‎SECUNDUS, JANUS. ‎
‎Iohannis Secundi Opera. Accurate recognita, ex museo P. Scriverii. ‎

‎Leiden (Lugduni Batavorum), Apud Franciscum Hegerum, 1631. (Colophon at the end: 'Impressa Lugduni Batavorum, in nova officina typographica Wilhelmi Christiani, 1631') ‎

Reference : 159134

‎12mo. XXVIII,384 (recte 382),(1 colophon),(1 blank) p. Vellum. 13.5 cm 'The kissing poet' (Ref: STCN ppn 833698613; Brunet 5,257; Willems 1669; Graesse 6,339; Ebert 20786) (Details: 5 thongs laced through the joints. Short title in ink on the back. Engraved title with the portrait of the first love of the neolatin poet 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'. On p. *10 verso an almost 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: Vellum age-tanned. Front pastedown detached. Some irregular pagination) (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 as 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 posthumously 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 1612, 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 this 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.) It opens with 18 page with 'testimoni'a and 'iudicia' on Secundus. After the poems of Secundus, Scriverius added some poems of his brother Marius: 'Cymba amoris et alia poemata'. (p. 249/266) This is followed by Secundus' prose letters, though with some poetry, that he wrote during his 3 voyages through France, and his trip to Spain. (p. 269/345) At the end have been added some letters and a treatise on the family of Secundus 'De Nicolao Patre, & gente Nicolaia') (Collation: *8,(between leaf *4 and *5 have been inserted the leaves pi*5 and pi*6), **4; A-Q12 (Between the gatherings C and D the pagination of 72/79 is skipped.Leaf H11, p. 195/96, misnumbered 159/196, is a cancel. Leaves K11 & K12 have also irregular pagination, the numbers of the pages 244/45 are doubly used. Leaf L8 is a blank leaf. Leaf Q12 verso blank)) (Photographs on request) ‎