658J. Eusebius – Only Two copies in the US

(La vita el transito) Eusebius Cremonensis: Epistola de morte Hieronymi; Aurelius Augustinus, S: Epistola de magnificentiis Hieronymi; Cyrillus: De Miraculis Hieronymi).

[Venice, Hannibal Foxius, 1 June 1487].               $7,000

Quarto  16.7x12cm. Signatures: a–i8. 72 leaves, 36 lines, Roman letter, rubricated with capital letters in red ink. Several annotations in ink and marginal notes, first leaf mounted, 5 leaves, small wormholes touching the letters on the front edge of 4 leaves, 2 intermediate margins reinforced with old paper strips, small worming marks on 4 leaves. – Bound in twentieth century quarter Morocco, with a spine label “Transito di San Gerolamo, Venetia, 1487”

This collection of pseudonymous works are now considered to have been composed anonymously in the thirteenth or fourteenth century by Dominicans in Rome. These Epistles here attributed to three famous Bishops who were contemporaries of St Jerome Eusebius of Cremona (347-420), Augustine ofHippo (354- 430) and Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386). These three letters, were attributed to SS Eusebius, Augustinus, and Cyrillus, but written in Italy in the 13th or 14th century in the circle of Santa Maria Maggiore; and internal evidence points to an author close to the Dominican Order. They circulated together widely in both manuscript and print. They tell of the life, death and miracles of St. Jerome. Jerome was embraced by Renaissance humanists and was particularly venerated by important religious movements in the Low Countries in the 14th century, such as the Brothers of the Common Life and adherents of the devotio moderna.

This work was the central texts for the cult of Jerome in fifteenth-century Italy. This is elaborated on in Rice’s  Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Rice, 1985).

cf. Rice, E. Saint Jerome in the Renaissance, Baltimore, London, 1985.

ISTC ih00257000; Goff H257; H8645*; GW 9466]. 

 United States: Walters Library & Huntington Library. ONLY