[Carpentarius, Alexander]

Destructorium vitiorum ex similitudine creaturarum exemploru[m] appropriatione per modum dyalogi: auctoritatu[m]q[ue] sacraru[m] scripturarum philosophorum [et] poetarum constructoriumq[ue] virtutum noviter correctum. Lyon: Claude Nourry, 4 September 1511

8vo (8 1/4 x 5 7/8 in; 210 x 150 mm). Collation: a - g8, h5= 61 leaves; lacking final blank leaf, title printed in red and black with woodcut view of a scholar in his study and a decorative woodcut initial, full-page woodcut on title verso of the Virgin enthroned, 122 one-third page woodcuts (save the first which is half-page) each set to begin each chapter, decorative woodcut initials; a few light marginal spots or pale stains, top margin cut close touching text on leaf E2. Modern vellum boards made from a 13th-century manuscript; stained, small tears in spine. 

Henri Burton (bookplate)

Baudrier XI, p. 111; Gultlingen I, p. 76, no. 33; see I. Collijn, Katalog der Inkunabeln der Kgl. Bibliothek in Stockholm II, 1, section 6 (1916) on the 15th- and 16th-century editions

Lacking final blank leaf, title printed in red and black with woodcut view of a scholar in his study and a decorative woodcut initial, full-page woodcut on title verso of the Virgin enthroned, 122 one-third page woodcuts (save the first which is half-page) each set to begin each chapter, decorative woodcut initials; a few light marginal spots or pale stains, top margin cut close touching text on leaf E2. Modern vellum boards made from a 13th-century manuscipt; stained, small tears in spine.
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A charming illustrated edition of this popular collection of moral exempla taken from fables, written partly in dialogue form, in which the creatures are the interlocutors. It ranks alongside Aesop and the Fables of Bidpai as one of the three great illustrated fable books to be printed in the fifteenth century. Written in the 14th Century, the manuscript versions bear the title Contemptus sublimitatis, the present title only appearing in the printed versions. A few manuscripts identify the author as either Nicolaus Pergamenus or Magnus de Magneriis. First printed in Gouda by Gerard Leeu (1480), this is the second Lyon edition of Claude Nourry, using copies of Leeu's woodblocks.

We have identified copies at Goettingen, Yale (defective), Philadelphia Free Library and Oxford, Bodleian.