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Venedig, Bernardino de Tridino - Stagnatius (Bernardino Benalio and Giovanni de Tridino / Bernardino Benalio and Giovanni de Tridino alias Tacuino), 10. April 1486. Folio (binding: 33x22 cm, block: 31,5x21,5 cm). In a charming contemporary full blindstamped pigskin binding over wooden boards. Five raised bands and early handwritten paper title-labels to spine. Spine and upper parts of boards with wear. Front hinge cracked, but still holding, although inner hinge very weak. Brass clasps, but no ties. Boards richly blindstamped with panels of acanthus-stamps and diamond-shaped stamps with two-headed dragons. Centre-panel with round stamps inside which a lion. Front board with "Iohannes" repeated four times inside banners. Pasted down front end-paper richly annotated in various hands - contemporary and early - and with several Ex libris - Ditlev Duckert, Sigurd&Gudrun Wandel, and "A-D". First blank with contemporary or near contemporary two-line inscription and a discreet stamp ("Veräusserte Dublette aus Stadtbibliothek Frankfurt am Main"). Neat, contemporary handwritten annotations to margins of many leaves. Pasted-down end-paper with many contemporary handwritten annotations as well. Beautifully printed in two columns throughout, 70 lines to each. Handpainted initials in red throughout and rubricated in red. A few leaves cropped at lower blank margin (far from affecting text), one leaf with a vertital tear (no loss), one leaf with a large brown stain, and one leaf with the red initials smudged. Otherwise just some occasional brownspotting. Generally very nice and well preserved. All in all a lovely copy. 200 ff. (a-p8, q-r6 (incl. the 3 ff. of Tabula) + aa-mm8 + 2 ff. Tabula) - thus fully complete, with both registers and the first blank. The scarce and magnificent Tridino-edition of the seminal third part of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas' unfinished magnum opus, of which each part constitutes a work in its own right, the third dealing with Christology. It is here that we find Aquinas' groundbreaking "Five Ways", his five arguments for the existence of God, arguably the most influential demonstration that God exists ever written. Each individual part of the "Summa" has its own separate printing history and its own bibliography, and the three parts are not expected to be found together. The "Pars Tertia" was printed for the first time in the 1470'ies, by Michael Wenssler. A reissue of this appeared in 1485. The present edition, by the renowned Venice book printer Tridino, constitutes the second edition of this landmark work of Western thought and the third appearance overall. Aquinas wrote his seminal magnum opus, the "Summa Theologiae", as an instructional guide for theology students and those interested in understanding Christian theology. Together, the three volumes that he wrote present the reasoning for almost all parts of Christian theology in the West, following a cycle beginning and ending with God, in between which we find Creation, Man, the Purpose of Man, Christ, and the Sacraments (unfinished), the third part dealing with Christ, the most fundamental question of the existence of God, and man's way of knowing him to exist. Although he left the "Summa" as such unfinished, the individual parts have come to form "one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature." (Ross, James F.: "Summa theologiae, Christian Wisdom Explained Philosophically", 2003. P. 165). Determining that the way which leads to God is Christ, the path to God becomes the theme of Pars III of the "Summa", where we find Aquinas' Christology developed in full, his seminal demonstration of the existence of God, and his assertation of the necessity of the incarnation. Centering on the unity of the divine and human in the person of Christ, Pars III argues that all human potentialities are made perfect in Jesus. Aquinas here focuses on Christ's true humanity, including his birth, passion, resurrection. Seller Inventory # 60412
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