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

ments proposed by the authorities. But by the end of the century the share
of the proWts claimed by government were ever increasing, and they became
mostly state-run.
Uncommon, OCLC lists just one copy in Munich.
Venetian Decline Foretold
73 MAFFEI, Scipio. Consiglio Politico Wnora inedito presentato
al Governo Veneto nell’anno 1736. Venice, Palese, 1797. £900
8vo, pp. 128; contemporary pale yellow boards, spine lettered in
manuscript; short tear to gutter margin, from the Giannalisa Feltrinelli
library with printed book label to front paste-down.
Rare Wrst edition of MaVei’s prophetic analysis of Venetian decline written
after his extensive European fact-Wnding trip in the early 1730s. The
Consiglio politico, which he wrote in 1737 shortly after his return and which
was addressed to the Venetian government but certainly circulated among
the patricians inside and outside the city, remained unpublished until 1797
because of the delicate problems it raised. It was rediscovered in 1797, the
year when the Peace of Campo Formio brought the Venetian Republic
to an end. MaVei’s exposure of Venetian weakness in the face of the other
European States seemed to the patriots of the late eighteenth century truly
prophetic. This text can be compared with Montesquieu, some aspects
of whose work MaVei anticipates, for example in his analysis of the three
powers and in his choice of an advanced political model along the lines of
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