{"title":"Politics \u0026 Statesmanship","description":"\u003cp\u003eBooks on political leadership and governance.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"francois-i-with-arena-antoine","title":"FRANCOIS I [with] ARENA, Antoine","description":"\u003cp\u003eA rare, handsome and important compilation of laws relating to the administration of justice in the south of France under Francois I, with reforming edicts for particular places, such as Marseilles. They cover all aspects of practice and procedure, the initiation of proceedings, appeals, vacations, relative jurisdictions, rights and duties of all sorts of officers and counsel and the exercise of Royal authority. There is a particular abundance of material on those perennial legal topics of costs, charges and fees. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The court of the Parlement of Aix was established by Louis II of Provence in 1415, but after the union of Provence with the crown in 1498, Louis XII decided to reform its administration of justice, using the Parlement of Paris as model. At first, the Count of Provence s administration remained essentially in place, and the new Parlement remained subject to the Governor of Provence. This intermediary situation provoked some unrest and anxious to better ensure his authority, Francis I introduced these edicts in 1534 (first published in 1535), restricting the powers of the Governor, and bringing the Parlement directly under Royal control, which lasted until the Revolution. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n These edicts cover administration of the Parliament at every level, the election of officials (from the President down), raising and organizing the  Gendarmerie , the organization of the  Legions , and the fining and punishment of criminals. The work finishes with an interesting edict on the running of the justice system in the town of Marseille with its special privileges and exemptions. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n For some reason the Ordonnances are quite often found bound with one or more other works, including Arena's, which lists the remuneration and privileges of lawyers and judges at the Parlement of Aix. A list of the names of all the towns subject to the jurisdiction of the Parlement d Aix is given at the end, introduced in Provençal. A very good copy of a rare work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"FRANCOIS I [with] ARENA, Antoine","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816066818383,"sku":"L1262","price":10500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_9008.jpg?v=1781795329"},{"product_id":"bochius-joannes","title":"BOCHIUS, Joannes","description":"\u003cp\u003eFIRST AND ONLY EDITION of this magnificent festival book celebrating the entry of Archduke Ernst of Austria into Antwerp on 14 June 1594. The condition and detailing of the engravings indicates this must have been one of the earliest copies off the press. They were executed by Pieter van Der Borcht after drawings by Cornelius Floris II and Joos de Momper from the designs of Martin de Vos. The first double-page engraving depicts Ernst's parade approaching the city, images of the city entrance, the columns, stages, and arches erected in the town in honour of the occasion, the city theatre, and a two-page musical score for 6 voices of the song performed to welcome the Archduke. The pageantry continues with an engraving of the 27-foot statue erected in the marketplace of the giant Antigonus who once controlled Antwerp and was known for cutting off the right hands of mariners who did not pay him tribute. The city was liberated by another giant, Brabo, who cut off Antigonus' own hand - the legendary origin of the hands on the city's heraldic arms. The festivities end with nautical displays, fireworks and jousting, each frozen in time by their own splendid double-page engravings. Each is accompanied by descriptions of the festivities, and a commentary on their allegorical significance, by Joannes Bochius (1555-1609), a prominent lawyer and poet from Brussels who was an active official in the local government. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The work provides a vivid depiction of the pageantry of the age and, the exuberant showmanship of a hopeful city: Antwerp had suffered sack, siege and plunder at the hands of Spaniards and Italians throughout the 1570s and 80s, its population halved to 55,000 by 1589. \"What is unmistakable, once the real plight of the city is realized, is the extent to which the various spectacles prepared for 1594 convey the city's desire to put a brave front on its position, asserting, particularly, through the allegories on the arches of the foreign merchant communities, that the golden age which the city had enjoyed under Charles V was not lost beyond recall...\" Whether or not Ernst, a minor member of the Hapsburg family could deliver the town remains to be seen: \"His relative unimportance is emphasized by the fact that Ernst was never invested with the titles of Margrave of Antwerp or Duke of Brabant\" and thus was not entitled to the full ceremonial welcome. (Davidson and Van der Weel, cit. infr.). To add to the misfortune, Ernst died in Brussels 8 months later in February 1595, so the work ends with a funeral oration, a memorial as well as a tribute.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOCHIUS, Joannes","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816076124495,"sku":"L1502","price":11500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_6829.jpg?v=1781795324"},{"product_id":"garimberto-girolamo","title":"GARIMBERTO, Girolamo","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of Garimberto  s important treatise on the art of warfare with the splendid and most appropriate provenance of Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy, and a particularly rare example of a painted binding with the Duke s arms; a few examples are at the Bibliotheque Nationale; none, it appears, in Turin, or elsewhere in Italy. On the death of his brother Louis (1536), Emanuele Filiberto became successor to the throne of Savoy. He inherited in 1553, an almost empty honour, as the vast majority of his hereditary lands had been occupied and administered by the French since 1536. He started a most distinguished military career in 1543 when he entered the service of his uncle Charles V, with the aim of recovering his Duchy, and took part in the imperial victories in Ingolstadt (1546) and Mühlberg (1547). He later joined his cousin Philip II in Spain participating in the defence of Barcelona from French maritime attack in 1551 and he served with Ferrante Gonzaga in the guerrilla war between the Spanish and French in Piedmont. He was also a suitor to the future Queen Elizabeth I. In 1553 he was appointed lieutenant-general and supreme commander of the Spanish army in Flanders, and in 1556 governor of the Netherlands. In 1557 he won a decisive and brilliant victory against the French troops led by Anne de Montmorency and Gaspard de Coligny. In the subsequent Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559) Emanuele Filiberto was rewarded with the return of his estates. The peace was sealed by his marriage to Margaret, daughter of Francis I. A skilled political strategist, he took advantage of various squabbles in Europe to slowly regain territory from both the French and the Spanish, including the city of Turin which he made the capital of his new Kingdom. He is considered one of the chief founders of the state of Savoy. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Garimberto s treatise on warfare and government, based on the work of Machiavelli, would have been most useful to him. When he came to compose his book on warfare it was largely to the  Discoursi  and the  Arte della guerra  that he turned for inspiration, method, and subject matter - although he makes effective use of Fourquevaux s  Instructions  for more up to date information on modern battles... His procedure is to follow a general discussion of a particular issue with ancient examples especially from the Career of Julius Ceasar, and then to add modern and contemporary instances. The plan is not slavishly executed. Individual examples are themselves subjected to further scrutiny; and Garimberto is not unwilling to challenge Machiavelli. ... He comments on how military virtu has enabled men to rise from humble origins to high position; and he devotes a whole chapter to the preparations necessary to bring off a military coup.  Sydney Anglo, David Cressy.  Machiavelli - the First Century. . A most prestigious copy \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Carlo Richa is most probably the distinguished Piemontese professor and physician who published a major work  Morborum vulgarium historia  on the plague, in Turin in 1721, later translated into English.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"GARIMBERTO, Girolamo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816080056655,"sku":"L1434b","price":9750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L1434b-Garimberto-2.jpg?v=1781795321"},{"product_id":"hayward-sir-john","title":"HAYWARD, Sir John","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of Sir John Hayward s posthumous  Life and Raigne of King Edward VI,  the earliest biography of the last Tudor king, reprinted in 1636, and again in White Kennett s Complete History of England in 1706. Considering the environment in which Hayward wrote, the influence this pioneering work has had on attitudes toward the mid-Tudor period is marked. Although few contemporary scholars would accept Hayward s interpretation of the reign at face value, his work influenced historical thinking for over three centuries. Hayward was imprisoned by Elizabeth I for his controversial book on Henry IV and his involvement in the conspiracy of the Earl of Essex in 1600. Edward VI (1537-53), the only son of Henry VIII, ruled in a period, not only of dramatic religious change, but also of warfare, political intrigue, and popular rebellion. Hayward wrote his biography of Edward at the end of the Jacobean period when major challenges were facing the monarchy. He proclaimed that his narrative was intended to be a  monument  to the  un-perishable fame  of the king and focused his efforts on court politics, foreign policy, and military affairs.  Sir John Hayward s full-scale  Life and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt, .. first circulated in manuscript in the 1620 s before its publication in 1630. As Lisa Richardson has demonstrated in her recent study of Hayward, he was soaked in the writings of Tacitus... Hayward also knew well Foxe s work in  Acts and Monuments , and used him much elsewhere in his historical work, yet here, in account of a reign dominated by violent religious change, his only substantial debt to Foxe is his admiring description of the King himself. ...What interests him most is Foxes anecdote about the king s supposed efforts at clemency for Joan Bocher and George van Parris, contrasting with the more bloodthirsty attitudes of Edward s advisers. ... One of the contemporary sources which Hayward was particularly ready to use was Edward VI s personal chronicle. .. the Chronicle minimizes his preoccupation with religion and gives the impression of a boy-king with primarily secular concerns. Overall, Hayward s distaste for what happened in the Edwardian reformation is clear.  Diarmaid MacCulloch.  The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation . An entirely unsophisticated and untrimmed copy of this important history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HAYWARD, Sir John","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816081498447,"sku":"L1488","price":1650.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_9087.jpg?v=1781795320"},{"product_id":"manutius-paulus","title":"MANUTIUS, Paulus","description":"\u003cp\u003eExpanded edition, revised and corrected of Manutius' celebrated commentary on the 16 books of Cicero's letters to his closest friend T. Pomponius Atticus and the starting point of all modern editions of the text. Written over the course of many years from 65BC onwards and compiled by Cicero's personal secretary Marcus Tullius Tiro, the letters are frequently written in a subtle code to mask their political content. In his impressively detailed commentary Manutius is clearly aware of this, discussing the implications of certain names and places thoroughly, explaining their relationships to each other and explaining historical and social significance as appropriate. A valuable edition in a fine copy. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n \"Perhaps the most valuable of Cicero's surviving works are the letters, such a vivid commentary on the last years of the Roman Republic as we have of no other period of ancient times. Here alone, devoid of formality, the character of Cicero can be seen.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MANUTIUS, Paulus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816107417935,"sku":"L802","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/2013-11-27-23.11.42.jpg?v=1781795310"},{"product_id":"fulbecke-william","title":"FULBECKE, William","description":"\u003cp\u003eFulbecke (1560-1616), dramatist, lawyer, legal writer and historian was educated at Oxford and then Grays Inn where he practised. His legal writings have long been highly regarded but he has been attracting renewed interest as the author of Shakespeare sourcebooks. It is likely that Fulbecke and Shakespeare were acquainted through one of the Inns of Court plays, masques or revels, in which it is believed both were involved and there is evidence that Shakespeare was acquainted with at least two of Fulbecke's works; an acquaintance discernible particularly in King Lear. \u003cbr\u003e\n That apart, Fulbecke was one of the first pioneers in the field of comparative and international law, especially the first English writer to deal with them in English. Most previous works on those topics, from wherever, had been written in Latin, indeed even on the common law which until Fulbecke's influential comparative work had remained sturdily impervious to the influence of other legal systems. But the most significant text here is the 'Pandectes', the earliest substantive original contribution in English to the law of nations, now more commonly known as 'public international law'. \u003cbr\u003e\n \"What Fulbecke appeared to be doing in his introduction of these controversial issues was suggesting a need for compromise. No doubt he realized the issue of authority was a critical problem that would probably escalate further upon the death of the Queen. His arguments were an idealistic attempt to please the various groups concerned. He took political ideas from men of such opposing views as Sir John Fortescue and Jean Bodin and developed them into a theory of authority. He attempted to check the power of the monarch further, not by emphasising parliament's role, but rather by giving the common law an independent status and associated it with the law of reason. Finally he resolved the debate over the origins of the common law by offering a moderate opinion. Overwhelmingly, the mood of compromise created in the introduction was carried over into the dialogues\". Terrill \"The Application of the Comparative Method by English Civilians\", Journal of Legal History 1981 II p 177.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"FULBECKE, William","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816108597583,"sku":"L1500","price":3750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/2013-12-05-01.13.04.jpg?v=1781795310"},{"product_id":"la-roche-flavin-bernard-de","title":"LA ROCHE-FLAVIN, Bernard de","description":"\u003cp\u003eA lovely copy of the first edition of this important and revealing work on the procedures and duties of the Magistrates and officers of the Parlements of France, beautifully printed by Simon Millanges, Montaigne s printer, a work which lead to the authors immediate ruin, as he wrote directly and openly of the failings, shortcomings, and corruptions of his colleagues who immediately sued him for libel. La Roche Flavin, studied at Rodez, at one of the first colleges founded in France by the Jesuits, then at Toulouse, where he became a lawyer at the Parlement, then Magistrate in the Parlement of Paris and President of the  Chambre de Requets  at Toulouse. His long and honorable career of over over fifty years as a Magistrate came to and abrupt end with the publication of this work. Its deliberate and systematic revelation of  the hidden workings of the judicial system is a precious resource for the historian. In around 550 chapters he details with all the knowledge required for the Magistrate of the ancient and modern parlements of France. The fruit of a life times labour, it is not simply a users manuel for the Magistrate, full of the details of the period, it contains all of La Roche Flavin s 50 years experience at a time when the Magistrature was rapidly changing. Written from 1614-17 but containing material gathered from the 1580 s, it includes the debates which shook the parlements since the civil wars.  