CRESCENZI (Pietro de’). Lot n° 5

Le Bon Mesnaiger. Paris, Vincent Sertenas, 1540, small folio, blue marbled paper boards, smooth spine, red title page, speckled edges (Binding of the late 18th century). Very rare Parisian edition of the Livre des profits champêtres, one of the most important treatises on agriculture and rural economy of the Middle Ages. This anonymous French translation had already appeared in Paris in 1533; it is followed by La Manière d'enter, planter et nourrir tous arbres by Gorgole de Corne. A sumptuous two-column gothic printing, executed by Etienne Caveiller for the associated booksellers Denis Janot, Charles L'Angelier, Pierre Sergent and Vincent Sertenas. It is decorated with four woodcuts - two large ones (ff. 1 and 29) and two small ones (ff. 10 and 56) - and numerous initials in the text. Composed in Latin between 1304 and 1306, the treatise by the Bolognese agronomist Crescenzi (1233-c. 1320) combines the sum of ancient and medieval knowledge on the subject with the experience of a long personal practice of agriculture, essentially Mediterranean. The work was already circulating throughout Europe before the invention of the printing press, in Latin and in the vernacular, and was published in 1471. Incomplete of f. 73 (N1), head margin a little short, wetness in the bottom of the volume, small marginal repair at the foot of the title. Naïs, n°14 - Moreau, V, n°1701.