Theologia naturalis; sive, Liber creaturarum specialiter de homine et de natura ejus in quantum homo: et de his que sunt ei necessaria ad cognoscendum seipsum et Deum, et omne debitum ad quod homo tenetur et obligatur tam Deo quam proximo. Half leather - 1501

Strasbourg: Argentinae: Ex officina Martini Flach junioris, 1501. Half leather. Fine. Folio, printed in Strassburg by Martin Flach, 7 February 1501; 161 unnumbered leaves. BINDING: new Gothic hand-sewn oak binding by Arthur Green of Malvern; tawed quarter leather over quarter-sawn oak boards, quires hand-sewn on four double-cords creating four raised spine bands, board leather blind-tooled with period style rosettes and fleurs-de-lys within panel of diagonal blind triple fillets, hand-sewn Gothic double headbands of alternate hand-dyed indigo and undyed linen thread, hand-made brass hasps and clasps ornamented in period style; an exceptionally attractive recreation of a Gothic hand-sewn binding employing medieval techniques contemporaneous with the date the book was printed. COLLATION: [pi]6, a2-8, b-y6, z8, zeta6, antisigma8; leaf a1 excised and subsequent first few lines of a2[recto] redacted in black ink in the sixteenth century by the inquisitor for its heretical content (see below). TEXT: Double column, 50 lines and headline, gothic type, red manuscript rubrication throughout in a contemporary hand with numerous 3, 4 and 6 line capitals, red paragraph markers and in-text capitals marked out in yellow. CONDITION: indecipherable contemporary manuscript ink inscriptions to title page, final two leaves a little soiled, new endpapers in complementary period-style paper, small professional paper repairs to fore-edges of opening and closing leaves, unobtrusive light stain to lower outer page corners well clear of printed text, overall a beautifully clean wide-margined copy. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES: Rare, not in Adams, USTC 696770 citing 32 copies with just 3 in the UK and 2 in the US. Sebonde's Theologia was a celebrated text in its day but is mainly known now through Montaigne's attention and his French translation of the work in 1569. Its prologue asserting the ability of human reason to understand the existence and attributes of God through observation of the natural world, was added to the Index Prohibitorum in 1559. A beautiful example of this rare text in an exceptionally fine binding.