In Renaissance Latin. 1568 Apud Bartholomaeum Rubinum (Venice, Italy), 3 3/8 x 4 1/4 inches tall x 2 inches thick full leather bound, gilt lettering to spine, [16], 367, [1] ff. Dedicatory epistle by F. Petrus Blomeuenne Leidensis, Carthusię Coloniensis prior, dated 1535. Recently rebound in full leather with refreshed endpapers. Lacking original blank endpapers, but an otherwise complete copy. Tiny prior owner name and ink mark to title page, which has a couple of paper repairs. A number of pages with light staining or foxing. Creasing to a few page tips. Otherwise, a very good copy - clean, bright and unmarked - of this rare sixteenth century imprint. OCLC (Nos. 1015474713, 797374717, 1051059410) locates only four copies at institutions worldwide - three in Italy and one in Durham, England.

This important treatise on death, the afterlife and eschatology (the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind) was written by Denis the Carthusian (1402-1471), also known as Denys van Leeuwen, Denis Ryckel, Dionysius van Rijkel (or other combinations of these terms), a Roman Catholic theologian and mystic. Sometimes called 'the last scholastic,' Denis penned over 150 works, which include commentaries on the entire Bible and over 900 sermons

Although an admirer of Aristotle and Aquinas, Denis is neither an Aristotelian nor a Thomist in the usual sense of the words, but seems inclined rather to the Christian Platonism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Augustine, and St. Bonaventure. As a mystical writer he is akin to Hugh and Richard of St Victor, St. Bonaventure, and the writers of the Windesheim School, and in his treatises may be found summed up the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, especially of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and of Meister Eckart, Henry Suso, John of Ruysbroeck, and other writers of the German and Flemish Schools. He has been called the last of the Schoolmen, in the sense that he is the last important Scholastic writer, and that his works may be considered to form a vast encyclopedia, a complete summary of the Scholastic teaching of the Middle Ages; this is their primary characteristic and their chief merit.