Hebrew Printing in Sabbioneta 1 AFFO, Ireneo - Schulz-Falster Rare ...

Small 4to, pp. [viii], 164, [8]; later full vellum, spine lettered in
manuscript; two small stamps in blank portion of title-page, some light
browning, a good copy with good margins.
First edition of this manual for the diplomat and secretary. Zinano gives a
detailed introduction to the function of private secretary to a ruler, and thus
both to the art of managing negotiations for the state as well as managing
all sorts of other business, particularly correspondence. An important part
of the book is devoted to the art of writing letters and instructions. This
includes rhetoric and stylistic information, grammar, structure, elegant
phrases etc. The increasing complexities of politics, Wnance and war in seventeenth
century Europe, made the maintenance of a professional bureaucracy
necessary, and thus secretaries gained in importance. Secretaries were
part of the court or government ‘machinery’, and a conduit for oYcial business,
who had to cultivate secrecy and dissimulation, which made them the
ideal Wgure of ‘ragion di stato’, and of course, a perfect target for critics.
The present work was published again in 1626 together with Zinano’s
Della ragione de gli stati libri XII and his Del Consigliere, and shows that Zinano
saw the function of the secretary as a clearly political one, with political
inXuence. Gabriele Zinano belonged to the group of authors vehemently
opposed to Machiavelli and his theories: he called Machiavelli the ‘mostro
uscito dall’inferno in forma umana’ (Croce, Storia dell’età barocca, p. 77).
Vinciana 453; uncommon OCLC: Toronto, Columbia, Newberry, Chicago, Cambridge,
and Oxford.
susanne schulz-falster rare books