Cork silhouettes, a massacre and a landmark of Irish printing 

Des O'Sullivan previews Fonsie Mealy's timed online collector's sale

A lithograph of The Massacre at Gortroe (Rathcormac) at Fonsie Mealy.

A LANDMARK of Irish printed literature, a fine collection of Cork silhouettes and a print of a sorry massacre at Rathcormac, Co Cork, in 1834 are among the lots at Fonsie Mealy's timed online collector's sale which runs until next Wednesday (July 15).

Incunabula, books printed before 1501, are always a rarity. This first edition of the first book by an Irish author to write for a printing press rather than the scriptorum dates to November 1497 and was printed in Venice. The author is Archbishop Maurice O'Fihely of Tuam, a native of Baltimore in west Cork. O'Fihely, a Franciscan, provided major commentary on the investigation of Scottish Franciscan Blessed John Duns, known as Duns Scotus, into Aristotle's metaphysical problems. Together with Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, Duns Scotus is regarded as one of the three most important philosopher theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages.