Jean Tixier de Ravisy - Officina - One of the first encyclopedias ever printed - 1532

(PEDAGOGY: DICTIONARIES; RARIORA) Jean TIXIER DE RAVISY (Johannes TEXTOR Ravisius, Nivernensis) (1470 c. -1542 or 1524)
Ioan. Ravisii Textoris nivernensis Officina, partim histerijs, partim poeticis referta disciplinis, multo nunc, quam prius auctior: aditis ab ipso authore antè q.è vita excederet, rebus propè innumeris cognitu dignissimis. Cui etia[m] accessit index copiosissimus, ut ad manu[m] statim habeas quicquid in hoc opere requisieris. (Paris), Prostat Reginaldum Chauldiere (colophon: Imprimebat Petrus Vidovaeus Calchographus Typis suis, Impensa Honesti viri Reginaldi Chauldiere) 1532.
§ Folio (337x213); [22], 344, [1] leaves (last blank), signature: A⁴ B-D⁶, a-z⁸, aa-vv⁸ (vv8 blank) Title within large woodcut frame depicting the Holy Trinity, a pope and a king and two men holding a scroll; woodcut initials. Contemporary vellum, handwritten title on spine. Very good copy.
Second edition, exactly a reprint of the first one, published in 1520 in Paris by the same printer .Jean Tixier, a French renaissance humanist, scholar and professor of rhetoric and was rector of the University of Paris; he wrote several works, all of them relating to teaching and many of which were widely used in several French colleges at the time. The present work was very popular and went through about thirty editions. Written with the purpose to make the learning of the Latin language and of the classical antiquity easier for his students, the present work, together with the Cornucopia “are true encyclopedias of Greek and Latin antiquity and are among its claims to fame. ... This Officina ... contains a variety of information on all imaginable subjects: the gods and their worship, the world, man, time and the seasons, magistrates, arts and crafts, virtues and vices. This is what Textor, in his preface, calls “writing history”.” (Vodoz, p. 19, 21, translated).
 Mémoires et documents scolaires: Publiés par le musée pédagogique, fascicule n° 3: Répertoire des ouvrages pédagogiques du XVI siécle Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1886, p. 551; VICTOR AUGUSTIN GUENEAU Dictionnaire biographique des personnes nees en Nivernais ou revendiquees par le Nivernais Nevers, Mazeron, 1899, pp. 159-160; JULES VODOZ Le théatre Latin de Ravisius Textor (1470-1524) Winterthur, Ziegler, 1898

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