XO52 Aristotelous hapanta

Aristotelous hapanta = Aristotelis summi semper viri, et in quem unum vim suam uniuersam contulisse natura rerum uidetur, opera quaecunq[ue] impressa hacternus extiterunt omnia : denuò iam collatione uetustissimorum exemplarium, partim integris aliquot libris, ueluti ... duobus ... uno, nuc primum adiectis, partim locorum infinitis ferè millibus emendatis ita instaurata atque restituta, ut hic author planè nunc primum è tenebris erutus, in lucem prodrisse uideri possit / per Des. Eras. Roterodamum (Basel: [Bebel and Isengrin], MDXXXIX [1539])

Penn Libraries, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Folio GrC Ar466.1 1539

This is the first volume of a monumental edition of Aristotelian works in the original Greek. Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) – who despised Scholasticism, and the use it made of Aristotelianism in theology – wrote the preface, discussing the authenticity and the order of the different works composing the Aristotelian corpus. Simon Grynaeus (1493-1541), a German Protestant professor of Greek who also curated Plato’s works, was the editor of the text. The volumes were dedicated, as in the first edition printed in 1531, to the son of Thomas More (1478-1535). This edition connected, therefore, three outstanding European scholars of the sixteenth century. Unlike what happens today, books were shelved or stored horizontally, with their spine on the internal side. For this reason, their titles could be handwritten on the fore-edge as in this remarkable case.