The question of the paulette (and judicial corruption more generally) made parlement magistrates sensitive to questions of Propriety during the first half of the seventeenth century. Toulouse magistrate Bernard de la Roche Flavin s treatise about parlement procedure,  Thirteen books of the Parlements of France , first published in 1617, was an important contribution to this debate about the professional role of magistrates and their social status. As a magistrate who had served at the Paris Parlement and more recently at the Parlement of Toulouse, La Roche Flavin urges his colleagues to prove their critics wrong. Much to the dismay of his colleagues, La Roche Flavin airs the dirty laundry of the Judiciary in an effort to reform current practice, acknowledging the faults of his colleagues in the hopes of holding them to higher standards in an age when venality threatens to undermine the authority of the Profession. La Roche Flavin, for whom the magistrates integrity is the very cornerstone of the French judicial system urges that court procedure be regularized and that magistrates maintain their public dignity at all times.  Sara Beam.  Laughing matters: farce and the making of absolutism in France . A very good copy of this important work in excellent contemporary morocco.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LA ROCHE-FLAVIN, Bernard de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816119116111,"sku":"L1554","price":3750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_00242.jpg?v=1781795300"},{"product_id":"reserved-1","title":"RESERVED","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst complete edition, one of four variant issues, of this important history of the Kingdom of Naples by the Poet and lawyer Angelo di Costanzo, written at the suggestion of his friend the poet Sannazzaro. Costanzo lived in the refined literary circles of Naples, and fell in love with the beautiful poetess Vittoria Colonna, to whom he dedicated much poetry. His great work,  Le Istorie del regno di Napoli,  was the fruit of forty years labour. It is one of the best histories of Naples, distinguished by its clearness, simplicity and elegance. His history, in twenty books, details the period from 1250 (the year of the death of Frederick II) to 1486 (the year of the war of Ferdinand I of Naples with the Duchy of Milan). The first eight books were printed in Naples in 1572, and the complete work at Aquila in 1581-2. It is especially renowned for its record of the period of the reign of Joanna I of Naples.  As Costanzo was born little more than a century after the death of Joanna, he might, without any great stretch of probability, have acquired much of his information from the grand-children, if not the children, of those who took part in the events of her reign; and in his introduction he tells us himself, that he wrote his history in part from a journal, kept by the Grandfather of the Duke of Montelone, of the public transactions of the Kingdom of Naples in the time of Joanna, and continued by his successors till the death of Alphonso the first. A similar work had supplied his account of those from the death of Frederic the second of Swabia, to that of Charles the second of the Angevine line. Costanzo commenced his history of Naples, at the suggestion of the celebrated Sannazzaro, and other eminent scholars, who were disgusted by the falsities and absurdities of the fabulous history of Collenuccio.... From Sannazzaro, Costanzo received many ancient documents, and much useful information. .. His style is remarkable for a forcible brevity and simplicity, which seems to convey the undisguised dictates of truth; and his character for fidelity and accuracy has never been questioned. .. His history is rather the recital of exploits and fortunes of individuals, than the chronicle of the vicissitudes of a monarchy; and a chivalrous interest is therefore attached to his personages, resembling that excited by the chronicles of Froissart, or the Florentine Annals of the Villani.   Historical Life of Joanna of Sicily, Queen of Naples.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Count Giuseppe Francesco Ignazio Attems (1686-1721), was Baron of Heiligenkreuz, Imperial Chamberlain at the Austrian Court, and owned considerable estates in northern Italy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RESERVED","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816119181647,"sku":"L1320","price":3450.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_4920-copy.jpg?v=1781795299"},{"product_id":"coutumes-de-provence","title":"COUTUMES DE PROVENCE","description":"\u003cp\u003eA rare and early collection of five Provencal arrests, a searing condemnation of corruption in Aix. The first two are indictments of the financial and moral corruption of the clergy of Aix, and its convents, which, instead of administering ‘le service divin…se livre a des actes de paillardise non convenables a la devotion chretienne’. The next denounces the corruption of the merchants of Aix, whose monopolies led to the exploitation of the populace (‘les grands officiers et majeurs mangent de la bonne chair et la populaire est mal servi’), with particular emphasis on the town’s butcher (who sold dirty and diseased meat), and goes on to attack the general corruption and bribery in the region and the bureaucratic indifference which has allowed the corruption to continue (‘le lieutenant general qui a la superintendence n’en tient compte et faict l’endormy’). The arret concludes ‘il faut tout changer’ and threatens heavy fines for future malefactors. The last two attack corruption among notaries and the resale of mortgages in the town. Unlike most legal works the engaging text is of a Rabelasian humour and directness, e.g. “l’avocat et procureur du Roy au siege sont esturdis d’une teste de veau”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhile a complete work in itself, this arrest may well originally have been bound up with other related works of coutumes, or legal customs of the various towns and regions of France, and indeed Fairfax Murray’s copy was in just such a sammelband. Fairfax-Murray tentatively ascribes the work to Jean de Channey in Lyon, on the basis that in his copy, the present work was bound with that printer’s 1536-1540 ‘Ordonnances’. This however, seems inadequate. De Channey was a printer of long standing in Avignon, but Baudrier, puts his date of death between 1536-8. It is therefore possible that his son, Bernard, who is known to have printed the title pages for the ‘Ordonnances’ in 1540 in order to sell them (cf. Betz, Répertoire bibliographique des livres imprimés en France, vol. 6), may have printed the present ‘Arrest’, often bound with the previous work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"COUTUMES DE PROVENCE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816120230223,"sku":"L467","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_00474.jpg?v=1781795296"},{"product_id":"capobianco-alessandro","title":"CAPOBIANCO, Alessandro","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fine copy of the first edition of this important, rare and profusely illustrated work by Capobianco, Captain of the Bombardiers of the city of Crema, that brings together all the technical advances in artillery in the C16, dedicated to Antonio Prioli (future Doge of Venice) and Lunardo Rossetti. By the middle of the 16th century Italian theorists and military architects had perfected the bastioned system of fortification and the Italian method was an admired standard throughout Europe. \"during the sixteenth century the emphasis shifts south of the Alps. And after 1550 Italian military writers dominate the field to the point of monopoly.\" (Horst de la Croix, 'The Literature on Fortification in Renaissance Italy'.) The use of cannons against these new bastioned fortresses required new tactical thinking, which Capobianco elaborates in this work. A veteran of many campaigns in both Italy and the Low Countries he was an expert gunner, though like many of his colleagues he was not a literary man, and his versatility and inventiveness are best shown by his plans and designs. A skilled bombardier, he presents the reader with a sweeping survey of the aims and techniques of artillery around the turn of the C16, starting with the technical use of cannon, their various types and specific purposes, the comparison of modern and 'antique' cannon, their manufacture, sighting etc. He then moves on to the tactics of artillery in defence and attack, the placement of cannons, their transportation, storage and the storage of munitions, the use of rockets and fireworks, and finishes with a brief but insightful description of 'modern' fortification, and bastion techniques. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The binding of this copy is identical in style, with the same central arabesque tool, to a book bound for Thomas Knyvett c. 1610, see David Pearson, English book binding styles 1450-1800, page 9, fig. 1.3. Sir Thomas Knyvett (1539-1618), barrister, of a leading Norfolk family with estates in Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Staffordshire and Yorkshire started to build his splendid collection after the first flood of books and manuscripts from the monastic libraries. At his death his library numbered approximately 1,400 titles and 70 manuscripts on various subjects, as recorded in his library catalogue now in Cambridge University Library, which also received much of his collection in 1715. Favouring original texts, he became proficient in many languages, nurturing a particular love of Italian, owning at least 80 Italian books. Never a very rich man, the size of his library is extraordinary for the period, and it is likely that many of his books were obtained second hand. This binding is typical of those bound for his collection. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Sutton Place, built in 1530 for Sir Richard Weston, is celebrated as a pioneer of the Renaissance style in England, an early Tudor House, innovative for the symmetry of its design and its Italianate terracotta decoration. It was later the home of J. Paul Getty.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CAPOBIANCO, Alessandro","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816120426831,"sku":"L680","price":12500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0080.jpg?v=1781795296"},{"product_id":"london","title":"LONDON","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn extremely rare publication of the orders and regulations governing meetings of the high officers of the City of the London on special, public and ceremonial occasions. Most of these were annual events fixed by the liturgical calendar though some, such as a coronation, occurred only very occasionally. The orders do not regulate the conduction of business, or the administration of the meetings, so much as to provide who shall be where and when, fulfilling what role and especially wearing what. It is a sort of secular  ceremonialum  for what was rapidly becoming the grandest and richest corporate government in the world and which often provided a splendid show for the local populace. This was not a mere matter of  panem et circenses  however but had a serious underlying social and political purpose. It is easy to forget today just how significant the symbolism of clothes and gestures was in the C17th (viz Malvolio) and how vitally important were the rules of precedence and procedure. This little work seems to have been designed principally for participants in these ceremonies, by the study of which deeply embarrassing (and perhaps worse) solecisms could be avoided. It opens with a paginated table of the principal ceremonies and closes with a list of the City corporations. Copies would have been discarded when the office holder retired or the regulations changed, and were doubtless few to begin with, almost none now survive. The earliest recorded edition of this sort was printed in 1568 and is known by a single copy at the Huntington; the Guildhall Library has the only recorded copy of an edition of 1604 and the Bodleian the unique 1610 as well as the only surviving quire of  c.1625? . Then follows this title of which two copies are now known (apart from the present), at the BL. and Guildhall respectively; a different issue, partly reset, survives uniquely at Harvard.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LONDON","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816121868623,"sku":"L20","price":4500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0026.jpg?v=1781795289"},{"product_id":"eutropius","title":"EUTROPIUS","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe impressive contemp. calf binding of this copy strongly resembles Oldham HM23  only one example is known  and is almost certainly English, though  many of the panels used in England no doubt came from the Netherlands  (Oldham p. 20). The text itself consists of a brief summary - the Epitome - of the Gallic Wars, taken from Suetonius  iconic work. Eutropius was a late Roman historian and secretary (magister memoriae) at Constantinople. Written in a straightforward narrative style, with none of the syntactical twists and turns of Suetonius  original Latin, the text rattles through the most important campaigns waged by Julius Caesar during the Gallic and Civil Wars, moving on to his Dictatorship and death at the hands of the Senate in only a few pages. This is followed by notes on the Commentary on Caesar s Gallic and Civil Wars, by Henricus Glareanus: these consist of short summaries of each book and explanations of any obscure place names or peoples (e.g. the tribe known as the Sedusi who, Glareanus tells us,  non sunt Seduni see Germani , referencing Pliny 4.17. Glareanus also explains, with a diagram, Caesar s battle formation, and the various numbers of his troops. The work ends with four alphabetical indexes: the first refers back to Glareanus  annotations on the commentary, the second gives the French equivalents of Roman place names and tribes mentioned in Caesar s text; the third, longer notes on these places and tribes, and the fourth is an index of Caesar s text itself. This beautifully bound edition must have been a very handy condensed textbook for any student of Caesar who had neither the time nor the inclination for the original work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"EUTROPIUS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816122032463,"sku":"L1853","price":3750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Screenshot2026-06-27at6.47.34PM.png?v=1782582521"},{"product_id":"johnston-john","title":"JOHNSTON, John","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this rare work by Johnston (?1570-1611) Scottish poet, who styled himself  Aberdonensis  and whose family hailed from Crimond near Aberdeen - where Johnston studied at Kings College, before spending eight years at various continental universities. He became a friend of Justus Lipsius and doubtless of the other scholars whose epigrams preface the present work - among them Joseph Scaliger, Jan Dousa and Daniel Heinsius. He was also closely attached to Andrew Melville, who probably helped him to obtain the professorship of divinity at St. Andrews c1593, when he was  Maister of the new college . The present work is a series of epigrammatic addresses to the Scottish Kings from Fergus I to James VI (to whom it is dedicated) highlighting their characteristics, exhibiting their virtues and referring to the principal events of their reigns. The verses are more interesting for their historical perspective than their poetry. The anonymous portraits - of Robert II, Robert III, James II, James III, James IV, James V, Mary, James VI and Anne are very finely executed and in excellent strong impression. Neither their source nor maker has been identified. In mid C19 hand on inserted fly  A very rare book. The Roxburghe copy sold for ¬£13.13. In addition to the 10 portraits this copy has a plate of the arms of James VI ... which has not been mentioned by Lowndes, + 1 leaf of preliminary matters (beginning with the verses of J.C. Scaliger) seldom found. At a sale in 1854 or 5 (I think at W. Duncan Gardiner s) a copy was sold for ¬£10 to Lord Breadalbane .\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"JOHNSTON, John","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816122655055,"sku":"L119","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0001_2fe970be-4bc6-4ee3-841b-5567342b9cf6.jpg?v=1781795285"},{"product_id":"caesar-caius-julius","title":"CAESAR, Caius Julius","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn early edition of Ortica's translation, first recorded in 1517, which dominated the Italian market in the first half of the C16. In this edition the translation is still apparently unfinished, after Book VI Ortica includes a letter apologising for omitting his version of Book VII, which was imperfect and interrupted. The history of Caesar's military campaigns in Gaul, Spain, Africa, Egypt and the Civil Wars, with their terse style and lively narrative, have, in their Latin original, been a perennial favorite with schoolmasters. In the vernacular the book could be used as a crib, and at the beginning the translator provides a vocabulary of Latin and Italian place names, explaining that it is so short because he has not had more time, with all the work of translating, transcribing and having the edition printed; he promises that his versions of the Lives of Plutarch and Helius Spatianus, which he is in the process of writing, will have longer lists. The travails of the C16 literary hack! \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The three half-page illustrations of siege engines, the \"vinea\", the \"ariete\" and the \"testudine\", and the one of the bridge half-constructed in the middle of the Rhine, which all follow the vocabulary, are very jolly. \u003cbr\u003e\n The binding is curious. It is C16 Italian morocco but over bds of the thickness we would normally associate only with pigskin. Did the binder or his client have a change of heart half way? Is it a provincial production of the far north Italian where German style bindings were more common? Were there once many bindings like this but very few survivors?