Hermetic Philosophy. HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. Aureum planeque divinum opusculum Mercurii Trismegisti de potestate ac sapiencia [..]

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. Aureum planeque divinum opusculum Mercurii Trismegisti de potestate ac sapiencia dei, interprete Marsilio Ficino Florentino.

Mainz, Johannes Schoeffer, 1503

8vo. 190x126 mm. Threequarter Binding, quarter vellum and polychrome marbled cardboard, corners. 50 unnumbered leaves, last blank. Collation: a-d8 e-g6. Last blank leaf. Colophon on g5 leaf verso “Impressum ... presens opusculum In nobili vrbe maguntina ... Per Joannem Schoeffer Anno dñi Millesimo quingentesimotercio. In vigilia palmarum”. Gothic type, spaces for Initials with guide letter. Woodcut Printer's device under the Colophon. Marginalia by contemporary hand. Small wormholes run through the leaves and often obliterate a few letters, without impairing the sense of the text. Nice specimen.

Very rare first German edition of De potestate et sapientia Dei and the first book printed by Johannes Schoeffer.

Ficino makes clear the primacy of Hermes in his preface: he was the ‘fons et origo of a wisdom tradition which led in an unbroken chain to Plato’ (Yates). Hermetic philosophy informed a wide spectrum of Renaissance humanism, from Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, to the Christian study of the cabala, and, owing to the alchemical hermetic works, magic and spirituality. Pimander was printed in more than 20 editions before 1641, and hermetic influence has been traced in works as disparate as Newton's physics and the writings of Shakespeare, Sidney and Spenser.

Johannes Schoeffer was the son of Peter, c. 1425 – 1503, one of the first German printers, apprenticed to Johannes Gutenberg and then partnered with Johann Fust, with whom he took over Gutenberg's business in 1457. In this work Johannes uses the same famous printer’s device as his father, the first device appearing in the Psalter of 1457, a milestone in the history of printing: two heraldic shields suspended from a branch, engraved with the Greek letters Chi (for Christ) and Lambda (for Logos, meaning "word").

Yates, Frances. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. 1964.

Peter Schoeffer, Printer of Mainz: a quincentenary exhibition at Bridwell Library, 8 September - 8 December 2003; Sophie Evans, Printers’ devices from the Royal Irish Academy’s early print collections: Johannes Hamman.

https://www.ria.ie/blog/printers-devices-from-the-royal-irish-academys-early-print-collections-johannes-hamman/