Bruno (Giordano) Summa terminorum metaphysicorum ... Accessit eiusdem praxis descensus, seu applicatio entis ex manuscriptio, per Raphaelem Eglinum Iconium Tigurinum, second edition, Marburg, Rodolph Hutwelcker, 1609.

 

Bruno (Giordano) Summa terminorum metaphysicorum ... Accessit eiusdem praxis descensus, seu applicatio entis ex manuscriptio, per Raphaelem Eglinum Iconium Tigurinum, second edition, woodcut title decoration, woodcut initials and head-pieces, a few diagrams in text, title with small portion cut away and restored without loss to text, light spotting and browning, light marginal damp-stain to first few gatherings, contemporary limp vellum, binder's waste from a printed 17th-century German almanac, 8vo, Marburg, Rodolph Hutwelcker, 1609.

*** The rare second and definitive version of Bruno's neo-platonic treatise.

Bruno's Summa terminorum metaphisicorum relays a series of lectures given by him in Zurich; he compiled the text in 1591, while still in the Swiss city. Bruno returned to Venice in August 1591 but was ultimately deemed a heretic and burned at the stake in Rome at Campo de' Fiori in 1600. The book was edited posthumously by the theologian Raphael Egli (1559-1622), who had become acquainted with Bruno in Geneva, and who later attended his lectures in Zurich. Of this Marburg edition two versions of the title-page are known, with and without mention of Egli's affiliation and reference to Goclenius's Terminorum quorundam explicationes. The copy presented here is one of only seven copies known to bear the title-page in the shorter form, and is considered the first issue.

Provenance: given by a certain Reiter to Rev. Leib in 1773 (ownership inscription on the verso of the front flyleaf, 'Ex libris R.d Leib à R.D. Leibn à R D: Reiter dono oblatus anno 1773', and on the title- page, 'Ex Libris Rd Leib').