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CAESAR, Caius Julius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816124064079,"sku":"SN2392","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Caesar-2392-1-copy.jpg?v=1781795282"},{"product_id":"andrewes-lancelot","title":"ANDREWES, Lancelot","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition, first issue with the errata, of Lancelot Andrews  important refutation of Cardinal Bellarmine s response to the Oath of Allegiance. Andrewes (1555-1626) was one of the leading figures of the Anglican Church, a skilled controversialist, deeply scholarly, and proficient in fifteen languages. Sometime Master of Pembroke, Cambridge, Fellow of St John's, Oxford, and Bishop of Winchester, he narrowly missed being Archbishop of Canterbury. A Privy Councillor, his name appears first in the list of divines appointed to produce the King James Bible, and Fuller says of him that \"the world wanted learning to know how learned this man was\". He was elegised by Milton and frequently consulted by Bacon. He was anti-Papist, and carefully defended the interests of the Church of England. In 1606, after the Gunpowder Plot, Parliament instituted a new Oath of Allegiance, targeted at Catholics. Cardinal Bellarmine issued an attack on the institution of this Oath, prompting an anonymous Royal defence ('Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus') published the following year. Bellarmine replied at the Pope's behest in 1608, under the name of his chaplain, Matteo Torti; prompting James I to commission Andrewes to compose a full reply to supplement the King's 'Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance .  James s desire not to see his sovereignty diminished led him to pursue and even intensify Henry VIII s policy regarding the requirement of loyalty to the crown, and in terms of Ecclesiological consequences, made it all the more urgent to reconsider the notion of the Church. The papacy on the other hand was keen to defend the Roman Catholic tradition, based on the primacy of the Pope s jurisdiction and indirect temporal power. To highlight the king of England s interference in the lives of English Catholics, Bellarmine evoked the creation of harsher penal laws related to the oath (of Allegiance), which betrayed a discriminatory , intolerant attitude. .. At this stage other authors, including Robert Parsons and his adversary William Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln and one of the King s Chaplains, joined the war of words. On the Anglican side, James called on the best known and unquestionably the best read of the pamphleteers, Lancelot Andrewes, to pen a refutation of Bellarmine s work. In 1609, Andrews published in Latin Tortura Torti.  Bernard Bourdin  The Theological-Political Origins of the Modern State . Andrewes' work, punning in his title on the pseudonym Bellarmine had adopted, Tortura Torti was published in 1609. Andrewes was a significant influence on English prose; he greatly infuenced T.S. Eliot, who commends his writing as subtly communicating his philosophical standpoint: \"It is only when we have saturated ourselves in his prose, followed the movement of his thought, that we find his examination of words terminating in the ecstasy of assent\" (from Eliot's essay, 'For Lancelot Andrewes ). A very good entirely unsophisticated copy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ANDREWES, Lancelot","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816124588367,"sku":"L1789","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Screenshot-2024-08-06-at-10.41.04.webp?v=1781795281"},{"product_id":"lusignan-estienne","title":"LUSIGNAN, Estienne","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond edition of this important and early genealogy, bound with the first edition of the second work  Les Droicts, Autoritez et perogatives que pretendent au Royaume de Hierusalem. . Estienne de Lusignan, was born at Nicosia, capital of Cyprus, and chose an ecclesiastical career under the guidance of the Armenian Bishop, Julian. After the fall of Cyprus he escaped to Italy and spent his fortune on buying his enslaved parents back from Turkey. He moved to Paris in 1577 and was nominated as Bishop of Limasso in Cyprus.  The work of Veccerius   became an important source for the G én éalogies of Estienne de Chypre de Lusignan (1537 - 1590). As his name suggests, Estienne was a descendant of the Lusignan kings of Cyprus and Bishop of Limassol. He wrote his Genealogies for Francois de Luxembourg-Piney, in which he presented the genealogies of sixty-seven noble dynasties that can all be traced back to the Merovingians. .. In this book, Melusine and the search for her true historic identity are a recurrent theme. This may be unsurprising, since it is that very figure that enabled the author s own glorious dynastic roots to be connected with those of his patron, or, as he wrote,  The house of Luxembourg, according to our opinion and that of many others, derived from the House of Lusignan . He also sees Melusine on the crest worn by  all members  of the house of Luxembourg and Lusignan as clear proof of his hypothesis.  Pit P éport é.  Constructing the Middle Ages:  The second work is the first edition of Lusignans interesting treatise as to the various claims of the main European noble houses, including the Papacy and the Patriarchy, over the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The first chapter concerns the rights over the kingdom exercised by his own family. He then discusses the rights of each of the royal families of Europe and their connection to the Kingdom, including the English royal Family through the exploits of Richard the Lionheart. Very good crisp copies of these two works.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LUSIGNAN, Estienne","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816126325071,"sku":"L1917","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L1917-LUSIGNAN-Estienne-2.jpg?v=1781795276"},{"product_id":"gysius-johannes-and-las-casas-bartolome_","title":"GYSIUS, Johannes and LAS CASAS, Bartolome_","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of the of these two important works published in the Netherlands in 1620, containing French translations of two earlier works detailing Spanish crimes and atrocities in both Europe and the New World. The first part is an abridged version of  Oorsprong en voortgang der Nederlandtscher beroerten  (Origin and progress of the disturbances in the Netherlands) by Johannes Gysius (died 1652), first published anonymously in 1616. The second part is a translation of Brev√≠sima relaci√≥n de la destrucci√≥n de las Indias (A short account of the destruction of the Indies), written by Bartolom é de las Casas (1474 1566) in 1542 and first published in 1552. These histories were published together under a new title by Jan Evertszoon Cloppenburch (1571 1648), an Amsterdam bookbinder and publisher of Bibles and patriotic and religious books and tracts associated with the Dutch Reformed Church. Gysius was a minister, whose book is a history of the Dutch revolt against Spain in 1555 98, containing accounts of such events as the sieges of Haarlem, Leiden, and other cities and the execution by the Spanish of Count Egmont in Brussels in 1568. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Las Casas was reprinted in 1620 and 1630. The first of these editions appeared in Amsterdam without any prefatory matter not even the author s .. relying largely on copperplates to tell a pictoral story of torture and cruelty on the title page and throughout the text. The publisher, Jan Evertz Cloppenburg, presented a typology of Spanish cruelty. He included two title pages set up in identical ways with the same pictures . The first,..was on the Low countries and the second was about the new World and preceded Las Casas s account. The first title page included writing surrounded by pictures of men, women and children being tortured. Philip of Spain presided at the top and centre above the title, his vassals  Don Jan  and the  Duke of Alva  are shown facing the title: the Spanish cruelty in the Netherlands was mirroring that in the New World. .. This symbolic correspondence was a central typology of the Old World and New. Cloppenburg was asking the readers to see the Old World through the New. .. Here the publisher says that the Spaniards brought war and tyranny to the Low countries under the same religious pretext that they used to tyrannise the Natives in the New World a hundred years before. The heretics and the Lutherans in the Netherlands had taken the place of the pagans an Idolaters of the New World. .. In some of the engravings in Cloppenburg s edition, the inhabitants of the Netherlands are naked like the Natives. The translation, which is from the dutch, sometimes elaborates beyond Las Casas s original to make the Spaniards seem even crueler. The engravings of the Flemmish artist Theodore de Bry, which had been in the Frankfurt Latin edition of Las Casas in 1598, constituted part of this edition, where they reinforced visually the worst atrocities in the text.  Jonathan Hart  Literature, Theory, History.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A good copy of this important reinterpretation both these works.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"GYSIUS, Johannes and LAS CASAS, Bartolome_","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816127144271,"sku":"L1795","price":4850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/l1795-le-miroir-10.jpg?v=1781795273"},{"product_id":"cicero-marcus-tullius","title":"CICERO, Marcus Tullius","description":"\u003cp\u003eA very rare and most attractive copy of Cicero's letters, beautifully printed in an elegant minuscule Italic by Simon de Colines, in a fine contemporary Parisian gilt tooled binding. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  First Colines pocket edition of Cicero s  Epistolae familiares', a rare book of which we were unable to locate another copy. [Schreiber s copy is also very incomplete, ending with book VIII] Renouard, whose note for this edition is particularly garbled and incomplete, states that this was the only Colines imprint to bear Henri (sic) Estienne s device. The text was overseen by Claude Chaudière, Regnault s son. In the preface Claude emphasises his position as Colines' grandson on his mothers side, and the care he has taken in establishing the text. After Colines  death, in 1546, Regnault and Claude were to take over the printing house.  Schreiber. Renouard had probably never seen a copy as there is no sign of Estienne s device. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Surprisingly, the work is particularly rare. We have located four copies on worldcat only, at Illinois, North Carolina, Glasgow and the Danish Nat. Lib.; the BNF does not have it and none are recorded in Italian libraries. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The binding is quite sumptuous for a pocket edition, almost certainly from Paris, and is similar in style, though on a miniature scale, to bindings of the same period by Claude De Piques, see British library Catalogue of Bindings shelfmark c20c15 and c48c2. s \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Written over the course of many years from 65 B.C. onwards and compiled by Cicero's personal secretary Tiro, the letters are often written in a subtle code to disguise particular political contents. The work is made up of Cicero s letters to his friends, acquaintances and also their replies, there is one to a conspirator in Caesar s murder,  I congratulate you. I rejoice for myself. I love you. I watch your interests; I wish for your love and to be informed of what you are doing and what is being done,  ( Fam. vi. 15). We know from others that Cicero thought about publishing some of his letters during his lifetime, but it is generally agreed that the Ad Familiares were published by Cicero s friend Tiro, who suppressed his own letters and included those written to him at the end. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Cicero s letters are among the most valuable sources of information on the period, we learn from him a great deal about daily life in Rome and the provinces, especially the province of Cilicia of which Cicero was sometime governor. There is no other period of antiquity for which we still possess such an immediate and intimate record and in such domestic detail.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CICERO, Marcus Tullius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816127340879,"sku":"L1852","price":3950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/frontcover_56b3a2cf-6629-4b3f-8e20-12206ae0e7be.png?v=1781795275"},{"product_id":"lurbe-gabriel-de","title":"LURBE, Gabriel de","description":"\u003cp\u003eVery rare, excellent second edition in French, finely printed by Simon Millanges (Montaigne s printer), of this important description of the history of the statutes of the town of Bordeaux by the historian Gabriel de Lurbe, a native of Bordeaux who published several works on the subject. The first edition was published in Latin in 1589 and then translated and expanded by the author and published in 1594. The work offers a fascinating insight into the every day life of the town as the statutes concern the regulation of its every aspect from the duties of the police and the Judiciary to fishmongers selling fresh fish or fishmongers selling salted fish (as a port town the trade in salt fish for the fleet was important). Naturally many of these statutes concern wine and give a very vivid description of the business with eleven chapters devoted to every aspect of the wine trade from the manufacture of barrels to the prohibition of the purchase of wines from areas outside Bordeaux, such as Armagnac. There is a specific regulation concerning the (very lucrative) trade with the English in wine which prohibits anyone taking an Englishman to buy wine from anyone other than the  bourgeois  of the town, and forbids English merchants from seeking to buy wine directly  sur les champs  unless with express permission from the relevant authorities. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n There are specific statutes concerning the labelling of wine, wine to be drunk in taverns, wines that are forbidden to be brought into the town, at what times wine from specific regions inland (such as the Gaillac) can be brought in town, the use of barrels, regulation of wine merchants, the growing of vines etc. These statutes are especially interesting as they clearly show the protection given to local merchants in their quasi monopoly on the wine trade and demonstrate the particular importance of this trade with the English market. Many also concern food such as butchers, the regulation of the trade in flour, fishmongers etc. Amusingly, the first line of the statute regulating  des tondeurs  or hair cutters states that it is strictly forbidden to cut the hair or wash the sheets of an Englishman if his ship was berthed within twenty leagues of the town. There are also particularly interesting statutes concerning the book trade and paper and parchment makers. A rare work, that gives fascinating insight into a town that was intimately linked, through its trade in wine, with the English.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LURBE, Gabriel de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816129601871,"sku":"L2053","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2053-Lurbe-1-e1439396196472.jpg?v=1781795267"},{"product_id":"sandys-edwin-with-boccalini-traiano-and-d-estampes-de-valencay-leonore","title":"SANDYS, Edwin [with] BOCCALINI, Traiano [and] D ESTAMPES de VALEN√áAY, L éonore","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn interesting collection of controversial treatises on early seventeenth-century religion and politics, two of which bear a false imprint to elude censorship. The opening work is the first and only Italian edition of an influential Stuart treatise on the situation of religion in Europe. An able politician and pioneering investor in North America, Edwin Sandys (1561-1629) completed his studies in Oxford, befriending his tutor Richard Hooker. Later, he travelled in Europe and in Venice wrote this anti-Catholic report with the help of the Venetian scholar Paolo Sarpi.   The Relation was first published in 1605 against the author s will and then expanded until 1637. This remarkably early Italian translation is variously attributed to the pen of Sarpi or Giovanni Diodati   the famous Calvinist pastor and scholar of the Bible   and was almost certainly printed in Geneva (where a community of Italian immigrants, religionis causa, was settled). According to a recent reattribution, the translator may well have been William Bedell (1571-1642), chaplain to the English ambassador in Venice Sir Henry Wooton and later translator of the Bible into Irish. Although the peculiar printer s device on title shows a dolphin twisting around an anchor like the famous Aldine device, the Latin motto is incorrectly  Festina tarde  instead of  Festina lente .   