ANGELI, Francesco Maria. Collis Paradisi Amoenitas, sev sacri conventus Assisiensis historiae libri II. Opus posthumum patris magistri Francisci Mariae Angeli a Rivotorto Ord. Min. S. Francisci Conventualium. In lucem editum Opera, & studio fratris Francisci Antonii Felicis Carosi de Monte Leone Provinciae Sancti Francisci eiusdem Ordinis Sacerdotis. Sanctissimo D. N. Clementi XI. Pont. Opt. Max.

Première édition du premier livre imprimé à Montefiascone.

Graesse, Trésor de livres rares et précieux, 127 ; Platner p. 50. Pas dans Lozzi.

« Rare. » (Catalogue de la bibliothèque de S.E.D. Paolo Borgese).

«  Livre curieux, notamment pour les gravures dont il est orné » (Catalogue des livres provenant de la bibliothèque de l’Abbé Sébastien Donati).

“’They say that the body of St. Francis is buried there in a place which they show, but the truth is that no one knows the exact spot, not even those in the monastery, except the Pope, one cardinal, and a brother of the monastery, to whom the Pope confides the secret.’ Thus the Spanish pilgrim Pero Tafur summarized his visit to the tomb of St. Francis at Assisi in the spring of 1436…

In the sixteenth century, widespread belief in a lost tomb below the Church crystalized around the concept of a third, hidden church. Giorgio Vasari, in the 1550 edition of his famous ‘Lives’, discussed the Basilica of S. Francesco in terms of a tripartite structure: ‘Maestro Iacopo Tedesco designed a beautiful church and convent, built according to the model of three orders: one to act as a crypt, the others as two churches’.

In the early years of the seventeenth century, a pilgrim’s pamphlet printed in Assisi graphically captured these beliefs in a series of engravings, while a groundplan and view of the ‘third church’ were included in the first comprehensive history of the Basilica, Francesco Maria Angeli’s ‘Collis Paradisi’, published posthumously in 1704”.

(“The tomb of St. Francis in history, legend and art”)

L’illustration superbe comporte 1 frontispice gravé orné des armoiries du pape et 12 gravures sur cuivre par Francesco de Providonis dont 11 dépliantes et 1 à pleine page.

Bel exemplaire conservé dans sa reliure de l’époque de cet important ouvrage illustré sur l’histoire et l’art de la ville d’Assise et des lieux franciscains.