DU VERDIER, Antoine.

by Antoine Du Verdier

£3,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

Elegantly bound set of a scarce edition of this early encyclopaedia of famous historical, literary, political, religious and cultural figures, from antiquity to the C16. Antoine du Verdier (1544-1600) was ‘conseiller du roi’ in Lyon, but mostly known as a biographer. ‘Prosopographie’ – i.e., a collection of biographies – first appeared in Lyon in 1573; it went through at least 4 further editions, the present by du Verdier’s son, Claude. In the humanistic tradition of ‘de viris illustribus’, the work gathers thousands of eminently educational anecdotes. Biblical figures include Adam, Eve, the Devil (with a wonderful woodcut portrait), the patriarchs, the Evangelists (with a lavishly illustrated biography of St Peter), and popes. Related religious figures are Zoroaster and Mohammed. Extensive sections are devoted to classical antiquity and mythology, with deities, heroes, emperors, philosophers and historians. Most valuable are the sections concerning Du Verdier’s contemporaries. In addition to kings, emperors and political figures, these include Pietro Aretino, Sir Thomas More (with an account of his death), Paracelsus, Ignatius of Loyola, the seditions of the Anabaptists in Westphalia, F. Rabelais (with a clear chronology), Francis Xavier, Sultan Suleyman, the occultist Guillaume Postel, Estienne Battori Prince of Transylvania, Mary Queen of Scots, the mathematician and cryptographer Blaise de Vigenère (with a bibliography), and Elizabeth I of England. The absence of portrait

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.