The second work is a very early edition of a mordant political parody, printed several times in the course of 1615 and later on in the century under a fictitious printing place such as  Cormopoli  or  Cosmopoli . This covering stratagem was necessary since the book ridiculed, alongside other European rulers, the king of Spain and the German Emperor. Traiano Boccalini (1556-1613) was a famous satirical author, whose most successful and entertaining work was Ragguagli di Parnaso. Pretending to be the official reporter of a divine parliament chaired by Apollo on Mount Parnassus, Boccalini fearlessly mocked the contemporary society and politics. The Pietra del paragone politico, published posthumously, was in fact a continuation of the Ragguagli. On leaf Bivr, one can find a witty account of Thomas More enquiring of Apollo as to the end of all heresies.   The volume ends with a booklet printed by Antoine Estienne, scion of the renowned dynasty of French printers. Written by the Bishop of Chartes, L éonore D Estampes (1589-1651), it is a defence of the unscrupulous expansionistic policy undertaken by Cardinal Richelieu and King Louis XIII in the Thirty Years  War, replying promptly to the pamphlet of the Jesuit scholar Jakob Keller entitled Ad Ludovicum XIII Regem admonitio. A counterfeited octavo edition with Estienne s name and device was published by Robert Young in London also in 1625.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SANDYS, Edwin [with] BOCCALINI, Traiano [and] D ESTAMPES de VALEN√áAY, L éonore","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816130978127,"sku":"L2110","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2110-Sandys-1.jpg?v=1781795263"},{"product_id":"reserved-3","title":"RESERVED","description":"\u003cp\u003eSumptuous copy of an early edition of a famous contemporary account of Italian political history in the first half of the sixteenth century, first published in Florence in 1550. A physician, historian and high-ranking Catholic prelate, Paolo Giovio (1483-1552) was a highly respected Renaissance scholar, linked to the Medici and later the Farnese family. In his famous villa in Como, he gathered a vast amount of ancient and contemporary statues and portraits, forming his beloved Museum. His works range from ichthyology, science and occultism, to philosophy, history, biography, iconography and ethnography, including a description of the British Isles and a very famous collection of imprese. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The Historiae was his lifework, meant to leave an indelible trace of his scholarship. Giovio focuses on the Italian wars, sprung from the invasion by King Charles VIII in 1494, up to the late 1540s. A sharp mind, he foresaw the disastrous outcome of the conflict between France and the Holy Roman Empire for the control of Italy on the cultural and political life of the peninsula. The work is dedicated to Giovio s close friend, Andrea Alciato, and each volume closes with verses by Benedetto Varchi. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This two volume set retains a very interesting contemporary binding. Gauffering of such a remarkable quality   certainly the work of a very skilled artisan in Geneva anticipating the style of Goldast Meister, such as the King s Binder (see I. Schunke, Der GenferBucheinband, 1937)   is usually combined with lavish tooled-blind and painted calf over pasteboards rather than gilt limp vellum on books as large as these ones. It is likely that the copies, gauffered in Geneva in 1561, were completed by another local binder, following afterthoughts of the patron. Even so, the bicolour silk ties were matched with the gauffering, formerly painted red.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RESERVED","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816132452687,"sku":"L2115","price":7750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2115-Giovio-2.jpg?v=1781795256"},{"product_id":"walther-johann","title":"WALTHER, Johann","description":"\u003cp\u003eCrisp copy of a German poem written to commemorate the death of Martin Luther in 1546, when the volume was first printed in five impressions (no priority has been established). Johann Walther (or Walter) (1496 1570), the  father of Lutheran church music , was composer and then director of the chapel choir of Frederick III, Duke of Saxony. In 1524, he published  Geistliches Gesangbuechleinin , a hymnal for Lutheran choirs, with a foreword by Martin Luther himself; the  Deutsche Messe  followed in 1527. For two decades, Walther worked incessantly with Luther to adapt Catholic church music to the needs of Lutheran liturgy, for instance, by introducing hymns into the mass and encouraging people to sing them at home and make them part of their everyday lives. The  Epitaphium  is Walther s tribute to a religious personality who had also become a close friend. The poem depicts Luther as a heroic figure whom Death cannot overpower and the Devil s bite cannot hurt, a soul who has escaped from the hellish torments reserved to Papists to revive in the teachings of God s word and the light of Christ. The fine woodcuts after Lucas Cranach the Younger immortalise Luther and Frederick III, one of the earliest defenders of Lutheranism and founder of the University of Wittenberg, where Luther taught. \u003cbr\u003e\n \u003cbr\u003e\n  The striking binding is made of two non-sequential leaves from the same manuscript in superb condition. It is probably a C15 German lectionary, with excerpts from the Acts of the Saints and Martyrs, associated with their calendar dates of worship. The front cover features passages from the acts of St Mathias (February 24) and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (March 10), while on the back are extracts from the lives of St Peter and Paul (including Acts 1:21-26 and 12:2-8), interspersed with orations.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WALTHER, Johann","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816138580303,"sku":"L2748","price":4950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/frontcover_2d4127df-f89c-4889-9c1d-2abc3a65732f.png?v=1781795192"},{"product_id":"yepes-diego-de","title":"YEPES, Diego de","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this important description of the persecution of Catholics in England in the reign of Elizabeth I, by the Bishop of Tarazona, Diego de Yepes. The work is of great historic and social interest, and provides much insight into the lives of Catholics in Britain, and the dissemination of their stories across Europe.  In fact, it is worth emphasising that whatever cognizance that Europeans obtained concerning events in England during the last decades of the 16th century came primarily from the published writings of figures like Persons and Allen and their fellow exiles, or alternatively figures such as Diego de Yepes whose  Historia particular de la persecucion de Inglaterra  shows that he was in close contact with them.  Brian C. Lockey  Early Modern Catholics, Royalists, and Cosmopolitans.  Yespes also seems to have been in contact with the indefatigable Verstegen whose close contacts with English recusants were important in the compilation of this work.  Though few remain, Petti estimates that (Verstegen) must have sent thousands of dispatches to key authors throughout Europe, funnelling through the news he received from his contacts in England. Dispatches to influential English exiles such as Robert Persons, Francis Englefield, Roger Baynes and Cardinal William Allen remain to this day, but he was also in touch with numerous other prominent Catholics throughout Europe who subsequently used his information for their own ends. Petti recognises Verstegan s hand in, for instance, Pedro de Ribadeneira S.J. s Historia Ecclesiastica del Reyno de Inglaterra (1593) and Diego de Yepes s Historia Particular de la Persecucion de Inglaterra (1599).  A Ewing  A Comparative Analysis of Catholic and Puritan Polemics, 1618- 1628.  A good example of the dissemination of these stories across is given by the English Nun Dorothy Arundel:  How did English nuns gain an international audience in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? One route was to write about persecution and martyrdom. The currency of such accounts was heightened in Counter-Reformation Europe, where the religious wars as well as efforts to halt or reverse the exponential growth of Protestant congregations gave strong impetus to the circulation of narratives strengthening Catholic identity. The religious orders were already transnational networks, transcending as well as embracing local and national allegiances. .. Dorothy Arundell, who resided at her widowed mother s home, Chideock Castle, in Dorset, provides one example. This recusant community was raided in 1594; Dorothy and her sister Gertude   who both went on to found the exiled Benedictine convent at Brussels in 1598   were among those arrested. Their priest, John Cornelius, was subsequently executed, reportedly making his Jesuit vows on the scaffold. Within a short time, Arundell had composed a narrative of the martyred priest, which was quickly absorbed by Jesuit historians across Europe. Her account was first publicised in Spain in the history of English persecution compiled by the Bishop of Tarazona, Diego de Yepes, in collaboration with the English Jesuit, Joseph Creswell: Historia particular de la persecucion de Inglaterra (Madrid, 1599).  Marie-Louise Coolahan.  Nuns  Writing and Martyrology.  \u003cbr\u003e\nA very good copy of the first edition of this most interesting work.  \u003cbr\u003e\nBM STC Spain C16th p. 220. Palau 377815.  Obra muy estimada en Inglaterra. Refiere la introduccion y succesivo establecimiento de la reforma anglicana en aquel pais y las persecuciones sufridas por los catolicos, con las biografia de mas de un centenar victimas de sus creencias\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"YEPES, Diego de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816141496655,"sku":"L2566a","price":3500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2566-5.jpg?v=1781795176"},{"product_id":"jimenez-de-rada-rodrigo","title":"JIMÉNEZ DE RADA, Rodrigo","description":"\u003cp\u003eVery uncommon, good copy of the second edition of the Chronicle of the  noble and eminent deeds  of King Ferdinand III (c.1199-1252), son of Alphonso IX of L éon and Berenguela de Castile. First published in 1516 upon the accession of Charles I, the first Habsburg on the Spanish throne the work celebrated the consolidation and territorial expansion of the united crowns of Castile and L éon by the hand of the pious Ferdinand III, who joined the Order of St Francis and was canonised in 1671. The narrative begins in the C12, with the reign of Alfonso IX, and concludes with Ferdinand III s death. Central to the  Chronica  is Ferdinand s conquest of Andalusia, with gory narratives of his battles against the Moors and the sieges of C√≥rdoba and Seville. Written by Don Rodrigo Jim énez de Rada (1170-1247), Archbishop of Toledo, and terminated by Jofre de Loaysa, it was modernised in spelling and edited by Diego L√≥pez de Cartagena, who also translated numerous Latin works into Castilian. It is one of the many successful medieval vernacular chronicles printed in Europe in the sixteenth century. These patriotic texts, addressed to the wider public, narrated the history of nations through the deeds of their kings, whilst functioning as dynastic  mirrors for princes  for the ruling monarchs. As shown by the arms on the t-p, this edition was dedicated to Charles I s son, Philip II. USTC records no surviving copies of the first edition of 1547.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"JIMÉNEZ DE RADA, Rodrigo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816143593807,"sku":"L2778","price":7500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/20191120_144639-scaled.jpg?v=1781795170"},{"product_id":"more-st-thomas-1","title":"MORE, St. Thomas","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond edition of the verses written by the champion of English Catholicism. Thomas More (1478-1535) was the most skilled and appreciated scholar of Henry VIII s reign prior to the latter s break with Rome. His refusal to join the king s reformation cost him his life. His visionary depiction of the perfect government on the island of Utopia inspired generations of thinkers and politicians. Despite More s hesitations, the Epigrammata first appeared into print as part of the collection issued by Froben in March 1518 under Erasmus  and Beatus Rhenanus  supervision, together with Utopia and Erasmus s poems. A few months later, between November and December, Froben published the same three-part collection, apparently after some revision by the author. Fairfax Murray points out that  more often than not the three parts (either edition) are found separately . Indeed, the BL has an independent copy of the Epigrammata of March (11409.g.47.). The book opens with a letter from Rhenanus to Willibald Pirckheimer, followed by the Progymnasmata, an erudite dialogue in Greek and Latin verses between More and the grammarian William Lily (c.1468-1522).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MORE, St. Thomas","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816145363279,"sku":"L2232","price":4750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2232-More-Thomas-1-e1541260156980.jpg?v=1781794946"},{"product_id":"rely-iehan-de","title":"RELY, Iehan de","description":"\u003cp\u003eBeautifully printed edition of this resume of acts of the  États-g én éraux  held in Tours under Charles the VIII, by the Bishop Jean de Rely. In this edition the acts of the States-General of Tours are preceded by the speech pronounced before Charles VIII and his council, by Jean de R ély, representative of the clergy of Paris who had been elected by the Three States to present to the sovereign the results of their deliberations. Jean de R ély (1430-1499) was a professor of theology, and was later chancellor and archdeacon of Notre-Dame and chaplain to Charles VIII, whom he accompanied on his expedition to Italy, then finally bishop of Angers. The States-General of 1484 were convoked by the Regent Anne de Beaujeu at Tours, to designate who should occupy the regency after the death of Louis XI (August 30, 1483) and during the minority of Charles VIII. Although the late king had designated her, with her husband Pierre de Beaujeu, Louis II of Orleans, challenged them. The summoning of the States General was a first victory for the prince. These États-g én éraux were of great importance in French history as for the first time, they brought together elected officials from all over the kingdom: from Artois to Dauphin é, from Brittany (which only sent observers) to Burgundy. On top of this, again for the first time, representatives of all social bodies were convened: nobility, clergy and the Third Estate, and remarkably, in the Third Estate, peasants were also represented. In total, the different provinces and the different orders sent 285 delegates. These Estates General introduced a bold conception of government, with the political power belonging to the people, being by them, vested in the king. The minority of the king caused a return of power to the Estates; it was therefore up to the states to organize government during the King s minority. These Estates General were also particularly interesting for a complete reorganisation of the system of taxation, but also covered every aspect of the Government of France, with lasting effect. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The work in this form was first printed in 1518 and is here beautifully reprinted by the Parisian bookseller Gaillot du Pr é with his famous device of a galley on the verso last.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RELY, Iehan de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816146248015,"sku":"L2774","price":1750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2774-1.jpg?v=1781794942"},{"product_id":"paruta-paolo","title":"PARUTA, Paolo","description":"\u003cp\u003eA magnificent copy, superbly bound in fine contemporary red morocco for presentation to Pope Clement VIII, with his arms finely painted on the covers, of the first edition of Paruta s most celebrated work on Politics. The work was brought to press by the author s son, Giovanni, shortly after Paulo s death in 1598. It gives an excellent overview of the political theories of a Venetian, anti-Machiavellian statesman, and exerted a profound, though not always recognised, influence on the political science of the seventeenth century: Paolo Peruta (1540-1598), entered the service of the Serenissima whilst still very young, was a diplomat and senator, governor of Brescia and finally Proveditor of St. Mark s (in 1596). Paruta was also an important Venetian historian and political theorist.  