‎SECUNDUS, JANUS. ‎
‎Joannis Secundi opera. ‎

‎Paris (Parisiis), Sumtibus Societatis, 1748. ‎

Reference : 120511

‎12mo. (II),382,(1 corrigenda) p., portrait. Vellum 14.5 cm (Ref: cf. Willems 1669) (Details: 5 thongs laced through the joints. An engraved portrait on the title of the first love of Janus Secundus, Julia, locked within a kind of medallion and surrounded by 2 cornucopiae; the text reads: Vatis amatoris Iulia sculpta manu, i.e. a portrait sculped by the hand of the author; opposite the title is a full-page engraved portrait of Janus Secundus himself, holding in his hand the medal or medallion he made with the portrait of Julia; underneath the portrait a 4 line poem by his brother Hadrianus Marius) (Condition: Binding soiled. Old ownership entry on the first flyleaf. Outer margin of the portrait & the title thumbed. Paper yellowing) (Note: The Dutch neolatin poet Janus Secundus Nicolai Hagiensis, was born on the 15th of november 1511, the day of the martyr Secundus, in The Hague. He died very young in 1536. In 1528 he moved to Mechelen where his father was appointed president of the High Council. This town was the residence of the Austrian vicequeen Margaretha of Parma. The southern part of the Netherlands was in this time the center of a florishing urban civilization. In May 1530 Secundus met a young prostitute from Mechelen, called Julia, and fell in love with her. Julia became the subject of his first book of elegies, his Julia Monobiblos, in which he tells how he won and lost his love. During his studies in Bourges under the famous jurist Alciati he wrote his first Basia. Alciati introduced Secundus there also to the newest Italian poetry. A humanist poet often started his career with erotic poetry, like Piccolomini and Beza. Secundus' kiss-poems are a variation on two kiss-poems of the Latin poet Catullus (ca. 84-54 B.C), who became during the Renaissance a model for love-poetry. Secundus wrote in his short live 6835 lines of poetry, of which only 425 lines were printed during his lifetime. He wrote 'with equal fluency all kinds of lyrical, heroic, and elegiac verse. Down to the present day Secundus lives in literary history als the kissing poet' (...) 'Until far in the 18th century Secundus is mentioned as one of the classics of love poetry' (IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin studies I, Leuven, 1990, p. 152) The first edition of his collected works was posthumely published in 1541 in Utrecht, and was edited by Secundus' brother Marius. All later editions are based on this edition. The manuscript with the collected works used for this edition came later in the possession of the Dutch classicist Petrus Scriverius, 1576-1660. He produced a new edition in 1619, in which he also incorporated poems of Secundus which had been omitted in the 1541 edition because they were thought to be disagreeable to the French and English king. In his second edition of 1631 Scriverius incorporated more material from other sources and manuscripts. (Best source for Secundus is J.P. Guépin, De kunst van Janus Secundus, Amst., 1991) The book on offer here is a reissue of the third edition of 1651. Willems says about the edition of 1651: 'L'édition de 1651 reproduit textuellement la précédente', id est that of 1631. The book opens with 18 pages testimonia and iudicia on Secundus. After these preliminary pages and before Secundus' text we find on page 27 a kind of half title: Joannis Secundi poemata quae reperiri potuerunt omnia. Ex tertia editione Petri Scriverii anno 1650. The year 1650 seems to be a printing error of the French printer. At the end are added some letters and a treatise on the family of Secundus De gente Nicolaia) (Provenance: on front flyleaf the old ownership entry of 'Frid. Guil. von Knebel'. We found on the internet a Friedrich Wilhelm von Knebel, 1735-1799, who seems to have been a rigid and at the same time sloppy Prusian state official. On the front pastedown is written in a different hand 'Ostheide'. Ostheide might refer to the Samtgemeinde (collective municipality) in the district of Lüneburg, south of Hamburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. Ostheide is also a German family name) (Collation: pi1 (= A12), A12 (minus leaf A12), B-Q12 (R1, corrigenda)) (Photographs on request) ‎