THE EVELYN SALE COPY?
Monasticon anglicanum, or, the history Of the Ancient Abbies, and other Monasteries, Hospitals, Cathedrals and Collegiate Churches, in england and wales. With divers French, Irish, and Scotch Monasteries Formerly relating to england. Collected, and Published in Latin, by Sir William Dugdale, Knt. late Garter King of Arms. In Three Volums. And now Epitomized in English, Page by Page.
London.
Printed, for Sam. Keble at the Turks-Head, in Fleet-street.., 1693.
First English edition.
Folio.
[12], 331pp, [13]. With 15 copper-engraved plates. Contemporary panelled calf, recently rebacked to style (and upper corner of lower board consolidated), with earlier lettering-piece laid down. A little wear to extremities, browning to endpapers and occasional spotting to plates. Likely from the Evelyn sale, with the twentieth century JE book label marking it as such to front pastedown, alongside two press-marks in two different early hands.
The first English edition, heavily abridged, of the definitive history of English monasticism, by Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686), English antiquary and herald.
First published in Latin - in three weighty volumes - between 1656 and 1673, which were illustrated with 109 engraved plates of allegory, architecture and costume by Daniel King and Wenceslaus Hollar, and a folding map of Thanet, the Monasticon charted the growth of the major orders (including Benedictine, Cluniac, Cistercian, Carthusian, Gilbertian, Gregorian, Templar and Trinitarian) through the middle ages to eventual dissolution during the English Reformation, collecting the charters of monasteries, abbies, nunneries and major Cathedrals, along with the history of the control, administration and latterly the privileges devolving to secular proprietors of ecclesiastical lands. Composed during the Cromwellian interregnum, the publication of this work was encouraged by a defiant Protestant and Royalist establishment as eager to reclaim their temporal privileges as to preserve the history and identity of English Christianity.
This English translation, made by the author's friend James Wright, features just 15 plates - all featuring the costume of various monastic orders, which retain the page references to the original Latin editions.
Provenance: quite possibly lot no. 497 in Christie's sale of The Evelyn Library, Part II: D-L, November 30-December 1 1977; this cataloguer's only hesitation is that copy was described as 'panelled calf (short splits in hinges)'. Given the near 50-year interval between that sale and now, it is entirely possible the volume was rebacked in the meantime.
£ 1,250.00
Antiquates Ref: 32687
First published in Latin - in three weighty volumes - between 1656 and 1673, which were illustrated with 109 engraved plates of allegory, architecture and costume by Daniel King and Wenceslaus Hollar, and a folding map of Thanet, the Monasticon charted the growth of the major orders (including Benedictine, Cluniac, Cistercian, Carthusian, Gilbertian, Gregorian, Templar and Trinitarian) through the middle ages to eventual dissolution during the English Reformation, collecting the charters of monasteries, abbies, nunneries and major Cathedrals, along with the history of the control, administration and latterly the privileges devolving to secular proprietors of ecclesiastical lands. Composed during the Cromwellian interregnum, the publication of this work was encouraged by a defiant Protestant and Royalist establishment as eager to reclaim their temporal privileges as to preserve the history and identity of English Christianity.
This English translation, made by the author's friend James Wright, features just 15 plates - all featuring the costume of various monastic orders, which retain the page references to the original Latin editions.
Provenance: quite possibly lot no. 497 in Christie's sale of The Evelyn Library, Part II: D-L, November 30-December 1 1977; this cataloguer's only hesitation is that copy was described as 'panelled calf (short splits in hinges)'. Given the near 50-year interval between that sale and now, it is entirely possible the volume was rebacked in the meantime.
