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Bartholomaeus Sibylla de Monopoli, O.P., Speculum peregrinarum questionum (Strassburg: Johann Grüninger, 1499) .

Bartholomew Sibylla (†1493) studied at Bologna and Ferrara. He became the Prior of the Dominican convent in Monopoli near Bari. The Speculum peregrinarum is Bartholomew's major writing. The text is ordered mystically into three parts, or "decades," of ten chapters each. The first decade contains questions concerning the origin and immortality of the human soul, hell, limbo, purgatory, the Elysian fields, paradise, the beatitudes, etc.; the second decade contains questions concerning the good angels, their esse et essentia, knowledge, powers and attributes; the third decade treats likewise the powers, etc., of evil angels. In form and substance, this work by a Calabrian Dominican unites a rather Joachimite rhetorical disposition with popular devotion concerning the last things and Scholastic questions.

The volume has a contemporary south German, tooled leather binding. The inside covers bear pastedowns, in two columns of French fourteenth-century writing, of a Scholastic text concerning, among other things, the authority of bishops. The image on the title page depicts the creation and fall of Adam and Eve, the resurrection of the body, and, in the foreground, the author dedicating his book to "the most illustrious Prince, Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Calabria."

References: Goff S-492 (the Notre Dame copy is not cited); GW no 3460; Kaeppeli no 448; Masin 120-21 no 64.

Catalogue No. 35
Call Number: Rare Books BF 1445 .S981      Catalog Record

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