Fastorum maiorum libellus

4to (211x154 mm). [35 of 36] leaves. Collation: a-d⁸ e⁴. Lacking the final blank. Colophon on l. e3v. 27 lines. Blank spaces for initials with guide-letters. Title from leaf a2r. Later vellum, red edges (traces of ties, new endleaves). Gutter of the first and final leaves repaired or reinforced, pale staining to the inner margin thorughout the volume, all in all a good, wide-margined copy.

Extremely rare first edition, dedicated to Cardinal Ardicino della Porta and financed by the jurist Paolo Rognoni di Taegio, of this collection of “carmina sacra in praecipuas per annum festivitates aliisque occasionibus facta”, i.e. elegiac poems that seek to create, in contrast to Ovid's, a Christian etiology of religious festivities. The style is fluid and the Virgilian imitation, though obvious, is moderate.

The poems are variously dedicated to Christmas, Epiphany, Pentecost, the Circumcision of Christ, the Annunciation, the Last Supper, the Passion, the Ascension, or to various saints, such as Stephen the Protomartyr, John the Evangelist, Innocent, Paul, and Peter, with the visit of the angel in prison; but also to the miracle of snow in summer which occurred on the site where the basilica of St. Mary Major was built.

One of the last compositions, entitled Tabellae Pictae Descriptio, contains a description of a painting owned by Collatius, which the latter describes as being of such great beauty that it makes Apelles envious, without naming its author. In particular, Collatius dwells on the feelings aroused in him by the painting, which depicts the Virgin and Child in the center and St. Francis with the stigmata at the side. The verses indulge in the brightness of the painting, while the closing of the poem suggests that Collatius would have made a donation to the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian, perhaps of the painting itself. The last poem is in praise of the child Simon of Trent who, according to tradition, was sacrificed by the Jews.

Of Collatius we do not know with certainty either the place of his birth (often referred to as “presbyter Novariensis,” many think he was born in Novara, while others speculate that he was only ordained a priest in Novara) or the date of his birth, which may be placed between 1430 and 1435. In all likelihood, Collatius was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Novara, Bartolomeo Visconti (d. 1457), who for some time had as his secretary Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II, with whom he then attended the Council of Basel (1432). It was to Piccolomini that Collatius dedicated his book of epistles, composed around 1460 and remained unpublished until 1877. After 1460 it is likely hat Collatius was busy with his ecclesiastical duties while continuing to compose verse. As is often the case, a juvenile production of a more personal nature was followed by a more mature phase, expressed in an epic poem of 2,486 hexameters in four books, entitled De eversione urbis Hierusalem, published in 1481in Milan by U. Scinzenzeler and L. Pachel, at the author's own expense. The work met with great success and was later reprinted in Paris in 1540 under the title De excidio Hierosolymitano by Jean de Gaigny, who, ignoring the 1481 edition, believed his to be the first. The other compositions, both sacred and profane, that Collatius wrote during these years, remained instead unpublished for a long time and were only published in Milan in 1692 under the title Heroicum carmen de duello Davidis et Goliae,elegiae et epigrammata. The date of Collatius' death is also uncertain: some place it between 1489 and 1492, others in the early 1500s, at around the age of 70 (R. Ricciardi, Collazio, Pietro Apollonio Massimo, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 26, 1982, s.v.).

G. Martini, Catalogo della libreria, Milan, 1934, no. 134; Goff, A-923; HC, 1290; BMC, VI, 785; GW, 7158.

[13134]