Thomas Aquinas Prima Secundae Summa Theologica 1496 Incunable

Aquinas, Thomas (c. 1225–1274)
Prima secundae partis Summa Theologiae
Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1496.
Folio.

A handsome, complete incunable edition of the Prima Secundae of Saint Thomas Aquinas’ monumental Summa Theologiae, containing his foundational treatment of human nature, happiness, virtue, sin, law, and divine grace. Particularly significant is Aquinas’ celebrated exposition of natural law, one of the most influential contributions to Western moral philosophy, jurisprudence, and political thought.

The Prima Secundae constitutes the first book of the Secunda Pars, the great centrepiece of Aquinas’ moral theology. Beginning with the ultimate end of human life and the nature of happiness, Aquinas develops his systematic account of human action, the passions, habits, virtues, and vices. Its concluding sections examine the relationship between eternal, natural, human, and divine law, together with the necessity and operation of divine grace. The celebrated Treatise on Law (Questions 90–108), particularly the discussion of natural law in Question 94, became foundational to subsequent traditions of scholastic philosophy, legal theory, and Catholic moral theology.

Owing to the immense size of the Summa, its constituent books circulated extensively as independent works, printed, acquired, and bound separately according to the requirements of scholars, clergy, and religious institutions. The Prima Secundae was separately printed only five times during the incunable period, compared with twelve editions of the more frequently printed Secunda Secundae. The present volume is complete in itself and represents the substantial first division of Aquinas’ moral theology.

The volume is further distinguished by its remarkable survival of medieval manuscript and early printed binder’s waste. Its pastedowns incorporate leaves apparently deriving from the 1476 Milan edition of Paulus Venetus’ Expositio librorum naturalium Aristotelis (ISTC ip00211000), an intriguing survival within a contemporary German binding, suggestive of the circulation and reuse of Italian scholastic books north of the Alps.

Beneath the pastedowns survives a narrow fragment of a Latin manuscript of approximately 1425–1475. Additional vellum fragments from a Hebrew manuscript, written in a cursive Ashkenazi script and probably of German origin, c. 1375–1475, are preserved within the binding. Further Hebrew manuscript material appears to have been employed in the construction of the backstrip, although the concealed text cannot presently be examined. These survivals provide valuable evidence of late medieval manuscript recycling and the use of Hebrew manuscripts as binding material in southern Germany.

Printed by Anton Koberger, the foremost German printer and publisher of the fifteenth century, this edition belongs to the mature period of one of Europe's largest and most influential printing enterprises.