LEONARDUS DE UTINO [MATTEI, Leonardo]. Sermones quadragesimales de legibus.
(Köln, Konrad Winters von Homborch, non dopo il 1475)
Very rare incunabulum, the first book printed in Cologne by Winters. Important source for ancient city laws and statutes.
Visnjevac: “The participation of popular preachers in the creation and enactment of statutes in Italian towns of the Late Middle Ages is a phenomenon which has received significant scholarly attention. Less well known is the influence of laws and law-making on the preachers’ composition of their own sermons. … Leonardo explored numerous subjects within the framework of eight forms of law, from natural and divine, to ecclesiastical and secular. But in addition to shaping the structure of these sermons, laws also formed the main content, with frequent references to canon and Roman law. … Leonardo expounded upon the obligations of those responsible for laws as well as those subject to them, and elaborated on the law’s stance on forty issues (mirroring the forty fasting days of Lent). … By linking his advice and examples with laws, Leonardo imbued the sermons with authoritative voice and simultaneously grounded them in a practical, if basic, legal education for his audience – whether ruler, lawmaker, or common man.”
Leonardus de Utino, i.e. Leonardo Mattei from Udine, was a follower of Thomas Aquinas. He became professor of theology and rector of the Dominican school in Bologna in 1428, and a highly acclaimed preacher who gave speeches from the pulpit in Venice, Milan and Rome; he was later prior of the convent of San Domenico in Bologna and provincial of all of Lombardy.
The Sermones are considered to predate Winters' earliest dated book. Winters' first dated work in BMC was printed in 1476, but we know from a rubricator's note dated 1475 in the Munich copy that the present work predates it. Although little is known about Winters, Pollard tells us that he printed about 60 works between 1475 and 1482.
H *16116; BSB-Ink L-121; CIBN L-136; Bod-inc L-074; Goff L-144¸ Poulain 2474. No in BMC.
Cfr. Stefan Visnjevac, Law as the Sermon: The «Sermones quadragesimales de legibus» of Leonardo Mattei da Udine (c. 1399-1469), in: Verbum e ius Predicazione e sistemi giuridici nell’Occidente medievale … a cura di Laura Gaffuri e Rosa Maria Parrinello, Firenze University Press 2018, p. 213-227; Luciano Cinelli, DBI, Vol. 72.
Large Folio. 395x295 mm. Brown leather binding, red title under horn in a brass frame applied on the front cover; binding renowed in the 20th century. Housed in 20th century clamshell stiff box with Morocco spine. Unnumbered 311 leaves. Without the final blank leaf. Text on two columns of 60 lines. Gothic type. Rubricated book, first Initial of six lines in red with pen filling and extensions in brown; numerous Initials of two to five lines in red, red underlining on text. Morocco Ex-Libris by Estelle Doheny pasted on the insidecover; handwritten ink ownership note on the first page of text from the Jesuit College of Leuven with the date “1643”. Very little tear on the lower margin of a leaf and little restoration on last leaf. Nice specimen with wide margins printed on thick paper and with wonderful rubrics.