[Prize binding Amiens, prize with hidden puzzle] Petri Fabri (...) Semestrium

Coloniae Allobrogum (Geneva), apud Franciscum Fabrum (volume 1-2)/ excudebat Stephanus Gamonetus, various editions, 1598-1611, 3 volumes in one binding, (28),174,(2 blank); (16),390,(9); (16),426,(22) p., titles printed in red and black and with woodcut printer's marks, title of volume 1 with engraved portrait of the author pasted on reverse, finely bound in slightly later rich gilt sheepskin, both boards with centered the coat of arms of Amiens and further fully covered in fleurs-de-lys (including the ribbed back), all edges gilt, 4to.

Top of backstrip slightly damaged, several other traces of use, yet a very good, finely bound copy. In volumes 1 and 2, a printed strip with the city in which they were published pasted across the city name "Lugduni". On the free endpaper a pasted typed leaf with explanation of the binding and the prize [see below]. Pasted on the inner margin of the title page is the letterpress school prize of the Amiens Jesuit college, filled out in pen to Carolus de Bonnaire, dated 22 August 1691 and with the paper seal of the school. This school school prize also has a special "chronogramme double, libre et additionné", double due to date and fact, free because the sequence is mixed up, and added because this yields a year: "MunifiCi AedIles pVer. hoC. te mVnere Donant", with in red the combination of letters MCIVCVD. The calculation of the date is as follows: M = 1000, C = 100, IVC = 96, VD = 495, added together this makes 1691. The first edition of this work appeared in Paris, in 1570. On the author, the theologist Peter Faber or Pierre Favre (1506-1546), one of the co-founders of the Society of Jesus, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Faber. He was sanctified in 2013.