Mercurii Trismegisti Liber de potestate et sapientia Dei

4to. pp. [88]. Signatures: pi⁴ a-b⁸ c-f⁴ g⁸ (pi1 and g8 blank). Stiff vellum; inscription ‘Ex dono Cl. V. Antonii Bellini Faren. A.1794’ on flyleaf. Gathering F4 in modern facsimile. Capital spaces with guide letters. Title from a[1]. Third edition of this Latin translation of the ‘Corpus Hermeticum,’ a compilation of Greek Hermetic treatises, by the Renaissance scholar Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499). This collection of supposedly primeval Egyptian wisdom was attributed to the mythical figure Hermes Trismegistus but was exposed in 1614 by Isaac Casaubon as a Hellenistic forgery. The present edition of the treatises retains Ficino’s address of to the reader from the editio princeps (1463, printed in Treviso by Gerardus de Lisa, de Flandria in 1471). See Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke. Leipzig [etc.], 12312; F. R. Goff, Incunabula in American Libraries: A Third Census. Millwood (N.Y.), 1973, H-79; Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica no. 114; A. Grafton, “Protestant versus Prophet: Isaac Casau[1]bon on Hermes Trismegistus,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983): pp. 78–93; W. Stephens & E. Havens, “Introduction: Forgery’s Valhalla”, in id. (eds.), Literary forgery in early modern Europe, 1450-1800, Baltimore, 2018, pp. 4-5. Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.