Incunabulum. ALBERTUS MAGNUS. Tractatus de virtutibus editus a Magno Alberto, secundum alios vocatus Paradisus animae.

ALBERTUS MAGNUS. Tractatus de virtutibus editus a magno Alberto, secundum alios vocatus Paradisus animae.

Memmingen, [Albrecht Kunne], 1488

Small 4to. 192x140 mm. Modern antique-style binding, full brown leather with embossed decoration. Unnumbered 34 leaves. Collation: a¹°, b-d8. Gothic type, initial spaces with guide-letter. Small lack on the lower white margin of leaf d5, a few sporadic stains, good copy.

A very rare incunabulum, printed by Kunne, the only printer in Memmingen in the 15th century. This is the second edition of this extensive Latin treatise on the virtues which was composed between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. It was transmitted anonymously in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but in the fifteenth century, when it was known under the title De veris virtutibus or Paradisus animae (On the True Virtues or The Paradise of the Soul), it was attributed almost exclusively to Albert the Great (c. 1200-1280), the German Dominican friar and bishop, known during his lifetime as Doctor universalis for his encyclopedic intellect, and considered by many as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages.

The Paradisus animae is divided into 42 chapters, each one treating a virtue (virtus) and its opposite (falsa virtus). It takes its sources especially from the Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers (especially Augustine, Gregory the Great and Jerome), and to a lesser degree, the medieval authors Bernard of Clairvaux and Anselm of Canterbury. The virtues discussed in the work include, among others, caritas (charity), castitas (chastity), abstinentia, prudentia, fortitudo (strength), compassio, letitia (joy), maturitas, taciturnitas (silence, reticence), discretio (discretion), maceratio carnis (maceration of the flesh), contritio (contrition), confessio (confession), penitentia (penance), perseverantia (perseverance).