Aristoteles De Mundo, Græce

Full title: Aristoteles De Mundo, Græce: Cum duplici interpretation Latinâ. priore quidem L. Apulei; alterâ verò Guilielmi Budæi. Cum Scholiis & Castigationibus Bonaventuræ Vulcanii tam in Aristotelem, quàm in utrunque eius interpretem. Acceßit seorsim Gregorii Cyprii, Encomium Maris, Gracè, numquam antea excusum. Et Pauli Silentiarii Iambica

8vo. f. [1], pp. [14], 297, [7]; pp. 23. Signatures: *8 A-T8; A8 B4. Contemporary vellum, with engraved portrait of Vulcanius (aged 57, dated 1596) bound in facing title frontispiece, complete with the 24-page appendix.

A presentation copy from the editor, inscribed by him on the title ‘Bonaventura Ventura L.M.D.D.’, with the recipient’s name in two lines above scored through with ink, though the words ‘Nicolao’ or ‘Nicolau’, and ‘patricio’ or ‘patricii Geneuensi’ (or possibly ‘Genouensi’) can be made out; and with marginal holograph corrections--quite possibly by Vulcanius--on A1v, A5r, M3r, and M4r. Later provenance: Friedrich Brandt, inscription dated 29 March 1629 on front pastedown, and ‘Sum Verus Possessor / Georgius Paip[er?]’, dated ‘V Id[es = 19] Novembris MDCLXXXVI’ on front endleaf.

Among many works now regarded as spuriously Aristotlean, the Greek text Περε κοσμοι (or De Mundo, not to be confused with Aristotle’s canonical De Caelo et Mundo) is perhaps outstanding: a vivid account of the cosmos presented as an instructive letter to Alexander the Great, first attributed to Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) by Apuleius of Madaura (c. 125-170 A.D.), the Numidian Platonist, rhetorician, and proto-novelist of The Golden Ass. Its true authorship has been disputed since the fifteenth century at least, with its skeptics (including Maimonides, Erasmus, Vives, Scaliger, Vettori, Muret, and later Daniel Heinsius, J. G. Voss, and Gabriel Naudé) outnumbering proponents from Bessarion, Ficino and Pico della Mirandola to Budé (perhaps wavering), the present editor Bonaventurus Vulcanius, Conrad Gesner, and Jean Bodin. Modern scholarship rejects Aristotle’s direct involvement, dating the composition--notable for its quasi-Judaeo-Christian presupposition of a single omnipotent God, as creator and ruler of the cosmos--to the era of Apuleius.

The present edition, perhaps the earliest variorium, with translations and scholia, offers the Greek text together with Latin versions of both Apulaius and Budé (the latter possibly accessed from a recent Paris printing of 1571), with new annotations by Vulcanius. It also contains (as called for in the title, and separately signed A8 B4 at the end) the first and only edition of an oration in Greek by Gregorius II Cyprus, thirteenth-century Patriarch of Constantinople (‘Ενκωμιον τες θαλασσες’, or ‘Praise of the Sea’) and a poem by the sixth-century Byzantine poet Paul ‘the Silentiary’, both edited by Vulcanius from manuscript, and dedicated to his former employer Henri Estienne. USTC lists this ‘appendix’ independently (thirteen copies, as opposed to forty-six of the De Mundo), suggesting that many copies of the latter may lack it.

For the disinguished humanist/translator/ poet Bonaventura de Smet, or ‘Vulcanius’ (1538-1614), see H.-J. van Dam, ‘The Honour of Letters: Bonaventura Vulcanius, Scholar and Poet’ (in Bonaventura Vulcanius, Works and Networks. Bruges 1538 - Leiden 1614. Leyden, 2010, pp. 45-68, citing other recent studies in fn. 2. The son of Pieter de Smet, friend of Erasmus, Bonaventura long served as Professor of Greek at Leyden, alongside Lipsius and Scaliger, where he taught Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius and traded verse with Jan Dousa the Elder (whose commendatory ‘Carmen’ begins the De Mundo). As a youngish man he spent a decade in Spain 1559-1570, then taught at Cologne, then (after a ruckus with a local jurist, Gilbert Regius, in 1574) lived in Geneva (working for Henri Estienne) and Basel (for Froben, to 1577), then Antwerp (for Willem Sylvius), then back to Leyden (1578), where he wound up (after more travel: he was reportedly fluent in six languages) as Professor of Greek, 1581-1614. His own working library and personal manuscripts remain there.

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