Libro llamado El porque provechosissimo para la conservacion de la salud, y para conocer la phisonomia, y las virtudes de las yervas. Traduzido de toscano en lengua castellana.

MANFREDI, Girolamo, and Pedro de RIBAS, translator.

Published by Alcalá de Henares, Juan Iñiguez de Lequerica, 1587 [(colophon:) Hernan Ramirez, 1589]., 1587

About this Item

Small 8vo, ff.[viii], '206' (recte 197), [14], bound without final blank; woodcut IHS monogram on title; paperflaws in two leaves (K3, with loss of catchword only, and P2, a large flaw resulting in the loss of several words across seven lines), small burnhole in one leaf (G6, not affecting legibility), 2 shaved at head affecting three words on uppermost line of recto, sporadic light dampstaining; early nineteenth-century Spanish marbled sheep, flat spine simply gilt and with red morocco lettering-piece (faded), later arms of William Stuart blocked in gilt to boards, marbled edges; extremities slightly rubbed, short cracks at head of joints.Extremely rare, early Alcalá-printed edition of Pedro de Ribas's Spanish translation of Manfredi's popular Liber de Homine, a regimen sanitatis in question-and-answer form, in part censored by the translator. Girolamo Manfredi (c.1430 1493) was born in Bologna and taught first logic and then medicine, astronomy, and astrology at the university there. His Liber de homine orIl perché, written in the vernacular and first printed in 1474, is in part based on the AristotelianProblemata and comprises a regimen sanitatis together with a treatise on physiognomy, all in question-and-answer form. Owing apparently to prudishness, Pedro de Ribas omits seventy-four of Manfredi's 568 questions and answers in his translation but adds explanatory remarks in simple language at the end of more complex responses. Little is known of de Ribas, but in his preface he humbly acknowledges that he is not a translator by training and 'fearfully' undertook the translation of the present work at the request of his close 'friend and familiar', the bookseller Antonio de Furno of Zaragoza, who had funded the publication of the first translated edition of 1567: 'I understand from those as educated as the author that [this translation] will be useful only to the common people, and of interest to those gentle spirits eager to discover the curiosities therein' (trans.). Provenance: Thomas Gaisford (1779 1855), classical scholar, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, curator of the Bodleian Library, and delegate of the Clarendon Press, with bookplate; William Stuart (1798 1874; see History of Parliament online), with his arms on covers (British Armorial Bindings Stamp 1). All early editions are rare. Besides a handful in Spain and Portugal, Abad records copies of our edition at Boston Public Library and the Wellcome Library only. OCLC records two copies of the 1567 edition (Biblioteca Nacional and Dresden), no copies of the subsequent 1579 editions (there were apparently two although Palau had seen only one of them), and two copies of the 1581 edition (Harvard and National Library of Medicine). Abad, La imprenta en Alcalá de Henares 998; Palau 137929n and 266617. Language: Spanish & Catalan. Seller Inventory # C3105

Bibliographic Details

Title: Libro llamado El porque provechosissimo para...

Publisher: Alcalá de Henares, Juan Iñiguez de Lequerica, 1587 [(colophon:) Hernan Ramirez, 1589].

Publication Date: 1587

Binding: Hardcover

Edition: 1st Edition