Paul the Deacon (Paulus Diaconus) [Attributed to Alcuin] - Homiliae seu sermones sive conciones ad populum - 1538

Paul the Deacon (Paulus Diaconus) [Attributed to Alcuin]

Homiliae seu sermones sive conciones ad populum. Praestantissimorum ecclesiae doctorum, Hieronymi, Augustini, Ambrosii, Gregorii, Origenis, Chrysostomi, Bedae, Herici, Haymonis, Aliorumq. In hunc ordinem digestae per Alchuinum Leuitam.

Lugduni: Mathiam Bonhome, 1538.

Full contemporary vellum. Ascribed to Paul the Deacon by the typescript Oxford Intercollegiate Catalogue; to Alcuin by Adams and listed under the heading Alcuin by BM STC German, 1455-1600, though described as a suppositious work.

Title and date printed in red and black within a woodcut architectural border. Woodcut initials. Text printed in double columns. 230 ff. 250 x 180 mm (9¾ x 7 inches).

Some darkening to the covers. Internally generally a good clean copy with some slight dustiness. Penciled inscriptions to inside paste down. Worming to the lower blank margin, and to ff. 166–189, affecting a few letters of text, in places part of a line in one column, though the sense remains legible throughout. A little light marking throughout.

Text in gothic letter, double columns, with woodcut initials (including a historiated initial with a hare).

Collation: a–z⁸ A–E⁸ F⁶; 230 leaves. Complete, collating with the printer’s register.

OCLC: 50204366 shows a single copy of this Lyon edition. (Library of Congress).
We could find no other copies for sale at the time of cataloguing.

This collection is generally held to have been compiled by Paulus Diaconus rather than Alcuin./ Imprint from colophon; date on t.p. is M.D. XXXVIII./ "Prior homiliarum Index huic parti, alter uerò secundae praefixus est."/ Signatures: a-z⁸ A-E⁸ F⁶./ This edition is without introductory matter save an index of feasts and Sundays on the verso of the t.p., apparently as issued./ Title page printed in red and black with historiated architectural woodcut border; text printed in double columns.

Sixteenth-century editions, including the Cologne printings and this Lyon one, put Alcuin on the title page (“per Alchuinum Leuitam”),
Around 790, Charlemagne found the sermon collections used in his churches full of errors. He commissioned the Lombard scholar Paul the Deacon to compile a corrected collection of the best patristic sermons for the whole church year, and issued it with his own royal decree. It became one of the most widely used books of the medieval Church, copied for 700 years and first printed at Speyer in 1482.

The plan of this book goes back to Charlemagne’s court. But it continued to be added to: The title lists the authors gathered here: Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Origen, John Chrysostom and Bede. It also includes Heiric and Haymo of Auxerre, ninth-century Carolingian teachers who came after Paul.

Alcuin of York was the English scholar who led Charlemagne’s palace school, and he was the most famous intellectual of the Carolingian court

In the 1530s preaching was contested ground: Protestants were reforming the sermon, and Catholics were turning back to patristic models

At this time Lyon was a major European printing centre, and Mathias Bonhomme was one of its active printers.