Obra a Llaors del Benaventurat lo Senyor Sent Cristofol

Obra a Llaors del Benaventurat lo Senyor Sent Cristofol

In August of 1488, a Justa poética or poetry fair was held in Valencia, a record of which was produced a decade later. This incunabulum, an early printed book predating 1501, was published in the Valencian print shop of Pedro Trincher on the 3rd of February 1498 and is stored today in the Biblioteca Nacional de España under the shelf mark Inc. 1471. It contains the work of fifteen poets, one of them anonymous, in neatly printed Gothic text with initials and various decorative elements. The title page is a woodcut with large white lettering and a mandorla containing the Virgin of Montserrat, the overleaf has an image of Saint Christopher, and an image of Christ Crucified comes at the end. It represents the only surviving copy of the work and this coveted codex has been owned by a long line of bibliophiles.
The Biblioteca Nacional de España acquired the codex from a Parisian auction in 1891, but it had a long list of owners in previous 390+ years of its existence. Notable owners include Ricardo Heredia y Livermore, Comte de Benahavis and the antiquarian Vicent Salvà i Pérez, who are listed in the ex libris, as well as other bibliophiles and dealers including Croft, White Knights, Herber's and Thorpe, from whom Salvá acquired the sought-after copy as is documented in the super libris. This impressive list of owners is proof positive of the value and desirability of this true unicum.

Saint Christopher

Saint Christopher was a martyr living during the 3rd or 4th centuries who was killed during the reign of the Roman Emperor Decius or possibly Maximinus Daia according to some sources (the confusion seems to be due to the similarity of their names). Either way, he would have lived during a turbulent period in history when the Roman Empire was torn apart by civil wars and left open to attack from foreign powers like the Goths and Persians. The most common story associated with Christopher tells of how he carried a child on his back across a river, only for the grateful boy to reveal himself as Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that he is considered to be the patron saint of travelers. Epics about Christopher’s life began to appear in the 6th century and had spread as far as France by the 9th century and he continues to be a popular literary and artistic subject up to the present. This collection of poetry is merely one exemplar of that tradition, albeit a particularly rare and precious specimen.