Soliloquii del Divo Padre Sancto Augustino volgari. Colophon: Impresso in Firenze Apetitione di Ser Piero Pacini da Pescia Adi. vii. digiugno nel. M.CCCCC.V.

4to (194x132 mm). [34] leaves. Collation: a-c8 d6 e4. Woodcut vignette of St Augustine kneeling before the Virgin and Child on a throne on l. a1r. Colophon and double Pacini's woodcut device on last leaf verso. Woodcut decorative initials on black ground. Roman type. Decorative 19th-century binding in orange calf with gilt roll-border on covers and small papal device at the center, color paper endleaves (slightly worn and rubbed). Small marginal hole to l. a6 not affecting the text, some occasional minor foxing, all in all a good copy.
Rare early Florence edition, a reprint of the 1496 Pacini edition, of this Italian translation of the apocryphal Soliloquia, a dialogue which describes St Augustine's state of mind between his conversion and baptism, containing a discussion of wisdom and the immortality of truth. In the later Middle Ages, Augustine's original text of the Soliloquia (‘Discourses on God and the immortality of the soul') was virtually forgotten, and in its place a different and more mystical pseudo-Augustinian Soliloquia, composed in the thirteenth century, in the form of a confession, began to gain popularity. Of all St Augustine's apocryphal texts, this one was the most successful in Italy and in France. The Soliloquia was translated into Italian three times in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and, although the translation remains anonymous, it is traditionally attributed to Fra Agostino da Scarperia, and it was certainly made in an Augustinian milieu.
Edit 16, CNCE27760; Sander, 697; J.P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, Paris, 1861, vol. 40, col. 863; S. Periti, Contributo alla bibliografia fiorentina del 16. secolo: le edizioni dal 1501 al 1530, Udine, 2004, S37; P. Kristeller, Early Florentine Woodcuts, London, 1897, 10c.