Born in Venice of a noble family from Lucca, Paruta studied in Padua before returning to Venice in 1561, where he held many important diplomatic and political positions for the Republic, including the post of city historian after the death of Pietro Bembo in 1579. Paruta continued this ongoing civic project but wrote his own contribution to the history in Italian rather thatn Latin. His Istorie veneziane (1605, the History of Venice) treats the events that occurred between 1513 and 1552 in twelve books. It received an English translation in 1658 by Henry Carey, Earl of Monmouth, an important English interpreter of the works of Paruta, Campanella, and Boccalini  It is Paruta s political treatises that are most influential. In the Discorsi politici (1599, Politick Discourses   also translated by Carey in 1657), Paruta continues the debate opened by Machiavelli s Discorsi on the causes for Roman greatness, offers explanations of his own, which often take issue with Machiavelli s, and accentuates the importance of the mixed form of government he believed Venice to posses. Unlike Machiavelli, who emphasized a state s establishment, the more conservative Paruta was most interested in its preservation. This book was an important source for Montesquieu s Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence (1734).  Cassell Dictionary Italian Literature. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Clement VIII, born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was Pope from 2 February 1592 to 1605. He was renowned for his political astuteness; perhaps the most remarkable event of his reign was the reconciliation to the Church of Henry IV of France, after long negotiations, carried on with great dexterity through Cardinal Arnaud d Ossat, that resolved the complicated situation in France. Henry embraced Catholicism on 25 July 1593. After a pause to assess Henry IV s sincerity, Clement VIII braved Spanish displeasure, and in the autumn of 1595 he solemnly absolved Henry IV, thus putting an end to the thirty years  religious war. The connection between Paruta and the Pope was a real one as Paruta had been the Ambassador for the Republic of Venice to the Pope from 1592 to 1595. His negotiations with Clement VIII, though often difficult, had always been successful. In 1598 Paruta had been sent to Ferrara to  compliment  the Pope for his conquest of the duchy   which Venice, in fact, very much disapproved of. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A magnificent copy of this important first edition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PARUTA, Paolo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816146608463,"sku":"L2802","price":18500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2802-1-1.jpg?v=1781794939"},{"product_id":"d-ossat-arnaud","title":"D OSSAT, Arnaud","description":"First edition of this important collection of letters written by Arnaud D Ossat to Henry the IV of France of great historical significance.  These letters formerly served as models for diplomats, owing not only to the importance of the questions which they treat, but especially to the talent for exposition which d Ossat displays in them. The French Academy inscribed Ossat among the  dead authors who have written our French language most purely . Wiquefort in his  M émoires sur les ambassadeurs  finds in them  the clearest and most enlightened judgment ever displayed by any minister , and Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son that the  simplicity and clearness of Cardinal d Ossat s letters show how business letters should be written.  Catholic Encyclopaedia\r \r D Ossat was a French diplomat and writer, and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, whose personal tact and diplomatic skill steered the perilous course of French diplomacy with the Papacy in the reign of Henry IV. He supported the cause of Henry IV at Rome, whose conversion to Catholicism he prepared Pope Clement VIII to accept. In 1593, Henri IV wrote directly to d  Ossat in Rome that he was sending the Duc de Nevers to negotiate with the Pope, and he instructed d Ossat to share all of his knowledge of and influence in the Roman Court, as well as his wise counsel, to advance the affairs of France. His letters to the King are filled with detailed information concerning negotiations not only with France but covering most of the major events in Europe.\r \r  Still more informative are the editions of the letters of a near French contemporary of Walsingham s, Arnaud D Ossat. Cardinal D Ossat was Henri IV s representative at Rome, and from a Roman Catholic point of view, a hero in the attempt to reunite Christendom and reconcile Henri with Spain and the Papacy.   the letters are gathered as a coherent historical narrative in a book  du tout utile \u0026amp; du tout public.  a book which offers a course of instruction in civil prudence. They exemplify D Ossat s moral and political thought:  candeur \u0026amp;libert é ,  la parfaicte sagesse ,  la dexterit é admirable qu il avoit au maniment des affaires . The reader will not find pages of  compliments  and  flatteries , but  un parfait modelle sur lequel tous les ministres des Princes de toute qualit é se devront former, soit pour la facon de traitter les affaires de vive voix, ou de les faire entendre par escrit tels qu ils sont . They are also, then,literary or rhetorical models. Furthermore, the letters of men such as D Ossat, men treating the affairs of great Princes, represent the most serious and noteworthy of their actions. They have more  naifvet é than  harangues . .. These kinds of writing, in short, give  l ame √† l histoire .  Jan Papy.  Self-presentation and Social Identification: The rhetoric and pragmatics of letter writing in early modern times. \r \r The shield on the binding is recoded in many examples by the Toronto database of British Amorial Bindings, many on continental books dating from the 1620s. However they have not been able to identify the owner. Henry Osborn maybe the distinguished admiral of that name (1698?   1771).","brand":"D OSSAT, Arnaud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816152703311,"sku":"L2864","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_0820-rotated.jpg?v=1781794936"},{"product_id":"llwyd-humphrey-kromer-marcin","title":"LLWYD, Humphrey. KROMER, Marcin.","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of Llwyd s geographical and historical description of Ancient Britain prefixed by his farewell letter to the cartographer Abraham Ortelius dated from Denbigh 30 August 1568, ending with a short Welsh vocabulary. An English translation by Thomas Twyne,  The Breuiary of Britayne,  was published in the following year.  in August 1568, the Welsh scholar Humphrey Lloyd of Demby lay dying. Writing for the last time to his friend Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp, he reported that  a very perilous fever hath so torn this body of mine these ten continual days that I [have been] brought to despair of my life.  Along with the letter Llwyd enclosed a pair of maps, one of Wales and one of England and Wales, destined for inclusion in Ortelius s atlas. Llwyd further enclosed  certain fragments written with mine own hand which   (if God had spared me life) you should have received in better order,  These  fragments  belonged to an unfinished topographical description of Britain, more than half of which was devoted to the history and description of Wales  Humphrey Llwyd was among the most gifted and provocative scholars of his generation.   As MP for Denbigh he was instrumental in the passage of legislation for the translation of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer into the Welsh language.   Llwyd s work left a lasting mark on the literatures of both England and Wales. It is unlikely that Camden s great work would have taken quite the same form   or even borne the same title   without the prior example and influence of the Breviary  Philip Schwyzer  The breviary of Britain . Introduction.  [Llwyd] wrote the Commentarioli Britannicae descriptionis fragmentum, a short historical and geographical description of Britain. .. It was the first attempt to compile a chorographia of Britain as a whole. Central themes of Llwyd s work are his defence of Geoffrey of Monmouth (particularly countering the attacks of Polydore Vergil), and his belief in the integrity of the early British church.  DNB.  Llwyd s important work is bound here with the first edition of another most interesting geographical work by Marcin Kromer on Poland.  Polish diplomat, bishop of of Warmia, historian, and polemicist on behalf of the counter Reformation. Was born in Biecz and served as secretary to Archbishop Piotr Gamrat   When working in the Royal Chancellery he ordered and listed the most important royal archives in Cracow.  .. Kromer was active in political and diplomatic life (numerous legations) He was one of the most important figures in the Polish Counter Reformation .. . His major work, intended for foreign readership is his history of Poland from legendary times to 1506 De Origine et rebus gestis Polonorum . In addition to De origine, he contributed a geographical and political description of Poland: Polonia (1577).  D.R. Woolf  A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing.  The work is full of interesting details on the politics of early Poland:\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LLWYD, Humphrey. KROMER, Marcin.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816153588047,"sku":"L2914","price":2500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_20190807_141022.jpg?v=1781794926"},{"product_id":"franciscans","title":"[FRANCISCANS.]","description":"\u003cp\u003eVery good copy of the scarce first edition of this compendium of privileges, bulls and concessions granted by popes to the Franciscan and other mendicant orders in the course of previous centuries. Intended as an  opusculum  for easy consultation, it is organized alphabetically and prefaced by a long index. Each numbered entry begins with the name of the pope who granted the specified privileges concerning, for instance, the permission to administer confession and absolution in various circumstances (e.g., to family members or infidels), appropriate behaviour in convents and in the presence of women who are not nuns, education and indulgences (with lists of specific stations for penitence in Rome and Jerusalem, sins absolved and length of time). Such compendia became fundamental administrative instruments for missionary friars in the New World. This copy belonged to the Convento de San Francisco in Quer étaro, Mexico, in the C17. Most marginalia highlight ordinances concerning the financial and administrative relationship between Franciscans friars and the nuns of the Second Order of St Francis for whom a convent was established in Quer étaro in 1606.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"[FRANCISCANS.]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816155881807,"sku":"L2899","price":4750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2899-1.jpg?v=1781794912"},{"product_id":"clark-william","title":"CLARK, William","description":"\u003cp\u003eA most interesting work on the state of Tithes in Britain, including a short description of tithes and a summary of the Statutes of tithing, sometimes erroneously attributed to William Crashaw. The pamphlet was issued as part of the  Tithes controversy  in which many Puritans resisted the payment of tithes. William Clark describes the state of confusion over tithes that stemmed from Henry VIII s dissolution of the monasteries in which  at a stroke, came at least one-third of the tithes of England into lay hands, and the lay rector appears on the scene  Robert Brown.  Tithes in England and Wales.  The confusion after the dissolution lead many to avoid paying tithes altogether, and Henry VIII to issue new statutes concerning tithes, followed by Edward and Elizabeth I. Clark describes the confused situation in his preface  The Canon and civil laws since first K. Henry of happy memory the eight, dismembered their bodies, and restored to the diadem of the Land (over the state Ecclesiastical) the ancient jurisdiction of the Crowne, they have and do lie hidden; such of them that K Henry then continued and K Edward that succeeded him .. and afterwards were the late Queenes deceased   they have, these Lawes, and doe lie hidden in manifold, darke, and dangerous corners, in practise only familiar in Consistories and their knowledge to the country obscure.  The preface, (disingenuously dated 1591, considering he refers to Queen Elisabeth as deceased) discusses his intentions in laying out, in a systematic fashion, the function of tithes, so that by shining a light on them it might lead to their eventual reform. The tithes concern all the produce of the land from tax on eggs, geese, mills, fish, fowl, trades, crafts, merchandise, woods pasture etc etc. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  The  Tithes Controversy  was one of the many hot-button religio-political issues of the 1640s and 50s that helped polarize Civil War England. Throughout the seventeenth century, popular support arose for the non-payment of tithes an attack on the very idea of a state church. The problem with tithes stemmed from the rise of Separatist or  congregationlist  sentiments, in part from economic issues such as lay  impropriations,  that is, the collection of tithes by lay owners of ecclesiastical lands (tithes were expropriated to lay owners following the dissolution of the monasteries). Even pro-tithe spokesmen like Henry Spelman vilified lay impropriators who  imployed the church to prophane uses, and left the parishioners uncertainly provided of divine service.  In the more radical views of non-conformist groups like the Diggers, the abolition of tithes was bound up with the abolition of rents and private property, a notion voiced in a number of polemical pamphlets that undoubtedly put conservative landowners on edge. Ironically, backlash against impropriators in the form of non-payment of tithes left legitimate ministers without a means of living in some parishes. In turn, many wished to change the way ministers made a living, either through government stipends, voluntary parishioner contributions, or by putting ministers to work. Nonetheless, the laws largely stayed the same and the non-payment of tithes continued on unabated. If anti-tithing pamphlets galvanized this behavior, a number of writers sought to counteract it by waging pamphlet warfare of their own.  Phil Palmer.  MCRS Rare Books blog  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This work was first produced as a table of two sheets in 1595, and twice reprinted. This is the first edition in book form.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CLARK, William","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816163057999,"sku":"L3152","price":1500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/20190522_171010.jpg?v=1781794889"},{"product_id":"pius-iv-1","title":"[PIUS IV]","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fine copy of this very scarce edict by Pope Pius IV (1559-65)—a remarkable ephemeral survival—regulating Jewish bankers in Rome. Copies of this document were distributed to be attached to the ‘banchi’ or inside the bankers’ stores, so that all Christians could read them carefully. On the one hand, Pius IV relaxed regulations in Rome, revoking some of the harsher provisions and imposing controls on rents charged to the Jews in the ghetto; on the other hand, unlike his predecessor, he enforced tougher financial regulations for the Jewish ‘banchi’ (Poliakov, ‘Jewish Bankers’, 181, 190). This edict forbad money-lending at an interest greater than 24 per cent instead of the customary 30, demanding interest on interest, reckoning as one month any shorter span than 30 days or selling what was pawned by Christians before the passing of 18 months. Jewish bankers should also ensure that any Christian borrowing money or pawning belongings signed a paper written ‘in the Italian vernacular’—as required of all documents in bankers’ books—specifying his name, address, the amount borrowed or pawned, and the time span for restitution, according to the practice of the Monte di Pietà. First established in Italian cities in the 1460s, the Monti di Pietà were the result of Franciscan preaching against Jewish money-lending and were meant to ‘put an end to the “iniquitous usury” of the Jews by replacing them in the small loans sector’, without interest, in order to assist the poorer population (Toaff, ‘Jews’, 239). The Monti notwithstanding, Jewish bankers continued to operate their business unofficially or through new agreements with the authorities, as well as thanks to the support of wealthier borrowers. This edict also provided regulations on ‘house-keeping’ including the regular cleaning of clothes, to avoid the presence of moth, and the compulsory keeping of cats to chase away mice, so as to prevent pest damage to pawned objects. A very fine copy of this very scarce document for Jewish and economic history in Italy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"[PIUS IV]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816164335951,"sku":"L3199","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_6641-scaled.jpg?v=1781794878"},{"product_id":"scorz-geraldo","title":"SCORZ, Geraldo.","description":"\u003cp\u003eVery good copy of this remarkable ephemeral survival an important witnesses to Spain s perception of Russia during the Siglo de Oro. First issued with a slightly different title in Seville by Juan Gomez de Blas, this work belongs to the popular European genre of  relaciones , two-leaf folio news reports on major international events, here unusually concerned with Muscovy, a monarchy with which Spain still had little contact. This  relacion  reported, on the basis of an official Polish missive, the victory and basic events of the Russian siege of Smolensk in 1632-34, eventually curbed, despite the lesser forces, by W adis aw IV who had just succeeded his late father as King of Poland. The Muscovy soldiers, it recounted, brought about  great havoc  in Smolensk  by capturing people, destroying fields, stealing cattle and other things at hand . Indeed, such early C17  relaciones  were still influenced by half-fictional accounts presenting Muscovy as a place inhabited by barbarians, traitors and faithless people ruled by an absolutist regime ( Muscovy in the Golden Age in Spain , 147). From the early C17, the increasing appearance of Muscovy in  relaciones  as well as chronicles or literature, such as Lope de Vega s  El gran duque de Moscovia  (1619), revealed the Habsburg s interest in the politics of Poland, led by the expansionist W adis aw III, seen as a potential ally for curbing the Turkish and Russian pressure over Asian commercial routes ( De Moscovia a Rusia , 80). A scarce and important document.