Lavrentii Vallae De lingvae Latinae elegantia libri sex, diligentia haud uulgari ad emendatissima quaeq[ue] exemplaris recogniti: Eivsdem De reciprocatione sui & suus libellus adprime utilis ...

Lyon: Seb. Gryphium, 1535. Hardcover. Very Good. MDXXXV (1535). 8vo (170 x 120mm). 493pp., [42]. Signatures: a-z(8), A-K(8), L(4). Colophon on leaf 3r. Woodcut engraved printer’s device of griffin on pedestal and winged orb with motto “VIRTUTE DVCE COMITE FORTVNA” (“Under the guidance of valor, accompanied by good fortune”). 5-line chapter decorative initials throughout. Printed catchwords and marginalia. 19th century half cloth over marbled boards, spine with three raised bands and lettered in gilt “LAURENTIUS VALLA,” endpapers renewed; (title browned with small lower right marginal tear, some marginal dampstaining, marginal worming in center of text block only affecting a few quires, few stains, outer edgewear; altogether a good French imprint from the Gryphius press). Title page with 19th century ownership inscriptions "Gabriele Tasinari 1865” and early 20th century ink ownership stamp of Jaime Azancot. Lyon edition of Lorenzo Valla’s linguistic work on the Latin language. This same year an edition appeared with Jodus Badius Ascensius and was printed in Paris with Simonem Colinaeum. The next year (1536) saw editions from the printers Giunta in Lyon and Fabricius in Cologne.Immensely popular as a textbook, this was Valla’s widely reprinted and influential work on Latin linguistics which went through at least 60 editions between 1471 and 1536. Lorenzo (or Laurentius) Valla, from Piacenza, was a scholar, humanist, and philosopher, not unfamiliarwith controversy. In his tumultuous career, he was chosen by Pope Nicholas V to translate the classical texts of Herodotus and Thucydides into Latin. His masterwork is De lingvae latinae elegantia (1444), called “a brilliant philological defense of classical Latin in which he contrasted the elegance of the ancient Romans’ works - especially those of Cicero and Quintilian - with the clumsiness of medieval and Church Latin” (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed., 2006). Valla’s treatise was novel in it subjected the forms of Latingrammar and the rules of Latin style and rhetoric to a critical examination. His work was the basis for the Humanist movement to reform the style of Latin prose to a more classical and Ciceronian direction and on a scientific basis and away from the Christian Latin of the European Middle Ages. This was thought to be a major improvement in style and elegance in Latin usage. Sebastian Gryphius was a German bookseller-printer and humanist. Around 1520 he came to Lyon and settled there, on behalf of a Venetian firm of booksellers. Initially Gryphius largely published works on law but was later known for classic works in humanism produced in elegant format. For an often reprinted title, this particular edition is not common.