Agonía del tránsito de la muerte con los avisos y consuelos que cerca de ella son provechosos, Maestro Alejo Venegas de Busto.

(Agony of the Transition to Death with Helpful Warnings and Consolations when Approaching Death, with Brief Descriptions of Obscure Sentences and Words, by Maestro Alejo Venegas de Busto.)

ALCALA DE HENARES [Spain], Andrés de Angulo, Diego de Sancta Cruz, M.D.LX.V (1565). Sixth edition.

Hardcovers (19th century Spanish binding), 3/4 red leather (spine and corners) and red textured cloth covered boards, 5 raised spine bands, gilt titling and gilt designs to the spine, marbled endpapers, small 4o, 6x8 inches (14.5x20 cm). Pagination: ff. [8] CCXVI (i.e. [8], 216 leaves numbered in Roman numerals). Illustrated with intricate woodcut crests on titles.

GOOD Condition: Covers are rubbed and have some scrapes, most noticeably on the leather corners, still the covers are solid, doing their job well, and quite attractive. Internally, the title page and the subsequent couple of leaves have a little professional conservation at top margin that affects a bit of the title page image and a couple words at the top of the following two leaves; there is the ghost of the removal of a bookplate on the front free-endpaper, the title page has some early marginalia that has been lined out and there is some relevant scholarly ink marginalia on the latter pages related to the description of obscure words in that part of the text; overall solid, tight, bright, clean and clear. A nice copy.

COLLATED page by page with a 1565 copy in the Austrian National Library (the pages of THIS copy are much whiter and brighter).

About MAESTRO ALEJO VENEGAS DE BUSTO (from Wikipedia and elsewhere on the Internet):

******Alejo Venegas de Busto, b.Toledo 1497 or 1498, d.Toledo, 1562, was a Spanish Renaissance writer, humanist, lexicographer, and considered a Spanish mystic.

His best known work is the AGONY OF THE TRANSITION TO DEATH... (Toledo, 1537), an ascetic, mystic work that he dedicated to Doña Ana de la Cerda, Countess of Melito, on the occasion of the death of the writer's great protector, her husband Count Diego de Mendoza. This work derives specifically from the Praeparatio ad Mortem (1534) by Erasmus. The second edition appears in Toledo in 1540, the third in Toledo, 1543, the fourth in Zaragoza, 1544, the fifth in Toledo, 1547, the sixth in Toledo, 1553 and the seventh in Alcalá, 1565. Beginning in the third edition Venegas added his Brief Declaration of the Sentences and Obscure Words. The book has continued to be reprinted and was edited in the 19th century by Eugenio de Ochoa (Paris, Beaudry, 1847) and in 2001 by Marc Zuili (Paris, L'Harmattan, 2001). Various parts of this work have appeared in numerous other publications, including works on Spanish and Christian Mysticism.******