LEUNCLAVIUS, Johannes [with] CURIONE, Celio Augustino
FROM THE LIBRARY OF ANDREW FLETCHER OF SALTOUN
Historiae Musulmanae Turcorum. (With) Annales Sultanorum Othmanidarum. (And) [CURIONE, Celio Augustino] Sarracenicae historiae.
Frankfurt, Apud heredes Andreae Wecheli, Claudium Marnium et Joann[es]. Aubrium, 1591. 1596. 1596.£2,750.00
Folio in sixes. pp. ‘898’ [i.e. 896] [i] (xlvii); 260 (xxviii) [ii]; 171 [ix]. Three works in one. Roman letter, first in double column. Woodcut printer’s device to t-ps and final verso of first work. Folding genealogical table to second. First work lightly waterstained towards outer edge, diminishingly, t-p dusty, slight loss at blank fore edge, continuing next few ll. Very light intermittent waterstain at same outer edges in second and third works. Good copies in contemp. calf, marbled edges, rebacked, corners bumped. Autograph of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun to rear pastedown possibly with price code. Very occasional ink marginalia in contemp. hand, slightly trimmed in places.
An interesting sammelband of historical works on Ottoman Turkey from the library of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (1655-1716), the great Scottish bibliophile, politician and adventurer, who, according to his own unlikely story, fought against the Ottomans at the Siege of Buda in 1684.
Johannes Leunclavius (d. 1594) was a German orientalist and jurisprudist who edited Greek historical works and wrote treatises on Byzantine civil law. He visited Constantinople on embassy in 1584-85. The first of his works opens with the genealogies of Muhammad, various Ottoman rulers, and ruling families of the Balkan kingdoms, and is a chronicle of the rise of the Ottoman dynasty from medieval times, ending in the 1540s during the reign of Suleiman I. The text is followed by an extensive index of proper names and a glossary of Turkish words. The second work is Leunclavius’s Latin translation of a manuscript chronicle in Turkish brought from Constantinople by Hieronymus Beck von Leopoldsdorf (1525-96), a German scholar who travelled widely in the Middle East, which was translated into German at the behest of Emperor Ferdinand II by his interpreter, Hans Caudir von Spiegel (d. 1579). This covers the complete history of the Ottoman Empire from its foundation to the time of publication. Leunclavius’s own contribution to this chronicle is the Pandectes Historiae Turcicae, a compendious series of short historical sketches of wars and other events in Ottoman history, as well as commentaries on their culture, including their cruelty and tendency towards patricide, especially by poisoning, the 23 gates of Constantinople, the prison there reserved for fraudsters and usurers (including Jews), etc. Finally, there is a brief account of the Siege of Vienna in 1529, when Suleiman I was defeated, translated from a German source, which includes a long catalogue of the names of the defenders.
Celio Augustino Curione (1538-67) was the son of the famous humanist and Reformer Celio Secondo Curione (1503-69). He is best known for this history of the ‘Saracens,’ meaning Ottoman Turks, dedicated to Emperor Maximilian II. It is followed in this edition by his history of the Kingdom of Morocco and his father’s account of the Ottoman Siege of Malta in 1565, as well as another chronicle of the Ottomans by an obscure German historian, Wolfgang Drechsler.
The works by Leunclavius are second editions; the first work was first published in 1590, the second in 1588 and the third in 1567.
None in Blackmer. I: Adams L597. USTC 662571. BM STC Ger., p. 495. II: Adams S50. USTC 611616. BM STC Ger., p. 495. III: Adams C3081. USTC 617661. BM STC Ger., p. 232.