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SCORZ, Geraldo.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816165351759,"sku":"L2862","price":1250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Untitled-13_42600679-127c-40de-9bda-b7b5eb47a548.jpg?v=1781794874"},{"product_id":"harpsfield-nicholas","title":"HARPSFIELD, Nicholas.","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond edition of this major work of English Reformation history, including the first printed account of Henry VIII s divorce. Nicholas Harpsfield (1519-75) was a Catholic priest, theologian and historian who, after reading canon law at Oxford, became friends with Thomas More and during his brief exile to escape the increasingly rigid reformism, composed the account of Thomas s martyrdom. Upon Queen Mary s accession, he was appointed Archdeacon of Canterbury and involved in trials of hardened Protestants, being singled out for his ruthlessness in John Foxe s  Book of Martyrs . During his later years, imprisoned in the Tower of London, he penned an attack on the validity of Henry VIII s divorce, one against the  Wycliffite heresy , and the  Historia anglicana ecclesiastica , a posthumously published history of all English dioceses from the first century AD, according to the great tradition of Bede and William of Malmesbury. The editor of this edition, Richard Gibbon S.J., included an addition by the Jesuit Edmund Campion, the account of Henry VIII s divorce and the schism its first appearance in print. Widely circulated in ms. for half a century prior to its publication, the  Historia  became a major reference point for exiled English Catholics, who saw in ecclesiastical historiography a solid battleground for debate on the schismatic church. The eminent Cardinal William Allen left a ms. copy to the English Collegium at Douai, which was taken to Rome, whilst the learned Robert Parsons S.J. ranked it as important as Bede (Kewes,  Uses , 110; Birkhead,  Newsletters , 233). A monument of the English Counter-Reformation. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The C18 Italian owner of this copy felt the need to clarify on the flyleaf that  this book was written by a Roman Catholic .\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HARPSFIELD, Nicholas.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816167547215,"sku":"L3245","price":1750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3245-1.jpg?v=1781794864"},{"product_id":"ruscelli-girolamo","title":"RUSCELLI, Girolamo","description":"\u003cp\u003eNewly corrected second edition of the collected letters of Girolamo Ruscelli. The table of contents to each volume illustrates the range of scholars, politicians, authors, military and religious figures Ruscelli had correspondence with. Numerous cardinals, Prince of Carpi Alberto III, the admiral Andrea Doria, Duke of Urbino Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Renaissance author Baldassare Castiglione, the poet Annibale Caro, military leader Pietro Strozzo and Pope Clement VII are included. Ruscelli was a prolific polymath in sixteenth century Italy who published on topics ranging from cartography to alchemy. He lived in a number of cities, eventually settling in Venice where the first edition of Delle Lettere Di Principi was published. Another notable work ascribed to his hand under the pseudonym Alessio Piemontese is  De Secreti Del Alessio Piemontese  which received considerable success and went on to be translated into French, English, German, Latin, Dutch, Spanish, Polish and Danish. These volumes demonstrate the rich social context of Renaissance Venice and Ruscelli himself can be perceived as the epitome of the multi-disciplinary Renaissance man. Scholarship has shown that Ruscelli s other work on Pyrotechnics could have inspired the depictions of fire and explosions common in Titian s paintings (Hills, Paul. Titian s Fire: Pyrotechnics and Representations in Sixteenth-Century Venice, 2007). Ruscelli began collecting these letters in 1562, and Gamba calls these volumes  raccolta pregevolissima.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n More significant is these volumes  provenance. In vol 3 is the engraved bookplate of Edward Gibbon with the recognisable lion and shell family crest. His printed label appears in vol 1. These volumes were sold to Pickering on the 20th December 1934 at Sotheby s important sale of Edward Gibbon s Library. Books from Gibbon s personal collection with this bookplate and name-label can be found in Trinity s Wren Library, confirming the volumes were owned by the author of the famous  History . Gibbon owned an extensive library, of which he wrote in his autobiography  I have gradually formed a numerous and select library, the foundation of my works, and the best comfort of my life, both at home and abroad.  At his house on Bentinck Street in Marylebone a catalogue was made of his library in 1777, with 2000 titles in 3300 volumes listed. Keynes refers to Gibbon s  addiction to books  but underlines that his collection was very much a  working library.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Though Gibbon is best known for his Decline and Fall, he was a prolific writer in a variety of other fields. His Miscellaneous Works are a multi-volume coagulation of Gibbon s essays, commentaries and remarks on subjects ranging from the ancient circumnavigation of Africa to Roman triumphal processions. Printed posthumously by Gibbon s long standing friend John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield, it includes a significant portion of Gibbon s personal correspondence. In this way, Gibbon emulated the practices of Ruscelli himself. From the 1934 Sotheby s sale, a number of books are recorded as being in their original calf binding. These particular volumes appear to have been rebound by Gibbon himself for regular use: Gibbon stated  I am not conscious of having ever bought a book from a motive of ostentation, that every volume, before it was deposited on the shelf, was either read or sufficiently examined. (Keynes, p. 16).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RUSCELLI, Girolamo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57820351562063,"sku":"L3526","price":6500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_9526.jpg?v=1781794793"},{"product_id":"fisher-john-st","title":"FISHER, John St","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of the collected Latin works of St. John Fisher, with translations into Latin of his English sermons. John Fisher (1469 1535), appointed bishop of Rochester by Henry VII, was one of the most distinguished churchmen and humanists of the early sixteenth century and Reformation. A friend of Erasmus s, he introduced the study of Greek and Hebrew to the University of Cambridge, of which he was Chancellor, and was beheaded by Henry VIII for his opposition to the Act of Supremacy. He was a notable preacher and author of the first sermon sequence to be printed in English. Fisher s Latin theological and controversial writings were more widely read on the European continent, in their day, than the predominantly English religious controversial writings of St. Thomas More and were a key influence on the Catholic Counter-Reformation. According to Fr. Surtz, St. John Fisher s writings formed an important bridge between the Church Fathers, the Scholastics, and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. As Chancellor of Cambridge University, Fisher firmly established in English Universities the  new learning  of the classics, the Scriptures, and the Early Christian Writers in their original languages. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Fisher was brought to trial at Westminster (17th of June 1535) on the charge that he did  openly declare in English that the king, our sovereign lord, is not supreme head on earth of the Church of England,  and was condemned to a traitor's death at Tyburn, a sentence afterwards changed. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 22nd of June 1535, after saying the Te Deum and the psalm In te Domine speravi. His body was buried first at All Hallows, Barking, and then removed to St. Peter's ad vincula in the Tower, where it lies beside that of Sir Thomas More. His head was exposed on London Bridge and then thrown into the river. On the 9th of December 1886 he was beatified by Pope Leo XIII. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  This contains: 1.  The Assertio septem Sacramentorum  of Henry VIII against Luther, which finds a place in the collection as being 'Roffensis tamen hortatu et studio edita.' 2. Fisher's 'Defence' of the 'Assertio,' 1523. 3. His treatise in reply to Luther,  De Babylonica Captivitate,  1523. 4. His 'Confutatio Assertionis Lutheran‚àö¬∂,' first printed at Antwerp, 1523. 5. 'De Eucharistia contra Joan. ‚âà√≠colampadium libri quinque,' first printed 1527. 6. 'Sacri Sacerdotii Defensio contra Lutherum.' 7. 'Convulsio calumniarum Vlrichi Veleni Minhoniensis, quibus Petrum nunquam Rom‚àö¬∂ fuisse cauillatus est,' 1525. 8. 'Concio Londini habita vernacul√®, quando Lutheri scripta public√® igni tradebantur,' translated by Richard Pace into Latin, 1521. 9. 'De unica Magdalena libri tres,' 1519. Also the following, which the editor states are printed for the first time : 10. 'Commentarii in vii. Psalmos p‚âà√¨nitentiales, interprete Joanne Fen ‚àö‚Ć monte acuto.' 11. Two sermons : (a) 'De Passione Domini,' (b) 'De Justitia Pharis‚àö¬∂orum,' 12. 'Methodus perveniendi ad summam Christian‚àö¬∂ religionis perfectionem,' 13. 'Epistola ad Hermannum L‚àö¬∂tmatium Goudanum de Charitate Christiana.' At the end (whether printed before or not does not appear) are 14. 'De Necessitate Orandi.' 15. 'Psalmi vel precationes.   DNB.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"FISHER, John St","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57820353462607,"sku":"L2955","price":2450.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2955-2.jpg?v=1781793815"},{"product_id":"machiavelli-niccolo_","title":"MACHIAVELLI, Niccolo_.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition, a handsome copy, of Machiavelli’s discourses in English translated by Edward Dacres, dedicated by him to James Duke of Lenox. “Hitherto political speculation had tended to be a rhetorical exercise based on the implicit assumption of Church or Empire. Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind — it should be remembered that a parallel work to ‘The Prince’ was his historical essay on the first ten books of Livy. Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery” PMM 63.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Discourses on Livy is a major work of political history and philosophy written circa 1517, published posthumously with papal privilege in 1531.The subject is ostensibly the first ten books of Livy’s Ab urbe condita which relate the expansion of Rome through to the end of the Third Samnite War in 293 BCE. Machiavelli saw history in general as a way to learn useful lessons from the past for the present, and also as a type of analysis which could be built upon, as long as each generation did not forget the works of the past.Machiavelli frequently describes Romans and other ancient peoples as superior models for his contemporaries.  The Discourses in this first English translation had a very great impact in England in the following years particularly on the Levellers. The classic Levellers pamphlet the ‘Vox Plebis’ quoted, almost verbatim, many passages from Dacres’ translation of the Discourses. “Machiavelli’s works were available to readers in 16th century England in Latin, Italian, and French editions, and to a lesser extent in manuscript translations in English. But the prospective audience was considerably widened by Edward Dacres printed English translation of the discourses (1636) and the Prince (1640). Dacres prefaces to his translation implies that Machiavelli could be a valuable guide to those desiring to know their enemy and fight fire with fire. Thus, the discourses recommended to those who might be called to steer the ship of state through troubled waters. .. Within a few years, during the English Civil War, Machiavelli was being taken to heart but some of the most zealous Protestant fundamentalists in England; the levellers, a political movement that combined the more radical regiments in Oliver Cromwell’s army of Christian warriors with support from some of the grittier neighbourhoods around London” J. S. Maloy. ‘The first Machiavellian Moment in America.’. “Machiavelli .. had no liking for despotism, and considered a combination of popular and monarchical government best. No ruler was safe without the favor of his people. The most stable states are those ruled by princes checked by constitutional limitations… His ideal government was the old Roman republic, and he constantly harked back to it in the Discourses… It is hardly disputable that no man previous to Karl Marx has had as revolutionary an impact on political thought as Machiavelli” (Downs, 12).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA very good copy of this important work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MACHIAVELLI, Niccolo_.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859627385167,"sku":"L2256","price":5250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Untitled-21_3e6d2529-1846-4380-86b1-f4b1201331dc.jpg?v=1781793804"},{"product_id":"contarini-gasparo-1","title":"CONTARINI, Gasparo.","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of the first French translation by Jean Charrier of Contarini‚Äôs important treatise on political theory, government and the philosophy of statecraft. The first edition was published in Latin in 1543 shortly followed by a translation into Italian. A most influential translation was made into English in 1599. Jean Charrier also published a translation of Machiavelli‚Äôs ‚ÄòArt of War‚Äô the same year. A Venetian patrician educated at Padua, Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) was ambassador for Charles V and later appointed Cardinal by Pope Paul III. Among the numerous personalities he met whilst accompanying the Emperor around Europe was Thomas More. It is More‚Äôs ‚ÄòUtopia‚Äô, first published in 1516, which may have inspired ‚ÄòDella Repubblica et magistrati di Venetia‚Äô, composed in the 1520s-1530s. Contarini‚Äôs influential work is a thorough description of the government of Venice celebrating the perfection of its Republican institutions (the Doge, Senate, tribunals and magistracies) in the age of absolute monarchies, but also suggesting changes to improve them. Its readers should ‚Äòmarvel‚Äô at the location, origins and functioning of Venice, ‚Äòthe common market of the world‚Äô, where political ideal and reality meet to create an exemplary State run by the patriciate\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e‚ÄúContarini is best remembered for his reflections on the government of Venice that he penned, and circulated among his friends, between 1522 and 1525 and then again between 1533 and 1534. These reflections were posthumously published .. in Paris in 1543. .. In drafting De Magistratibus et Republica Venetorum, Contarini drew on both the history of Venice and his own experience to provide a host of normative, historic, and contemporary details that would educate Venetians and foreigners alike about the machinery of Venice‚Äôs government. The volume was not concerned with the political behaviour of Venetians, but with a formal institutions by which political aims were realised. The reflections are thus as much of a description of the institutions of governance as they are a prescription for how those institutions ought to work to meet expectations. In this way, De magistratibus contributed to a particular view in the 16th century that has come to be known by modern historians as the ‚Äòmyth of Venice‚Äô, celebrating the Republic‚Äôs well-being and accomplishments and presenting his aspirations and self image as reality.‚Äù Filippo Sabetti. ‚ÄòGasparo Contarini‚Äô\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e‚ÄúThe Commonwealth and Government of Venice played a pivotal role in conveying the myth of 16th-century Venice to an English audience. First written in Latin by Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, it was translated into English in 1599 by Lewis Lewkenor.‚Äù BL. Shakespeare is most likely to have read this work and its influence is felt in two of his major works ‚ÄòThe Merchant of Venice and ‚ÄòOthello‚Äô\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CONTARINI, Gasparo.