Saint Augustine of Hippo’s De civitate Dei (right) was penned to counter pagan claims that what had prompted the Visigoth sacking of Rome in 410 was the adoption of Christianity by its emperors. The book was first printed around a thousand years later in the 1460s, but it was 150 years before a first English language edition appeared.
A rebacked and recased copy of that 1610 edition of the …Citie of God made £4000 in a John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) sale of May 15 – considerably more than had been predicted. A translation by John Healey, it also incorporated the 1522 commentary of the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives and was printed in London by George Eld.