WITH THE EARLIEST ILLUSTRATION OF A SURGICAL PROCEDURE. “THE FIRST IMPORTANT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE FIRST IN WHICH THE WORKS OF GREEK, ARABIAN, AND JEWISH NATURALISTS AND MEDICAL WRITERS… WERE LAID UNDER CONTRIBUTION” (CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA). Chancery folio [26 x 19 cm]. 460 [of 466] ff, with 10 full-page woodcuts by the Bellaert Master, most of which delicately colored. With 20 large initials painted in red, blue and olive green with scroll work extending down the margins; and rubricated throughout with a large number of lombards in red. Lacking 3 blanks as well as the printer’s mark, one woodcut, and one text leaf. Bound in late 17th century yapp-edged vellum with gilt title label on spine. A fine copy, with some light staining and a handful of skillful repairs to margins etc., but with no loss of text. Provenance: Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, (1773-1843), his bookplate; sale 1845, Evans Part VI, 11 August 1845, lot 187, to Pickering for 15s; John Duncanson, M. D. (mid-19th century bookplate, untraced); Edward McClure (1837-1922), Secretary of the S. P. C. K., bookplate; Eric Hyde Lord Sexton (1902-1980); oval leather book-label and paper label; sale, Fifteenth-century Books Illustrating the Spread of Printing (New York: Christie's, 8 Apr. 1981), lot 75, $7,500. Sole edition of one of the earliest vernacular appearances of this famed encyclopedia (the second vernacular, following the French of 1482), with the earliest known printed illustration of a surgical procedure (Eugene Flamm, personal communication). Although Anglicus’ text covers natural history, astronomy, alchemy, geography, and the culinary arts, recent scholarship on the present Low German translation has identified two groups of early readers who primarily used this text: those interested in Biblical exegesis, and those for whom it was an invaluable medical compendium during a period when few resources were available in the vernacular (cf Bogaart, pp. 155-6). The astonishing program of illustration is original to the present work and the blocks were never re-used; they did, however, provide inspiration for the woodcuts in Wynkyn de Worde’s English translation of ca. 1496 (cf. Bogaart and Holbrook). This is the Lord Sexton copy, from his 1981 Christie’s sale (Fifteenth-century Books Illustrating the Spread of Printing). Like the Otto Schafer copy (4 leaves supplied) and the William Morris copy (now Pierpont Morgan Library, 9 leaves supplied including 2 plates), this copy lacks a relatively small number of printed leaves (3) which have been supplied here in facsimile. Anglicus (or here, ‘Engelsman’) was born in England (probably in Suffolk) around 1200 and studied at Oxford before moving to Paris and becoming a follower of Francis of Assisi shortly before the saint’s death in 1226. Composed around 1245 in Magdeburg (Saxony), De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things) followed in the tradition of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, attempting to categorize and describe much of what was known of the world during the author’s lifetime. Anglicus drew on varied sources including Greek, Jewish and Arab treatises which had only recently become available in Latin translation: Aristotle for Physics and Natural History, Pliny's Natural History, Isidore of Seville, Albumazar, Al Faragus, and other Arab writers for Astronomy, Hippocrates, Constantinus Afer, and the Jewish physician Isaac Medicus for Medical Science, and Physiologus, the Bestiarium, and the Lapidarium for the properties of gems, animals, etc. As noted above, Bogaart’s recent study of the Low German text’s reception (Hilversum, 2004, pp. 155-6) concludes that a sizeable proportion of its readers were interested in the medical knowledge therein. The large-format woodcuts, executed by an artist today known simply as the Master of [the printer] Bellaert, include a handful of depictions which count among the earliest ‘medical’ illustrations to appear in print: plate #4, for example, depicts a chamber in which a physician is examining a urinal by the bedside of a sick man. In the open courtyard before the house a surgeon is performing an operation on the right shoulder of a young man who is seated on the ground; beside them lies a corpse. The plate illustrating various types of beasts is a superb illustration of an anatomically plausible elephant, certainly one of the earliest such depictions in print. Finally, ‘The Twelve Months’ depicts in charmingly detailed rondelles the daily activities of common folk throughout the year. According to Ina Kok’s 1994 survey, just 15% of all Dutch incunabula were illustrated; this certainly counts among the finest examples in that field. Margaret Stillwell called De Proprietatibus Rerum “still important for its information on political geography and its accounts of natural history” (The Awakening Interest in Science during the First Century of Printing, p. 186); for Robert Steele, “the interest of Bartholomew's work to modern readers is twofold: it has its value as literature pure and simple, and it is one of the most important of the documents by the help of which we rebuild for ourselves the fabric of mediaeval life... we thus obtain a succinct account of the popular mediaeval theories in Astronomy, Physiology, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, and Natural History, all but unattainable otherwise…. Some information, too, can be obtained about the daily life of the time from the chapter on the Natural History of Plants, which gives incidentally their foodstuffs…” (Introduction to Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus, pp. 1-6). Almost every copy encountered in the trade (and many in institutional collections) is either lacking several leaves or has had them ‘supplied’. The Otto Schafer copy, sold at his sale at Sotheby’s, had been supplied with four leaves from another copy (including a1 and a2) and suffered from a repair to one woodcut; it nevertheless made $46,000 in 1995. It was recently offered by Jörn Günther, for an unknown price (now sold). A copy sold at Romantic Agony in 2016 entirely lacked three leaves of text but made € 32.500; and William Morris’ copy at the Morgan Library lacks 9 text leaves in all, including 2 plates (elephants and angels) and the colophon – all of which have been crudely supplied from a much smaller, washed copy. Two of the remaining plates in the PML copy are badly torn and repaired; one text leaf is torn with the loss supplied in MS; and a handful of other leaves showed large repairs. In comparison, the present copy is quite presentable, and lacks six leaves in total, of which three were blank. The text leaves lacking are ?6 (with woodcut), W8, and the final leaf (printer’s mark). * ISTC ib00142000; Campbell 258; GKW 3423; Goff B-142; Polain B507; Hain/ Copinger 2422; Proctor 9173. Cf also eg. Susan E. Holbrook, “A Medical Scientific Encyclopedia 'Renewed by Goodly Printing': Wynkyn de Worde's English ‘De proprietatibus rerum’” Early Science and Medicine Vol 3 (1998), pp. 119-156; Conway, Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century; and especially Saskia Bogaart, Van den Proprieteyten der Dinghen in Perspectief (Hilversum, 2004).