AURIGNY Gilles d' – [LE BLOND Jehan trad.]

AURIGNY Gilles d' - [LE BLOND Jehan trad.] BINDING BY THE BOOKSELLER CHARLES L'ANGELIER Le Livre de Police humaine, contenant brieve description de plusieurs choses dignes de memoire : si comme du gouvernement d'un Royaume, & de toute administration de la Republique... Lequel a esté extraict des grandz & amples volumes de François Patrice... par maistre Gilles d'Aurigny... & nouvellement traduict de Latin en François par maistre Jehan le Blond... & dedié à... Messire Claude d'Annebault Admiral & Mareschal de France... Paris, Charles L'Angelier, 1544 Small in-8°. Glazed brown calf. 6-rib spine decorated with a gilt fleur-de-lys repeated at the entrenerfs. Cold filleting in the margins of the boards, framed inside by a triple bold and lean fillet adorned at the corners with a small repeated gilt iron. In the center of the boards, a diamond-shaped medallion showing two angels linked to Christ, surrounded by the inscription "les anges liés" and the initials C[harles] L[Angelier], all gilded. Restoration to corners and spine. Endpapers missing. Scratches and a few stains. Pale foxing. Booksellers' bindings prior to 1550 (and indeed throughout the 16th century) are extremely rare. Our copy has been preserved in its very first binding, that of the L'Angelier booksellers, embossed with the "angels liés" emblem (homonymy of the brothers Arnould and Charles L'Angelier). According to Georges Colin, 21 have been identified. Two more have appeared since the end of the 20th century, including this one. This is therefore one of only 24 known examples worldwide of a binding by the L'Angelier brothers! The work is complete and illustrated with 2 woodcuts: the arms of Claude d'Annebaut, at the dedication (last "great favorite" of François I) and a vignette illustrating the writer. According to WorldCat, there are around twenty copies preserved worldwide in various universities and libraries. Gilles d'Aurigny (?-1553), known as "Le Pamphile", was a French lawyer and poet. He first wrote and published this text in Latin in 1543. He was interested in the political ideas of the Venetian philosopher Francesco Patrizi (Francescus Patricius), who died in 1494 and was one of the first modern demographers (see Institut national d'études démographiques in France, no. 143). Patrizi is considered a precursor of Machiavelli, although he did not hesitate to denounce the abuse of power and chose republic over royalty, preceding Bodin's Republic by more than thirty years. He defended freedom of expression, supported the "middle classes" against servitude and slavery, and expressed extremely progressive ideas for the time, such as the right to abortion and contraception. Jehan Le Blond, the French translator of Gilles d'Aurigny's Latin text, was a priest, poet and defender of the French language. Professor Björn-Olav Dozo of the University of Liège, a specialist in the period and now attached to the Media, Culture and Communication Department, devoted a long article to him in 2005. Indeed, this man was the first French translator of Thomas More's Utopia in 1550. Here, he is also the first to interpret Patrizi's highly modern political ideas in the vernacular. Ref: INED, no. 143 Brunet, I, 571 Adams, P-450 Georges Colin, Les marques de librairies et d'éditeurs dorées sur des reliures, in Bookbindings & other bibliophily: essays in honor of Anthony Hobson, 1994, pp. 77-115 Björn-Olav Dozo, Jean Le Blond, le premier traducteur français de " L'Utopie ", 2005, in Lettres Romanes, LIX (3-4), pp. 187-210 Rare copy