Abraham

1685 · Best.-Nr. 162244 — 1685. Hardcover. Very Good. AMELOT DE LA HOUSSAYE Abraham Nicolas. Histoire du Gouvernement de Venise. Derniere edition revüe & corrigée par l'Auteur. Two volumes in one. 32 558 4 559-686 80 16 8 184pp. A very good copy bound in full contemporary mottled calf gilt panelled spine with original red morocco label. Some rubbing to the gilt on the spine the leading blank edge of one leaf has an original paper tear and some age browning to the final few leaves. An early owner has pasted three booksellers' catalogue entries onto the inner front board. 8vo. Paris chez Frederic Leonard Imprimeur oridinaire du Roi. 1685. ~ Abraham Nicolas Amelot de la Houssaye 1634-1706 was secretary to the French embassy at Venice. In this work he undertook to explain and above all to criticize the administration of Venice and to expose the causes of its decadence. The work was printed by the King's printer and dedicated to Le Marquis de Louvois which indicates that the French government did not disapprove of it. It appeared in March 1676 and provoked a heated protest from the Venetian ambassador Giustiniani. The author was sent to the Bastille where he remained however for only six weeks. A second edition with a supplement published immediately after drew forth fresh protestations and the edition was suppressed. This persecution gave the book an extraordinary vogue and it passed through many editions and was translated into several languages. Amelot de la Houssaye devoted most of the second volume to the "good cause" of Venice against the Pope. He saw that Venice was a lesson for a Europe in which political order was still regularly disrupted by the imperious demands of religion and the city revealed that the first condition of effective statecraft was that it must be secular and therefore autonomous. In 1683 he also translated Il Principe The Prince into French for the first time creating the most popular late 17th and 18th century version of Machiavelli's masterpiece. Amelot did more than translate but also inserted his own commentary and introductions and controlled how they appeared to their new audiences. Through his translations of other important humanist works he spread his own ideas concealing himself behind accepted authors and escaping the censorship that he had attracted with his Histoire du Venise. hardcover