The copies that matter most are not always the cleanest ones. This mid-sixteenth-century Cologne edition of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares survives as a working book, densely annotated by an early modern reader who approached Cicero not as a stylist or moral ornament, but as a practical guide to political judgment under pressure. Across multiple openings, the marginalia classify rhetorical strategies, bracket chains of argument, test advice against lived experience, and finally distill Cicero’s counsel into explicit conclusions governing duty, restraint, gratitude, and risk. Read in sequence, these notes document a professional habit of mind: Cicero absorbed as a repertoire of precedents and maxims for action in unstable political circumstances—precisely the way a statesman, diplomat, or political historian would read him in the age of confessional conflict and imperial governance.
411G Cicero 106 B.C.-44 B.C
Epistolarum familiarium…libri XVI, ex Christophori Lo[n]golij eloquentiss. oratoris castigationibus recogniti, quàm antè hac multò etia[m] à mendis curiosiùs adserti; elenchum eorum, quae adiecimus, versa habet pagina
Coloniae : Apud Viduam Marini Gymnici, 1551 Price $4,300
Edited by Christophorus Longolius (Christophe de Longueil) with notes by Philipp Melanchthon, Christoph Hegendorph (Hegendorf), and Gisbert Longolius (Gilbert de Longueil)
Octavo: 6 1/2 x 4 inches *-**8 A-2Z8 3A8(-3A8) .
Bound in Contemporary tawed pigskin, the boards tooled in blind, including the use of a signed roll (“K”) incorporating symbols of the Evangelists and abbreviated biblical passages. The roll is a similar for one assigned to the workshop of Nuremberg bookbinder (Einbanddatenbank 124045b). Original brass clasps intact and functional. Printer’s device on title page; initials. There is some Light to moderate dampstaining through the second half of the book the last three with open tears resulting in textual loss (the worst leaves with perhaps a square inch of loss); title page dusty and darkened at the edges; the final leaf backed with an early sheet of laid paper. Binding soiled and worn at the extremities, exposing some board edge; likely re-cased at some point, with the original front fly-leaf removed.
There is an Ownership inscription on title page of Franz Christoph Khevenhüller, Graf zu Frankenburg (1588-1650), a high-ranking Habsburg diplomat, ambassador, and the compiler of the monumental Annales Ferdinandei (36 folio volumes!) Khevenhüller read Cicero as a practical guide to political writing: his annotations classify rhetorical strategies (“amplificatio,” “de calamitate,” “de officiis”), identify consolatory and diplomatic topoi, supply interlinear glosses, and distill entire letters into concise marginal summaries. The notes reveal a working statesman extracting from Cicero a vocabulary of prudence, mediation, fortune, and public duty—precisely the moral framework that structures the Annales. A superb example of early modern political humanism in practice.
This book has numerous early interlinear glosses and marginalia across fourteen pages, a few of the annotations rather extensive. Beyond working through grammar and syntax—and there is plenty of that—the scattered use of first-person pronouns suggests more personal engagement with the text. Responding to the editor’s summary of a letter to Nigidius Figulus on p. 134, for example, our annotator begins, “recordabor bene” (“I will remember well…”). On p. 133, he notes in the margin, “I will better move myself toward these ways” (“Incia[m] mihi conversatione[m] eoru[m]”)
On PP 154-155: On later openings the marginalia move from analysis to prescription. The annotator explicitly marks a Conclusio, distilling Cicero’s counsel into ethical rules governing endurance, restraint, and public duty under political danger. Letters are indexed by function (Responsio ad gratulationem), and key passages on periculum, fiducia, and the instability of fortune are selectively flagged. The annotations show Cicero transformed from literary authority into a source of practical maxims for conduct in unstable political circumstances.
Gymnich first issued his edition of Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares in 1538, including, as here, the commentary of Philipp Melanchthon. Also includes notes by Christoph Hegendorph (Hegendorf) and Gisbert Longolius (Gilbert de Longueil), which Gymnich added to his 1542 edition. Cicero’s Epistolae ad familiares was one the most popular and influential works of the early modern West, and one of the most frequently used schoolbooks. Gymnich’s widow, published only half a dozen other editions all between 1551 and 1552.
“Written rather than oral texts, apparently personal and informal rather than public and theatrical, these offered the student a vast range of models of prose rather than the highly formal one of Cicero’s oratory. They also seemed more appropriate models for young men whose future tasks would involve far more document preparation than public speaking. Accordingly, students at early stages of their education, from Strasbourg to Rome, spent large amounts of time reading, translating, and imitating Cicero’s letters” (Grafton).
REFERENCES: This edition not in VD16 or USTC
c.f. Anthony Grafton, Bring Out Your Dead (Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 109-110
Ownership inscription of Franz Christoph Khevenhüller, Graf zu Frankenburg (1588-1650)
JAMESGRAY2@ME.COM
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