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859632464207,"sku":"L3370","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Untitled-16_e1aae237-ae02-4746-ae01-f0363a65dd04.jpg?v=1781793792"},{"product_id":"strada-famiano","title":"STRADA, Famiano.","description":"\u003cp\u003eHandsomely bound two volumes of Famiano Strada’s (1572-1649) account of the Dutch Revolt from Spain. The vols are exceptional for their many exquisite full page engravings, especially the Leo Belgicus in Vol II, where the Low Countries are depicted in the form of a lion. This is based on the original 1583 Eytzinger form with the lion standing facing right with a paw raised and holding a shield. The lion features heavily on the coats of arms of both Netherlands and Belgium and the depiction was a powerful byword for patriotism during the war in the Low Countries.  The portraits are excellent likenesses of important figures from both sides.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFamiano Strada was a Jesuit historian and moralist who taught at the Collegio Romano of the Jesuits in Rome. This work was commissioned by Ranuccio I Farnese in 1595 and was written with the assistance of Alexander Farnese (1545-1592). It was first published in 1632 and translated into Dutch in 1646. The book evocatively describes the scents and colours of the battle between the Spanish troops led by the Duke of Parma and the Dutch troops led by the Staten-Generaal van Willem van Oranje. In 1579 the northern provinces had established their independence as the United Provinces of the Netherlands, leaving the south under Catholic control as the Spanish Netherlands; at the time this work was first published the war with Spain was still continuing. It was only in the year this edition was produced, 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years War, that Spain recognised Dutch independence. The work was criticised by the Dutch for its pro-Spanish stance. Strada defended himself by stating that the supporters of Orange did not fight for religious conviction but merely defended the material interests of the secular nobles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese volumes were handsomely bound for Gilbert Watts. Born in Yorkshire, the son of Richard Watts of Barnes Hall, Watts the younger attended Lincoln College, Oxford before becoming Rector of Willingdale Doe, Essex, in 1621. He produced an English translation of Bacon’s De augmentis scientiarum in 1640 entitled ‘Of the advancement and proficiencie of learning’ (STC 1167). Watts bequethead his library to Lincoln College – “soe many bookes as cost mee threescore pounds”, to be selected by Bodley’s librarian Thomas Barlow. The armorial binding on these volumes is typical of his collection, which were often bound in dark brown calf with gilt edges.\u003c\/p\u003e  \n\n\u003cp\u003eEdwin Wilkins Field (1804-1871) was a prominent English lawyer and painter who was a passionate advocate for chancery reform. Field also worked to establish artistic copyright through the Fine Arts Copyright Act of 1862. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery and a statue of him stands in the Royal Courts of Justice.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"STRADA, Famiano.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859633611087,"sku":"L3597b","price":2500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_9629.jpg?v=1781793787"},{"product_id":"toussain-daniel","title":"TOUSSAIN, Daniel.","description":"  Rare first edition of this English translation of Daniel Toussain s,  L exercice de l ‚àö¬¢me fidele, assavoir prieres et meditations pour se consoler en toutes sortes d afflictions. . Newton s library of nearly 2000 volumes remained virtually intact until 1920, when more than half the volumes were sold. John Harrison was therefore obliged to use three manuscripts sources to to reconstruct the library of Newton in his modern recension  The library of Isaac Newton  1978, which contains a catalogue of Newton s books. These were firstly, the inventory of Newton s belongings made at his death, secondly a list made by Huggins, established a few months after his death (BL ms. Add. 25, 424), and a catalogue, dating from 1766-1767 made by Musgrave (Trinity College no. 17.36.) This work does not feature on the list made by Harrison. However a curious feature is that several pages have their corners folded, either up or down, in order to point to passages of the text, which is consistent with Newton s own particular usage;  Evidence of Newton s use is provided by annotations or dog-earing (which are described in some detail wherever they occur), by references or citations in the manuscripts, and\/or by subsequent research which has otherwise demonstrated or suggested his use of a particular source. While it is possible that some dog-earing was the work of subsequent owners, it is evident from the fact that most instances of it point quite precisely to passages of demonstrable importance to Newton that the vast majority is his own. He used dog-ears not merely to mark pages but to align the page corners with specific passages of interest (hence the fact that pages may have their corners turned down, up, or both): see Harrison, 25-7 for a more detailed account.  Cambridge, The Newton Project,  About Newton s Library.  It could be therefore that the ms  Newton  is an independent early record or attribution of a very distinguished provenance.  \r  This work of Protestant piety is remarkable for containing an important account of the Reformed church at Orleans, where Toussain (or Toussaint) was a Pasteur, and particularly of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre that occurred there.  We also possess an exceptionally evocative overview of the fate of its reformed Church in the prefaces to two devotional writings written later in the century by its minister from 1562 to 1572, Daniel Toussaint. In the first years of the Reformation, Toussaint recalled, God has seem to bless his faithful in the city. During the first Civil War, just as Orleans was besieged by the Catholics and threatened with capture and sack, peace was negotiated.. But tribulations rained down after the Royal troops came in 1568. Acts of violence against the Protestants multiplied. It took a year for them to re-establish the church following the peace of Saint-Germain, during which time they  were daily threatened, beaten robbed and .. let and hindered .. to enjoy the greatest part of their goods.  The local reenactment of the Saint Bartholomew s massacre of 1572 was the final blow. The  greatest part of the church was slaughtered and many others fell away from the faith, so  that it seemesth, there is no trace or path of a Church left, or that ever there had been anie reformation  \u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e   Thomas Brady  A Handbook of European History 1400-1600:     \u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"TOUSSAIN, Daniel.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859634757967,"sku":"L3488","price":7500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3488-1.jpg?v=1781793782"},{"product_id":"sauermann-georg-with-hierocles-of-alexandria","title":"SAUERMANN, Georg [with] HIEROCLES OF ALEXANDRIA","description":"\u003cp\u003eInteresting combination of works, the first by the German jurist Georg Sauermann (1497-1527). Sauermann was born in Breslau and studied jurisprudence at Wittenerg, Leipzig and Bologna. He became rector of the University of Bologna in 1513, later moving to Rome and Spain. Upon his return to Rome he took up office as imperial procurator at the Curia but died shortly after of plague. In 1518 he published a manifesto  Maximilian an die F√ºrsten und V√∂ller Italiens , in 1519 a panegyric addressed to Karl and Ferdinand on the death of Maximilian I, and in 1524 this speech to the German princes on religion and unity. The work sought to guide princes not only in military matters but also in diplomacy, eloquence, piety and dignity. It emphasizes the legacy of one s forefather s and follows a common narrative of moral decline, which he is attempting to halt with the publication of this guide. It uses the examples of Roman emperors like Hadrian and Julius Caesar in order to demonstrate good leadership practices. Sauermann became acquainted with Leo X, Adrian VI and Clemens VII and was a personal friend of the Spanish Renaissance humanist Joan Lluis Vives. In recognition of his talents as a Latinist, Clemens granted him Roman citizenship. Both Paulus Jovius and Pierius Valerianus immortalised him in their writings. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The second work is the only extant publication by Hierocles of Alexandria, the Neoplatonist Roman author. It contains a commentary on the  golden verses  of Pythagoras, a collection of moral exhortations. Hierocles studied under the celebrated Neoplatonist Plutarch at Athens, and this work is important for preserving some of the lost writings of Pythagoras. This work was widely published in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, with numerous translations in European languages. Hierocles argued against astrological fatalism on the basis that it is supported by an irrational necessity rather than the divine, rational Providence of God. For the same reason, he opposed theurgic and magic practices as he perceived then as attempts to supersede the divine providential order. Although he never mentions Christianity in his surviving works, his writings have been taken as an attempt at reconciliation between Greek religious traditions and the Christian beliefs he may have encountered during his time living in Constantinople. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Ludovico Vecentino degli Arrighi (c. 1475-1527) was a papal scribe and renowned type designer who published the influential pamphlet on handwriting, La Operina, in 1522. This work was published in the year that Arrighi first turned to printing and designing his own Italic typefaces.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SAUERMANN, Georg [with] HIEROCLES OF ALEXANDRIA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859635151183,"sku":"L3640","price":5750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_4183-copy-2.jpg?v=1781793781"},{"product_id":"magna-carta-1","title":"[MAGNA CARTA].","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of the  Secunda Pars Veterum Stautorum , a collection of early statutes, often found with a first part, the Magna Carta, though issued and saleable and often reprinted separately. It contains many important early statutes such as the  Statuta Valliae , which provided the constitutional basis for the government of the Principality of Wales from 1284, superseded only three years after this printing in 1535 when Henry VIII made Wales unequivocally part of the  realm of England . \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  The small edition of the  Antiqua Statuta , first printed by Pynson in 1508, and afterwards frequently reprinted, contains Magna Charta, Charta de Foresta, the Statues of Merton, Marlbridge, Westminster, 1 and 2, and other statutes previous to 1 Edw. III. in Latin and French respectively. These are the earliest printed copies now know of those statutes.   In 1531 Berthelet printed an edition of the  Antiqua Statuta , similar to the editions by Pynson, with some additions. In 1532 Berthelet also printed a collection of the statutes previous to 1 Edw. III. not included in the  Antiqua Statuta . This collection he intituled  Secunda Pars Veterum Statutorum , and it is always so distinguished. It was frequently reprinted. The statutes contained in it are in French and Latin respectively. Neither in the  Antiqua Statuta  or in the  Secunda Pars Veterum Statutorum , were the contents arranged with any chronological accuracy. In the Antiqua Statuta the Two Charters, and the Statutes of Merton, and Marlbridge, and Westminster 1 and 2, are placed first, and the other matters follow in a very confused manner. No better order is preserved in the  Secunda Pars . Charles Purton Cooper  An Account of the Most Important Public Records of Great Britain.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The binding is an interesting and extremely rare survival; the block is wrapped in an early printed leaf which it seems from the same work as the leaf used for the stubs within the book, suggesting that the leaf was originally intended for use in the binding as pastedowns. The Vellum wallet cover has cuts in place for the binding cords also suggesting that the book was being prepared for a binding that was never completed. It has remained in such an unfinished state probably since the sixteenth century. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n An exceptionally rare and important first edition of these early statutes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"[MAGNA CARTA].","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859635380559,"sku":"L3487","price":5950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3487-3.jpg?v=1781793781"},{"product_id":"luther-martin-4","title":"LUTHER, Martin.","description":"\u003cp\u003eHandsome copy of the second edition of this collection of Luther s writings, in a beautiful contemporary German binding. The elegant blind tooled palmettes and this religious roll depicting figures of the Old Testament were both popular decorative motifs in the mid. 16th century (see EBDB 128997b and 100083n), and often used combined. Interestingly, similar examples appear on the binding of another volume of Luther works, produced in Leipzig by Thomas Stelbogen (Henry Davis Gift 335). The upper cover bears the ownership stamp of Frau Margarethe von Hassenstein (c. 1514-1555), from the house of the Burgraves of Meissen (Saxony). Born Magarethe von Plauen, she married the Bohemian politician Bohuslav Felix von Hassenstein and Lobkowitz (1517-1583). An educated woman and assiduous Lutheran, her name appears frequently in the writings of Johannes Mathesius (1504-1565). Mathesius was a German minister and Lutheran reformer who had the privilege to assist, as a guest in Luther s home, to a series of his discourses, which he then published in the famous work  Table talk . \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A professor of theology and monk, Luther (1483-1546) is the initiator of the protestant Reformation. This collection contains a multitude of his writings, the majority of them being sermons. Among the most noteworthy, is Luther s famous commentary on chapters 5, 6 and 7 of the Gospel of Matthew: in his discussion, he strongly criticised the Catholic view and wrote: \"there have fallen upon this [fifth] chapter the vulgar hogs and asses, jurists and sophists, the right hand of the pope and his Mamelukes.\" Another interesting chapter is concerned with the text of the  Donation of Constantine    the Roman imperial decree by which Constantine the Great supposedly entitled the pope extensive temporal privileges   translated and commented on by Luther. Although this Latin document was declared a fake by Lorenzo Valla in 1440, the Church continued to defend its authenticity for centuries. After reading Valla s treatise in 1520, Luther frequently mentioned this as an example to condemn the corruption and greed of the Catholic Church. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This volume includes an important preface by the theologian Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). A friend and collaborator of Luther, he wrote a fundamental systematic theology based on the reformer s ideas. The editor, Georg R√∂rer (1492-1557), is one of Luther s most reliable reporters. The volume also features the remarkable contributions of Caspar Creuziger (1504-1548), a humanist and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg who wrote an important biography of Luther and assisted him in revising the German Bible.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LUTHER, Martin.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859638919503,"sku":"L3566","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_8950.jpg?v=1781793773"},{"product_id":"krakow","title":"KRAKÒW","description":"\u003cp\u003eStunning illuminated manuscript granting the citizenship of Krak√≥w to Ioannis Stephanus Pusterla Venetus, i.e. the Italian Giovanni Stefano Pusterla Veneto. The text of the diploma states that he is ‚Äònobilis ac famatus‚Äô, meaning noble and famous, and that he provided sufficient evidence of his genealogy. The Pusterla family is an ancient and noble family of Milanese origin, related to the powerful Visconti: among its most notable members are four archbishops of Milan, several politicians, military leaders and benefactors. In the 13th century, the family obtained from Emperor Otto IV the right to have a black Imperial Eagle on their coat of arms, depicted in beautiful detail on this document. Giovanni Stefano, however, is ‚ÄòVenetus‚Äô, meaning that he comes from the Veneto region in the north-east of Italy. The Italian historian Giambattista Pagliarino (1415-1506) records branches of the Pusterla family in Vicenza, a city not far from Venice, at least from the 14th century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to the grant, Giovanni Stefano is now entitled to ‚Äúuse, enjoy and benefit from‚Äù all the ‚Äúlaws, privileges, freedoms, prerogatives and immunities‚Äù of the citizens of Krak√≥w, and that he also must preserve and respect them. Most interestingly, he is officially allowed to ‚Äútrade goods freely and without customs duties‚Äù. In the 17th century, several members of the noble families of Vicenza were merchants. The ‚ÄòBianchi-Pusterla Company‚Äô, led by Ludovico Bianchi and Carlo Pusterla, was one of the biggest Venetian companies based in Krak√≥w. Giovanni Stefano was Carlo‚Äôs brother, and we know from various sources that he continued to trade in Poland even after his brother‚Äôs company failed in 1629. The text is signed by Ioannes Rorayski, a ‚Äòsecretarius‚Äô (secretary) of Krak√≥w whose name is attested in other contemporary documents issued by the city (Piekosinski).