Peter Bichsel   Fine Books

Bizarus, Petrus. Pannonicum bellum, sub Maximiliano II. Rom. et Solymano turcar(um) imperatoribus gestum: cumque arcis sigethi expugnatione, iampridem magna cura et studio, descriptum. Unà, Cum Epitome illarum rerum quae in Europa insigniores gestae sunt: et praesertim de Belgarum motibus, ab anno LXIIII. usque ad LXXIII.

With woodcut printer’s device at the end of the text part and before the index. (8) leaves, 322 (recte 332), (4) pp., (56) pp. index, last leaf blank. Small 8vo. 18th-century full vellum on three bands with ms. spine title. – Basel, Sebastianus Henricpetri, (1573).

First Latin edition of Pietro Bizarri’s account of the Turkish war in Hungary from 1540 to 1547. An Italian edition was published first in 1568 and 1569 in Lyons, and it was Bizzarri himself which translated it into Latin in order to reach a larger public. The dedication at the beginning is adressed to the 13 years old August of Saxony, son of Prince Elector August. It is dated january 1573 and gives the young man a brief account of the history of writing and of historiography. The Turkish war in Hungary (pp. 1–165) is followed by an account of the unrest in the Netherlands in 1566 and of other contemporary European occurencies (pp. 166–332). The present single imprint of Bizzari’s “Pannonicum bellum” was one month later compiled in a collective edition together with the Latin translation “Aula Turcicae” of Antoine Geuffroy’s “Briefve description de la cour du grand Turc” and with the “Belli Cyprij inter Venetos et Zelymum Turcarum Imp.” as well by Bizzarri. – VD 16 B 5758 (single edition) and G 1913 (collective edition); STC, (German), 128; Hieronymus, Petri 1488–Schwabe 1988, (1997), Nr. 526. – Very clean copy in a cultivated vellum binding. – Best.-Nr. 16552