Historiarum sui temporis libri decem. Pars prima. [all published].

£1,250 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

The uncommon first edition of this contemporary history, written in ten books which covered the years 1545 to 1557. A second edition appeared in 1581 in which the work was expanded to 30 books taking the history up to the present day, and an Italian translation was later made of both parts. The Latin text was reprinted in Strassburg in 1612. The dedicatory preface, written from Ravenna, and dated 1 July 1572, is addressed to Don Juan of Austria, whose military exploits against the Ottoman Empire are highly praised; in October 1571 Don Juan had put an end to the Turkish threat at the battle of Lepanto. The narrative is filled with accounts of engagements with the Turks, but there are accounts of relations with England (see book VIII) , the discovery of places in the New World, while the final event to be described is the great flood of the river Tiber in 1557. The recto of the final leaf has a note ‘Ioanes Baptista Sessae humano lectori’ which is printed in Roman type and asks the reader to forgive misprints. It is clear that Sessa printed the book. Natale Conti (1520-82) published an account of the siege of Malta in 1565 which appeared in two Latin editions in 1566 (Venice Nurnberg) and in a German translation (Dillgen, 1567) and a number of other works, including the influential work on mythology. The excellently preserved roll-tooled pigskin binding has a roll-tool composed of four large stamps, which is very similar to two rolls described by Haebler I, p. 214/5, nos. 15 an

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