The Ruralia commoda is considered the most important agricultural treatise of the Middle Ages. It was written in the early fourteenth century by the Bolognese jurist Pietro de Crescenzi, who based his work on ancient and contemporary sources as well as his personal experience. The practical and encyclopedic nature of his “manual” was to benefit its main audience, the emerging urban bourgeoisie, by covering husbandry, irrigation, enology, gardening, hunting, fishing while also describing plants and animals.

The success of his work is suggested by the fact that it was soon translated into several European vernaculars, and printed in nineteen different editions in the fifteenth century alone. This copy was printed by Peter Drach in Speyer, an edition characterised by fine woodcut illustrations.

Binding description
Ninteenth-century armorial binding in brown pigskin over wooden boards. Covers decorated with blind fillets and rolls to form a border and panel with floral tools at the outer corners; blind-stamped coat of arms with Charles Porcher Lang's initials and motto "virtuti fortuna comes"; two metal clasps on long fore-edge. Spine with three double cords, decorated with blind-stamped tools and titling. Textblock trimmed and dyed red. Endpapers of plain paper.