valuable collection composed of philosophical, theological and literary writings and significant correspondence with the greatest thinkers of his time, was Matteo Bosso's opportunity for a daring dialogue between the modernity of humanist ideas and the demanding Christian rigorism.
“De tolerandis adversis,” written in 1463 in Alexandria and dedicated to his brother Giovanni Filippo Bosso, is a reflection of the benefits of adversity, not by its value of redemption but by the teaching it provides the great minds. This new concept of sufferance marks humanist thought.
The treatise “De gerendo magistratu iustitiaque colenda” is then made up of twenty chapters for the magistrates use, in which Bosso outlines the best means to govern by comparing, with the help of the Elders, the different political regimes: monarchy, oligarchy or democracy.
There follow seven “orationes,” sermons
with a clear doctrinal rigor, one of which was very important concerning the defence of the 1453 March law against the luxury of the Bolognese women's adornment, an important reform driven by the canon.
The last and the most consequential part gathers 133 letters that Bosso addressed to the greatest figures of his time, with whom he had friendship connections during his numerous trips towards central and northern Italy. Several humanists figure amongst them such as his friend Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – who will contribute to the posthumous publication of Bosso's first writings – and his nephew Gentile de' Becchi, bishop of Arezzo and tutor to Lorenzo and Giovanni de' Medici, the poets Pandolfo Collenuccio and Panfilo Sasso, the philosopher Guarino da Verona, the dancer Antonio Cornazzano or Ermolao Barbaro and of course, Lorenzo de' Medici... and also several women with whom Matteo Bosso exchanged ideas on morals, such as Isola Nogarola or the Franciscan Violante Séraphic.
This significant and passionate humanist correspondence is still today considered a fundamental historical source for the study of Italian intellectual life at the end of the 15th century.
Superb and large rubricated copy of this contemporary testimony of a humanist at the heart of the intellectual turmoil initiated by the Renaissance.