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe illumination of diplomas, certificates and official documents was optional, and usually requested by wealthy persons as a way to emphasize the value of the document. This example has small holes on the upper edge, suggesting that it was displayed on a wall for everyone to see. Illuminated citizenship diplomas are very rare compared to degree certificates and official decrees, and this one was decorated by a skilled illustrator. His name appears, signed in a small and neat hand, in the middle of the calligraphic initial: Daniel Rode. In this period, zoomorphic and floral elements began to appear ‚Äì as here, where grapes, foliage, different species of birds, dogs hunting, fishes, goats, deers, snails and other small animals are rendered with fresh vividness. These realistic elements interact with charming human characters (including prisoners, a knight, a philosopher and a bagpipe player), symbolic objects and fanciful mythological creatures such as chimeras and dragons.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis document is not only an outstanding work of art, but also an extremely interesting witness of the political and commercial relations between Italy and Poland in the 17th century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"KRAKƒW","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859639673167,"sku":"L3652","price":9500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/1_25474eac-386b-4a5c-818d-44f37373ab79.jpg?v=1781793772"},{"product_id":"le-fevre-d-etaples-2","title":"LE FEVRE D ETAPLES.","description":"\u003cp\u003eVery rare first separately published edition of Lef√®vre d'Etaples important and influential introduction to the Politics of Aristotle with the Oeconomicus of Xenophon, translated by Raphael Maffeius and edited by Volgatius Pratensis, published by Henri Estienne for the University of Paris. The volume was probably intended to complement Henri Estienne s edition of the Politics published in 1506. It is extremely rare; worldcat locates only copies of the second Estienne printing of 1512 and no copies have ever appeared for sale according to ABPC. \u003cbr\u003e\n Lef√®vre d Etaple s introduction to the Politics of Aristotle was the most influential and important of the period in France and firmly established Aristotelian Humanism at the heart of the French curriculum. The Oeconomicus by Xenophon, here in the second edition of Maffei s translation (first published Rome 1506), is a Socratic dialogue principally about household management and agriculture. It is one of the earliest works on economics and a significant source for the social and intellectual history of classic Athens. Beyond the emphasis on household economics, the dialogue treats such topics as the qualities and relationships of men and women, rural vs. urban life, slavery, religion, and education. Scholars lean towards a late date in Xenophon's life for the composition of the Oeconomicus, perhaps after 362 BC. Cicero translated the Oeconomicus into Latin. The opening dialogue is between Socrates and Critoboulus, the son of Crito, in which Socrates discusses the meaning of wealth and identifies it with usefulness and well-being, not merely possessions. He links moderation and hard work to success in household management. When Critoboulus asks about the practices involved in household management, Socrates pleads ignorance on the subject but relates what he heard of it from an Athenian gentleman-farmer named Ischomachus. In the discussion related by Socrates, Ischomachus describes the methods he used to educate his wife in housekeeping, their practices in ruling and training slaves, and the technology involved in farming. A very good copy of a most uncommon work, one of the earliest printed by Henri Estienne.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LE FEVRE D ETAPLES.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859646652751,"sku":"L3866","price":3750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3866-3.jpg?v=1781793733"},{"product_id":"agricola-johannes","title":"AGRICOLA, Johannes.","description":"\u003cp\u003e.Carefully used copies, charmingly bound and extensively annotated, of the first and second part of this important early collection of German proverbs    one of the major literary documents of the Reformation  (Gilman, p.78). The first part   here in one of 5 first editions published in 1529 (priority not established)   comprises 300 proverbs; the second work, first published here, has another 450. In these two works, Johannes Agricola (1494-1566), a German Protestant Reformer acquainted with Luther, combined the medieval tradition of vernacular proverbs with Erasmus s humanist Latin  Adagia . At the same time, he  polemized  the content and gave it a different form   using the genre of the moralizing exemplum - so as to transmit Reformed ideas (Gilman, p.78). Indeed, each numbered proverb, accompanied by a Latin or Greek version, is followed by a short explanation in German, presented as a traditional harmless commentary with moral intent, but actually imbued with Reformation and nationalistic polemics, including biographical details of the early Reformers and observations on contemporary German economics and politics.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n .The extensive annotations in this copy provide stellar evidence of ways in which contemporary Reformed readers engaged with Agricola. E.g., the annotator glossed  This is what false tongues and teachers have done  with  Thomas M√ºntzer , an early Reformer who eventually rejected Luther s ideas. He highlighted a passage on Luther s difficult position in 1518, glossing it with a reference to his work (1520) on the  Captivitas Baylonica  of the Roman Church. Other episodes from Luther s career are glossed with a date and  M L . He was interested in Agricola s account of the fortunes and activities of the merchant Jakob Fugger,  who pushed trade so hard like nobody in living memory , and who obtained with a bribe a monopoly over Portuguese spices (glossed with  Monopolia p[ro]hibita  by our annotator). Clearly interested in trade, he glossed with  Emporia Germanica  a passage on commercial centres, i.e., Antwerp, Frankfurt and Leipzig. He also marked references to sources, e.g., Erasmus and Huss, and added verse in German from his own personal knowledge. The slightly later annotators were more interested in the proverbs per se.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"AGRICOLA, Johannes.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859656253775,"sku":"L3949","price":5950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3949-6.jpg?v=1781793711"},{"product_id":"boethius-2","title":"BOETHIUS.","description":"\u003cp\u003e.A very good, well-margined copy, in a charming C18 English binding, of this exquisitely printed incunabular edition of Boethius s  De consolatione philosophiae , including the famous commentary assigned to Thomas Aquinas, but probably written by the Oxford Dominican Thomas Waleys (1287?-1350?). With its extensive reader s annotations spanning nearly a century, this copy provides a remarkable snapshot of Renaissance Boethian scholarship. Rebound in the late C18, it has surprisingly retained generous outer margins and the odd untrimmed outer edge. .  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n .One of the most influential early Christian philosophers, Boethius (477-524AD) was a Roman politician in the service of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths. He probably studied in Athens where he became fluent in Greek and acquainted with important Hellenic philosophers. Imprisoned by Theodoric for high treason, he famously wrote  De Consolatione philosophiae  in 523-24, eventually leading to his execution. This milestone of Western philosophy reflects on the negative turn of events in Boethius s hitherto very successful career. In a fictional dialogue, Lady Philosophy consoles him, as they discuss the evanescent nature of worldly fame and riches, virtue, the ills of fortune, human folly, passion, hatred, free will, justice and predestination, with Boethius s Christianity heavily tempered by Hellenism. Waleys s commentary was one of the most successful and most reprinted. Boethius s work was taught at grammar schools for its elegant Latin and educational content, and lectured on at universities for its philosophical value. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n .The late C15 annotator provided, as often required of students, interlinear paraphrases for sections of Books I-III   paraphrase being  an aspect of pedagogy handed down from Classical Antiquity, which spans grammatical and rhetorical construction  (Love, p.129).  He provided synonyms of most words or phrases, seeking to follow the original meaning whilst slightly altering the lines, as well as clarifications (e.g.,  philosophi  for  Anaxagore ). He also added the odd marginal note, e.g., a reference to Cicero. .The late C16 scholarly annotator, well-acquainted with Greek, cross-referenced interpretations from Nicolaus Crescius s 1513 edition, with one instance of criticism of the latter attributions, Johannes Murmellius\/Agricola s commentary ([1514]; Basle, 1570) and the Lyon edition of 1581. (In his first reference to them on the t-p he also specified the book format.) Among his interests were Boethius s prosody, on which he noted the meaning of the metre  Alcmanium  from Murmellius, as well as Platonic, Epicurean and Stoic doctrines. He also quoted from Ovid, Boethius s original Greek, and Ficinus. He crossed-out a repetition of two words   probably the compositor s oversight   and a couple wrongly-spelled or misread.   \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n .Rev. Philip van Swinden was appointed preacher at the Dutch Chapel in St James s by the Bishop of London, in 1773. Reginald Cholmondeley (1826-96) inherited Condover Hall, Shropshire, in the 1860s; among his guests in the 1870s was Mark Twain.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOETHIUS.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859656319311,"sku":"L3719","price":17500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3719-1.jpg?v=1781793710"},{"product_id":"philip-ii-of-spain","title":"PHILIP II OF SPAIN.","description":"\u003cp\u003ePhilip II of Spain (also known as Philip  the prudent ) reigned from 1556 to 1598, also serving as .jure uxoris ruler of England from his marriage to Mary Tudor in 1554, until her death in November 1558 a few weeks after this royal grant of privileges was issued. He was the son of Emperor Charles V, completed the building the palace of El Escorial and his reign saw the conquest of the Incas and the Philippines, bringing territories in every continent then known to Europeans under his direct control and ushering in the Spanish  Golden Age  of power and influence. The rule of Ferdinand and Isabella and Charles V are often seen as the very heights of European empire building in the Renaissance, but Philip II pushed this further, holding back the Ottoman advances into Eastern Europe and the Italian coastline, while also extending Spain s hold over the Americas and annexing Portugal and thus their wide ranging overseas colonies and maritime empire. In fact, the presence of the stylised sun and moon, and inscription  sol lucet  in his armorial device in the right-hand of the bas-de-page of the frontispiece here alludes to the observation of his contemporaries, that only he could truly say  sol mihi semper lucet  ( the sun always shines on me ). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Unlike the common Spanish royal grants of arms, this is a grant of extensive royal privileges including autonomous legal and juridical authority (.Carta de Privilegio Real), for the town of Heute, Castile-la-Mancha, and its inhabitants. Its style of decoration and scribal achievements can be closely located to the royal scribes and illuminators of the Castilian capital of Valladolid   Philip II s birthplace and the main site of his court. Huete   sited to the south-west of Madrid, as part of a ring of settlements that surround that city, including the sixteenth-century royal winter palace of Aranjuez   was well known to Philip II, and within his circle of immediate influence. An attractive and interesting ms. from the centre of Spanish royal power at its highest grandeur.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PHILIP II OF SPAIN.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859657105743,"sku":"L3864","price":4750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3864-2-1.jpg?v=1781793708"},{"product_id":"falletti-gerolamo","title":"FALLETTI, Gerolamo.","description":"\u003cp\u003e.An attractive, well-margined copy of the first Aldine edition of this interesting collection of Neo-Latin poems, including one on the wars of Charles V in the Low Countries. Gerolamo Falletti (d.1564) studied at Louvain and Ferrara, earning the patronage of Ercole II and Alfonso II d Este. He was later a diplomat for the Serenissima, one of his duties being a visit to Poland after the death of Sigismund I. Dedicated to Ercole II,  De Bello Sicambrico  is a poetic account in 4 books of the siege of Guelders by Charles V in 1542-3. Imbued with humanistic classicism and Virgilian influences, the poem is based on Falletti s first-hand account of the Emperor s attacks against Antwerp and other cities, he took part in the defence of Louvain whilst a student there. The remainder of the collection includes dozens of poems addressed to major personalities of the time, especially Venetian, whom Falletti knew, and concerning specific occasions. For instance, the author Bartolomeo Ricci (who published  De imitatione  with Manutius), Francesco Venier (for whom he provides an obituary), Olimpia Colonna (wife to the Venetian aristocrat Enea Martinengo), and members of the Este family.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n .The near contemporary annotator glossed 5 poems in Books VI and VII, and corrected Latin typos throughout. The first annotated poem concerns probably Hippolitus Riminaldus, a Ferrara jurist; the following three, the Flemish poet Nicolaus Grudius, and the fifth, Alfonso d Este. The annotator clarified the classical references in the text (to the Argonauts, Orpheus, etc.), as well as rhetorical techniques employed by Falletti (e.g.,  comparatio ,  hortatio ,  prosopopeia ).  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n .This copy was in the library of the famous British archaeologist and bibliophile Thomas Ashby (1874-1931), also the first student and honorary librarian of the British School in Rome.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"FALLETTI, Gerolamo.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859657400655,"sku":"L3770","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L3770-3.jpg?v=1781793707"},{"product_id":"chauncy-maurice-1","title":"CHAUNCY, Maurice.","description":"\u003cp\u003eA very good, clean copy of the first edition of this most interesting work on the hardships of Carthusians in Protestant England, edited and much rewritten by Simon Weisser. Maurice Chauncy (1509-81) was himself an English Carthusian. Having been spared martyrdom, unlike other monks from the London Charterhouse, by accepting the Oath of Supremacy after the Anglican Schism, he fled to a monastery in Bruges. His guilt for this weakness urged him to write (a few of his works were first published only in the 1600s), including ‘Innocentia’, on the lives, customs and holy deaths (in 1535) of 18 Carthusian martyrs he knew, under Henry VIII. Dedicated to Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, ‘Innocentia’ is graced by a gory engraved title border representing the tortures, imprisonments and executions at Tyburn of the English martyrs. The 15 chapters are concerned with the history and organisation of the Carthusian order, the life of the Carthusians in London (as witnessed by Chauncy), their observance and discipline, the prodigies which happened before martyrdom, the Anglican schism and its consequences in London, as well as the deceptions, patience and visions surrounding their martyrdom. The handsome engraved copperplate shows the Irish Carthusian William Tynzbi, renowned for his visions of heaven and hell, surrounded by demons in the shape of monsters.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CHAUNCY, Maurice.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57859658514767,"sku":"L4025","price":1750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L4025-2.jpg?v=1781793706"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/collections\/Screenshot_2026-06-20_at_12.53.29_PM.png?v=1781958168","url":"https:\/\/www.sokol.co.uk\/collections\/politics-statesmanship.oembed","provider":"Sokol Books Ltd","version":"1.0","type":"link"}