Moralia sive exposito in Job

[ Basel: Nicolaus Kesler, 1496 ] Contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over oak boards. Covers with ornate panels and floral borders. With the original engraved brass bosses on corners of both covers and in centers of both covers. Brass catches, but lacking the fore-edge clasps. Spine with four ruled raised bands. Folio. Text in double columns, rubricated throughout in red and blue. The decorative two-line title is from a woodcut. Contemporary ink manuscript notes on front pastedown, occasional contemporary ink marginalia. Remains of a medieval vellum manuscript leaf, used as binder's waste, in front and back. Occasional dampstaining and other staining, especially near the end. Pin hole worming, moderate at front and back sections, but mostly absent in the middle, touching text, but with no loss of legibility. A good and interesting copy, well-suited to teaching purposes, being in its original binding, with most of its original brass fittings, with text marginalia, and with the binder's waste evidence Handsome incunable edition of Gregory's (540-604, Pope from 590 to 604) moral homilies on Job, his longest and perhaps his greatest work. Gregory, also known as Saint Gregory the Great, is credited with founding the medieval papacy and is famous for instigating the first recorded large-scale mission from Rome, the Gregorian Mission, to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons in England to Christianity. The present work was written between 578 and 595, begun while Gregory was at the court of Tiberius II at Constantinople, and probably finished after he returned to Rome, perhaps as early as 591. It served as a sourcebook for many of the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, including Hugh of St. Victor,. St. Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure. The first incunable edition was published in Nuremberg in 1471. The present edition is the seventh incunable edition.