GREGOIRE DE NAZIANCE Carmina, cum versione latina.

Renouard, 4; Ahmanson-Murphy, 84 (“under: Poetae Christiani, v.3”); Adams, G-1142; Aldo Manuzio tipographo, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 86 .

Editio princeps of the most famous of all collections of poetry of the primitive Church.

Carmina comprises 17 000 verses and are written on the request of the Greek fathers at the time when it was believed that Christianity was in need of literary culture in order to compete with much older Greek traditions. 

Best known for his reform of the liturgical calendar, Gregory of Nazianzus set himself the task of providing the Church with Christian poetry on a vast scale. The Carmina encompass all the literary forms known at the time and explore a wide range of Christian themes, including dogmatic, moral, lyrical and autobiographical.

This bilingual edition is also a bibliographical curiosity. Aldus did this in anticipation of enthusiasts wishing to possess the two versions, Greek and Latin, separately: he printed the texts separately, and mixed the leaves when assembling the copies, finding himself obliged to print on the double blank pages resulting from this method; on these occurrences of blank pages he printed a work perfectly independent of the Carmina, the Gospel of Saint John, to which he added a line in the lower margin each time, Quaere reliquum in medio sequentis quaternionis. The Gospel of St John does not, however, fit into these few pages, and Aldus apologises for this in the index, promising to print the end in a forthcoming Greek edition… but he did not keep his word. Aldus proceeded in the same way in the other volumes of the Christian Poets that he printed, of which this is the third.

A copy complete with the two leaves of corrections to the text, which are often missing after the Aldine mark. There are sometimes two additional leaves containing the table of poems, which are missing here.

Handwritten annotations in Greek in the margins. Some wetness and foxing.