Saxo Grammaticus: Danorum Regum heroumque Historiae … Paris: Jodocus Badius Ascensius 1514.
LN 240 2º

Front cover	Title page

Prefaces by the Bishop of Roskilde Lauge Urne and the editor Christiern Pedersen	Preface by the printer Jodocus Badius Ascensius	The beginning of the first book

The first printed edition of Saxo Grammaticus’ History of Denmark – which was written in Latin about 1200 – was published in 1514 in Paris. The printer Jodocus Badius Ascensius was one of the significant Paris printers, and the editor was the Danish humanist Christiern Pedersen (c. 1480-1554). This first edition is of decisive importance for our knowledge of Saxo’s History of Denmark, since no mediaeval manuscript containing the text in its entirety has been preserved – only fragments exist.
This copy is bound in brown calf decorated in gold. Apparently it belonged to the great French collector of books Jean Grolier (1479-1565), but it is not bound in a so-called Grolier binding (see an example of one here). On the back paste-down leaf, Grolier’s motto is written by hand: Portio mea Domine sit in terra viventium (Let me, o Lord, have a part in the land of the living), and under that: Joannis Grolierij Lugd. et amicorum (Belonging to Jean Grolier of Lyon and his friends). This again is crossed out, and underneath it a later owner has written: V. Raffarii.

28.4 x 19.8 cm.

Reference: Anker Kyster, Bookbindings in the Public Collections of Denmark, Vol. 1: “The Royal Library Copenhagen”, Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, Ejnar Munksgaard 1938, pp. 66-67.

See also the Angers fragment of Saxo’s History of Denmark under “The book in the Middle Ages”.

© Det Kongelige Bibliotek 2004