It was a 1480 edition printed in the Catalan language.
Written in the 13th century by the Augustinian philosopher and theologian Edigio Romana Colonna, Archbishop of Bourges (also known as Aegidius Romanus), Lo libre del regiment dels princeps was first printed, in Latin, in 1473.
This translation by Arnau Stranyol, printed by Nicolaus Spindeler for Joan Cacoma, is however both the first vernacular edition and one of the earliest Catalan printed books.
It sold for $40,000 (£30,305) at Swann Galleries’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).
It lacked the initial and final blanks and showed some marginal dampstaining and soiling, but it was a wide margined copy of a real rarity. The binding of blind tooled morocco by Emilio Brugalla was a recent one, dated 1953.
