Zacchia, Epistole Thurci, Lyon, 1520, crushed brown morocco by Bedford

ZACCHIA, LAUDIVIO (HIEROSOLYMITANUS LAUDIVIUS). Epistole Thurci per Laudiuium herosolymitanum equitem aggregate. Lyon: Jean Marion for Romain Morin, 30 March 1520

A collection of spurious letters addressed either from or to Sultan Mehmed II (1432–1481), the Conqueror of Constantinople and Europe’s most fearsome military antagonist. It was first printed 14 September 1473 at Naples, where the author (b. ca. 1435) had been called by Giovanni Pontano, and was dedicated (like another work of Zacchia, printed almost simultaneously) to a would-be patron, the Catalan nobleman Francí Beltrán. Two recent bestselling publications were Zacchia’s inspiration: the purported letters of the Sicilian tyrant Phalaris of Agrigento (first printed in 1468–1469) and Pope Pius II’s Epistola ad Mahumetum, with the apocryphal letter published as Mehmed’s reply (1469–1472). Although they found many credulous readers—nineteen editions were printed before about 1500—a close reading demonstrates that the letters were not intended to deceive, but to supply models for rhetoric and epistolary style.

The Sultan’s fictional correspondence occasionally was bulked-out by another text, such as the Phalaris, Epistolae. In this edition, the publisher Romain Morin has appended a letter (Epistola quo modo quis amice sue debeat rescribere) written in 1443 by Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) for the sixteen-year-old Siegmund of Tyrol (1427–1496), who had requested a love letter to send to a girlfriend. Romain Morin and his printer Jean Marion further extend and enliven the book with woodcuts drawn from their stock of images. The title is enclosed by a border composed of six strips of woodcut ornament, with a scene in three compartments of soldiers approaching a fortified city captioned “Roma” (the woodcut is repeated once in the text). A large cut on the last page depicting the Creation of the World had been employed by Morin and Marion for their editions of Dictys Cretensis, De bello troiano (10 March 1520) and Francesco Albertini, Mirabilia Rome (28 March 1520). There are thirty-four smaller woodcuts (including repetitions) of court and battle scenes, as well as scholars in libraries, and sixteen woodcut initials. According to H. W. Davies, seven woodcuts “are direct copies” from the Giunta Malermi Bible of 1490. A few woodcuts have exemplars in work of Guillaume II Leroy (d. ca. 1529).

4to (190 x 134 mm). Roman type, lines variable. Collation: a–e⁴: 20 leaves. Title printed in red and black with historiated woodcut border, full-page woodcut of the creation on e4v, 34 woodcut illustrations (including repeats), 16 woodcut initials (many repeated). (Washed.)

Binding: English brown crushed morocco, ca. 1854–1894, signed F. Bedford, panelled with gilt and blind fillets, floral corner-pieces, spine gilt tooled and lettered in six compartments, plain endpapers, gilt edges. (Rubbed at spine ends.)

Provenance: J. Pearson & Co., London (Sotheby’s, London, 28–30 January 1914, lot 341), purchased by — Francis Edwards, London (£3 5s) — Hodgson & Co., London, 24–26 June 1914, lot 147, purchased by — Bernard Quaritch, London (£4; Catalogue 353, 1919, item 331, £10 10s; Catalogue 494, 1934, item 267, £6; Catalogue 520, 1936, item 670, £4 10s; Catalogue 528, 1937, item 564, £3 3s) — Bonhams, London, 4 December 2019, lot 129 (“The Property of a European Collector”). Acquisition: Purchased at Bonhams through Robin Halwas. References: FB 77260; USTC 145241; Gültlingen, III, p.151 no. 36; Mortimer, French, no. 341; Davies, Catalogue of a Collection of Early French Books in the Library of C. Fairfax Murray, no. 304; for the pedagogical purpose of Zacchia’s work, see Coleman, “Forging Relations between East and West: The Invented Letters of Sultan Mehmed II,” in Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800 (Baltimore, 2018), pp. 128–144; Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of Mehmed II,” in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), pp. 111–207 (p. 126, “intended for Latin composition classes in grammar schools”)