Leighton Library, Dunblane

Scotland's oldest purpose-built independent library founded in 1687

Leighton Library has 1554 edition of "Annalium Boiorum" by Johannes Aventinus

Added at 08:30 on 09 January 2026

#OnThisDay 9 January 1534 Bavarian Renaissance historian and philologist known by the pen name Johannes Aventinus died.

The Leighton Library has a 1554 first edition of his "Annalium Boiorum" - Annals of Bavaria, a valuable record of the early history of Germany, the first significant history of a region of Germany.

As a result of his nonconformity the Annals were not published until after his death - many passages were omitted in this Ingolstadt edition, as they reflected on Roman Catholic Papacy (the book was later placed on the church’s Index of Prohibited Books, banned books, in 1563–64), with a fuller edition not being published until even later.

In his Annals, Aventinus preserved some of the text of now lost original writings from previous centuries.

< Leighton Library has 1724 edition of "De officio hominis et civis" by Baron Samuel von Pufendorf