[Rarebooks] fa: PAOLO SARPI - HISTOIRE DU CONCILE DE TRENTE (COUNCIL OF TRENT) - Two 4to vols. 1736

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 22. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/yabuzvzd

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Paolo Sarpi; Pierre-Francois le Courayer (trans.): Histoire du Concile de Trente, ecrite en Italien par Fra-Paolo Sarpi, de l’Ordre des Servites; et traduit de nouveau en Francois. Amsterdam: J. Wetstein et G. Smith, 1736. First(?) or early edition thus. Two volumes, 4to (26 cm), untrimmed in early/period speckled heavy card boards, gilt-lettered spine labels; [14], lxxv, [1], 696 pp.; [4], 848 pp.; half-title in vol. II; vol. I with engraved portrait frontispiece by Vertue, folding engraved plate, engraved vignette, both vols. with engraved title-page vignettes, woodcut decorations and initials.

Sarpi’s influential and controversial history of the Council of Trent, first published in 1619 and here translated into French by Pierre-François le Courayer (1681-1776), a religious exile from France living in England who was granted a doctorate of theology by Oxford University and who dedicated the work to Queen Caroline, the wife of George II. Le Courayer’s translation first appeared in 1736 in two separate editions, one in two folio volumes with a London imprint and this quarto Amsterdam edition. Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623) was a Venetian historian, prelate, scientist, lawyer, statesman and controversialist, a friend and patron of Galileo and a correspondent of Francis Bacon and William Harvey. His writings, as here, were often highly critical of the Catholic Church and the papal curia in particular. Described by some historians as a “crypto-protestant,” his writings influenced Thomas Hobbes and Edward Gibbon, among others, and Milton called him “the great unmasker.”

Scuffs and bumping to the boards, spines with wear, creases and chipping; bindings tender but secure; inkstamps (Studiehuis Minderbroeders Nijmegen) to title-pages and in the margins of a few text leaves, no other library markings; occasional modest toning to the contents, untrimmed edges of the text blocks a bit browned and bumped at the corners, occasional small light spots and touches of soiling, else quite clean.