De concordia & discordia in humano genere … — Antwerp 1529

[SOLD]

De concordia & discordia in humano genere ad Carolum V. Caesarem, libri quattuor. De pacificatione, liber unus. Quam misera esset vita christianorum sub Turca. Lib. unus. — (Antwerp), Michael Hillenius excudebat, cum privilegio Caesareo, (1529).

First edition

8vo (160 x 100 mm). A-Z Aa-Dd [De concordia] A-E⁸ F⁴ [De pacificatione] A-B⁸ [Vita sub Turca]: (216); (44); (16) leaves, final leaf blank.

Title within woodcut border; separate title-pages and signatures for each part.

Foxing and water margins, quires K, L, Q, R, Bb, D, E browned. Title-page nearly loose. Wormhole in lower blank margin. Book-block broken. Late 16th century vellum.

Adams V 945; Vives te Leuven No. 51; Vives Edicions Princeps. No. 32; Estelrich 134.

¶ The Leuven exhibition catalogue (1993) calls the book Vives’ second summa in political theory with a stronger pessimistic undertone than De europa dissidijs of 1526. Compared to the pacifist thoughts or illusions of Erasmus and More Vives’ reflections on war and peace in De concordia & discordia are said to be of much more philosophical deepness than this of his humanist friends. De pacificatione starts with the question how to find peace in yourself and enlarges this to family and society; De conditione vita sub Turca deals with the miserable conditions of Christians under turkish reign. It was reprinted in later volumes (1538, 1543 and 1550) about the turkish expansion.

The title-border is made of four pieces. It seems to be cut for this book. The upper part shows under a cloudless sky, on which the sun and moon can clearly be seen, a kind of Easter walk: couples moving around peacefully in a flourishing cultural landscape, in the background the silhouette of a small town. This scene of concordia corresponds to Caritas on the right bar.

The left bar shows Mars, here the god of war and destruction, holding the flames of pillage in his right hand. The bottom bar refers to him: a battle, murder and manslaughter under a moving, cloud-laden sky in front of a burning farmhouse.