PBA Galleries

[4], 76 pp. With 33 copper-engraved plates. With 33 plates designed & engraved by Johann Pfeffel. (4to) 19.2x15 cm (7¾x6"), mater calf, rebacked with more recent calf, later endpapers. 

Second, or perhaps third edition of this life of the Czech saint John Nepomuk, by the noted historian Bohuslave Balbin. Nepomuk was drowned in the Moldau for resisting the tyranny of Wenceslaus IV, and Balbin's biography is the most detailed account of his bloody torture as well as the conflicts that caused it. This second edition was published five years after the first, with a new title page and a supplement of documents relating to the examination for sainthood. In the present copy, the supplement has been bound in after the plates. As to the finely engraved plates, each shows a scene from the saint's life against a richly patterned architectural background.