Quattro libri de dubbi: con le solutioni a ciascun dubbio accommodate : la materia del primo e` naturale : del secondo e` mista (benche per lo piu sia morale) : del terzo e` amorosa : & del quarto e` religiosa.

Venice: Gabriel GIolito de' Ferrari, 1552. First edition. Very Good. Octavo (16 cm); 318 [2] pages. Woodcut device on title page and on last page. Woodcut initials. Bound in recent vellum in period style, yapp edges, titled in ink on spine. Early 20th-century bibliographical note bound in. Marginal annotations in contemporary hand. Leaf a ii, the dedicatory letter, present in two states, the cancel addressed to Johann Jakob Fugger closing with Lando's name, and the original leaf addressed to Christoph Mielich and not signed, as usual. Small perforation in the cancel, affecting a word. Occasional light stains, darker on last leaf. References: Bongi I, 368; Melzi II, 391; BM Italian, 377 (1556 ed.); Fontanini, II, 117.



The title promises four sets of "questions and their solutions," and indeed that was the plan. Lando wrote Q&A on four topics: medical questions (including dietary and aging functions), ethical questions, questions about religion, and questions about love and sex. It was the love and sex part that raised the eyebrows of the censors, and neither Lando or his publisher Giolito could get permissions to print it as the book was going to press. As Giolito himself declares in a postscript to the reader: "I promised you four books of doubts, but since I haven't yet been granted a license for the doubts about love, I'm forced to give you only three.... Be well and enjoy as much of the book as I could give you." (The license came later, and the text appeared in later editions.) This unfinished text with its publisher's apology represents a fascinating birthmark on the 16th-century book trade.

The Q&A ranges over hundreds of topics, calling upon the author's medical training (much involved with the humors and temperaments associated with various organs, objects, and creatures), his classical erudition, and his training in the Augustinian order. The three sections together provide comprehensive insight into 16th century medicine and popular religious and moral thought.

The odd matter of two versions of the dedication page, leaf A ii, is not easily explained. We suspect (with some justification) that Lando sought patronage for the same work in different locations, knowing that Protestant Germany rarely spoke with Catholic Italy and vice versa. He might have found different backers in different markets. We know that to be the case with at least one other book of Lando's, the "Sermoni Funebri" (1549), where some copies are dedicated to Fugger and others to Niccolo degli Alberti. That case is known and recorded. We find no recorded instance of the alternate dedication of "Quattro libri dei dubbi" to Fugger, and no record of the author being identified by signing the dedication letter in any other copy.

The "Quattro libri de dubbi" was quickly translated into French (Lyon, 1558) and by William Painter into English, entitled "Delectable demaundes and pleasaunt questions, with their severall aunswers..." (1566, and again 1640).