Theatrum Humanae Vitae
Theodor Zwinger
Basel, 1604
 
Parts 10-18(of 29 total) in one volume. Folio, 36.8 x 22.23 cm. Blind- stamped pigskin, clasps and one corner metal fitting gone, rusting, front wooden board renewed, covers well-worn, numerous wormholes particularly in the early leaves, text largely clean and crisp though, overall Good or slightly better. Importantly and excitingly, it retains a 5 link, 16 cm. chain on the rear cover.
 
Fifth edition of the Swiss physician and polymath’s universal encyclopedia, posthumously enlarged and edited by his son, Jakob. It’s a compilation of thousands of extracts to produce a universal history that displays how humanity’s good and evil natures affect everything.
 
And now, more on this item’s most significant feature. Starting in the late Middle Ages as a means of theft prevention, books housed in libraries and monasteries would be fashioned with a chain and connected to a desk; books were still rather expensive productions. While a cover’s chain hook sometimes survives, the chain itself rarely does. It viscerally evokes the learned, perhaps dreary, yet compelling ambiance of the old library or monastery from which it came, with images of robed scholars studiously hunched over the tome playing their part in progressing human knowledge. Aside from purely religious texts, this tome is just the sort of wide-ranging work that would keep such a scholar ponderously occupied. It is indeed pretty magical.
 
Ref:
 
Interfaces of the Word, Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture, Walter J. Ong
 
A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Lynn Thorndike