Argentinae [Strasbourg] Apud Ioannem Albertum, Anno M. D. XXXV. Mense Martio. 1535. Small 8vo, 147 x 90 mms., unpaginated, pp. [124], collating A-H8, with the recto of the last leaf bearing the engraved colophon, contemporary vellum (slightly soiled), with the autograph in ink "Walter Shelley/ M. Temple" on the front paste-down end-paper, and in pencil on the recto of the front free end-paper, "Cosmo Gordon/ [?Inschia] 1951." Sadoleto (1477 - 1547), the Italian humanist and churchman, and in 1533 published his De pueris recte instituendis, considering the education of boys in his capacity as Bishop of Carpentras, to be his most important duty. Sadoleto was also friendly with Erasmus (1466 - 1536) and corresponded with him on numerous matters, including education; his Imago pueri Jesu posita in ludo literario is included in the present volume. "Sadoleto, a cultured yet devout believer, strikes a note of deep seriousness, symptoms of the temper of the counter-reformation to which he so ardently devoted himself. Then he writes as one with a definite end in view : he has in mind the youth of the higher professional class his own and of landed families of modest estate. He knows what is wanted from experience of society in France as well as in Italy. Again, no other humanist writer upon education has as thoroughly entered into the true spirit of Plato. The end which Sadoleto puts forth is that of a liberal training not concerned with any of the possible technical superstructures which taste or need may suggest. The impression we gain from the De Liberis recte Instituendis is that its author knew well the class for which he was writing ; that he kept within the bounds of the attainable: that he set himself to exhibit in harmonious outlines an adaptation to the modern and the Catholic world all that was best in antique as the unwearied scholarship of the Italian Renaissance, which had already reached its zenith, had revealed it. Sadoleto himself was amongst the greater scholars of his time, surpassing most of them in insight into the significance of Greek thought. His treatise, it may be added, forms an instructive introduction to a study of the Jesuit Ratio" (W. H. Woodward: Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, 1906). WorldCat locates a copy of this printing in Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, and Bibliothèque interuniversitaire Sainte-Geneviève. In North America, there are copies of the 1538 edition at the Folger, Cornell (2), with Yale having the 1533 and 1535 editions, etc.. No copies of this Strasbourg imprint found in Copac.
