BONARDO, Vincentio. Discorso intorno all'origine, antichita, et virtu de gli Agnus Dei di cera benedetti. Rome, appresso Vincentio Accolti, 1591 8vo.
31ff. (of 32, lacks the final blank). Small woodcut of the Agnus Dei on title-page, in nineteenth century marbled wrappers.
Second, and rarer than the first, edition of Bonardo's history of the Agnus Dei, a small cake made of the wax of the Easter candles and impressed with this figure. From the ninth century onwards it was customary for the pope tro bless these cakes and distribute them on the Sunday after Easter among the faithful, by whom they were highly prized as having the power to avert evil. In more recent times the distribution has been limited to persons of distinction and is made by the pope on his accession and every seven years thereafter. The first edition appeared five years earlier.
Censimento B3002; Cicognara 3183 (citing only ther 1621 edition); not in Adams; NUC locates only the copies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Union Library Catalogue of Pennsylvania.
£375
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