Selectarum epistolarum libri quatuor Graecolatini

Second edition, published the year after the first. Text in Greek and Latin.

Illustrated with the printer's device on the title page, headpieces, initials, and tailpieces.

Superb contemporary red morocco binding, spine with five raised bands bearing Colbert's crowned cipher, centre of both covers stamped with his arms, boards framed three times in gilt, gilt roll-tooling on the board edges, all edges speckled, spine very lightly sunned, discreet rubbing to the corners, board edges and spine-ends on one abrasion to the lower cover and a faint dark mark on one compartment of the spine.

A sumptuous copy bound in morocco stamped with the arms and cipher of Colbert, minister to Louis XIV. Colbert acquired a vast collection comprising Byzantine manuscripts and printed editions of Gregory of Nazianzus, 4th-century theologian, Doctor of the Church, and Bishop of Constantinople. His second son, Jacques-Nicolas Colbert (1655-1707), doctor of theology, was himself Archbishop of Nazianzus like his illustrious predecessor. He too collected his works, and had a later edition of Nazianzus's works bound in his own arms (Bibliothèque de l'Institut des Sources Chrétiennes, Lyon).

At the head of the title page appears the manuscript ex-libris of his library written by his famous librarian Étienne Baluze. The luxurious binding is in "Levant morocco, which diplomats and scholars are asked to seek out alongside books, medals, and manuscripts [...]. A memorandum preserved in the archives of the Bibliothèque du Roi records the use, between 1668 and 1683, of 4104 morocco skins, of which 1820 were allocated for the Colbertine library. The usual binder was Éloy Le Vasseur, who also worked for the Bibliothèque du Roi and whose receipts and memoranda appear regularly in the registers of Carcavy and Baluze. The name of Bernard Picart also appears once.

The calfskin, or more often red morocco binding generally bears at the centre of the boards the arms or 'an undulating serpent palewise azure', surmounted, in the earliest period, by an open helm facing forward with seven bars, the spine with raised bands then bearing in the compartments the title in gilt capitals and a lozenge-shaped tool. In 1668, Colbert had Simon Thomassin the Elder engrave four bookbinder's tools for his library. These were doubtless the coat of arms surmounted by a marquis's coronet and encircled by the collars of the king's orders, to which the minister had been appointed grand treasurer in 1665. The spine thereafter bore the title and the cipher formed of the interlaced initials JBC, sometimes accompanied by the serpent, within a gilt dentelle border" reports Denise Bloch (Histoire des bibliothèques françaises - t. II, Les bibliothèques sous l'Ancien Régime 1530-1789). In 1672, Simon Thomassin engraved new tools - a note on the flyleaf dates the binding tool to this last set of arms.

Like his former patron Cardinal Mazarin before him, Colbert assembled one of the largest and finest libraries in France, which he continually expanded until the end of his life. A bibliomane ahead of his time, he engaged numerous correspondents charged with tracking down books not only in France's provinces but across all of Europe. His library, like the king's he also took care of, became one of the great European repositories of Greek philology: acquisitions, copies, and groupings of manuscripts brought hundreds of sources to Paris to feed the work of Hellenists and scholarly editors. Two months after Colbert's death in 1683, his family had the books in his library inventoried, comprising more than 20,000 printed volumes and more than 8,000 early manuscripts. The Colbertine book collections passed first to the Marquis de Seignelay, then to the Archbishop of Rouen Jacques-Nicolas Colbert, and finally to Colbert's grandson Charles-Eléonor, Comte de Seignelay:

"The latter disposed of it in 1728 through a public sale which, announced in April in the Mercure de France, began on 24 May and lasted several months, with one session held weekly; in July, one hundred and fifty Parisian booksellers petitioned the chancellor to have it halted, its scale having brought trade in the shops to a complete standstill!" (Denise Bloch, exh. cat., Colbert 1619-1683, Hôtel de la Monnaie, Paris, 4 October-30 November 1983)

Our copy appears in the sale catalogue of Colbert's library under number 12332, which includes numerous works and commentaries on Gregory of Nazianzus (nos. 4558, 4559, and 5173).

Provenance: Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Bibliotheca Colbertina, 1728, II, no. 12332); eighteenth-century ownership inscription on the title page: "Cav. Ren. De Boinon"; Giorgios Avanitidis, ex-libris on red morocco stamped in gilt on the second flyleaf; ex-libris "PLC" on green morocco stamped in gilt on the second flyleaf.