ISIDORE DE SEVILLE. Isidori Etymologiarum opus /Idem de summ - Lot 45

ISIDORE DE SEVILLE. Isidori Etymologiarum opus /Idem de summo bono. [Venice, Bonetto Locatelli for the heirs of Ottaviano Scotto, circa 1500-1510]. In-folio, 77 [erroneously numbered 1to8 and 7to75]-(1)-21ff. Signatures: aa8, bb-mm6, nn4, a-c6, d3. Bound in half-red basane decorated with gilt and cold motifs; a few old notes in ink and pencil; last leaf blank; binding faded and a little rubbed, bottom margin of second leaf trimmed, full-page engraving trimmed at binding, some wetness (binding circa 1830). Fine Venetian post-incunabula printing. Some engravings in the text: tree of consanguinity (full-page, f.35v°), schematic world map (f.51r°), punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, etc. (HC *9277, Copinger dates 1485; GMW M15272). The first medieval encyclopedia of secular and sacred knowledge, completed in 633 in Visigothic Spain, Les Étymologie d'isidore de Séville contains an ancient content in a medieval form: human knowledge is presented in terms of definitions, of taxonomy, according to a classification that classically includes the seven liberal arts, material techniques, law, medicine, sacred knowledge and the natural sciences; however, the intellectual tools used to define reality correspond to four new categories: analogies, differences, glosses and, above all, etymologies. Isidore de Séville's central thesis is that "the nature of a thing is best understood once the nature of its name is known", i.e., by means of an approach that goes from words to things, advocating a return to the sources of things through those of words, ultimately to the purity of origins. Bishop of Seville and advisor to the Visigoth kings, Isidore (c. 530-636) played a major political and religious role in the Spain of his time, while also producing an important theological body of work. He was one of the most widely read authors in medieval Europe, praised by Bede the Venerable in the 8th century, Raban Maur in the 9th century, and Dante in the 13th-14th centuries. It was also one of the first to be printed in the 15th century. Provenance: Agostino Antonio Norsini (1654-1714), canon of Macerata Cathedral in the Italian Marches (2 handwritten bookplates indicating a purchase, one dated 1677).