CORSE. GUELFUCCI (Bonfigliu). Lot n° 70

La Corsica a suoi figli. Campulori, Domenico Ascione, 1760. Small in-4, stiff vellum, handwritten title on the spine (Binding of the time). Very rare first edition, printed in the convent of Campulori, of this republican and Corsican independence pamphlet written by a close collaborator of Pasquale Paoli. The press of Campulori was the first Corsican national printing house, and the second installed in the island, after the short-lived experience of the marquis of Cursay, in Bastia, in 1750-1752. Commissioned by Paoli for the needs of his cultural policy, it was sent from Naples to Prunete in January 1760 and entrusted to the care of the Neapolitan typographer Domenico Ascione, under the responsibility of father Leonardu Grimaldi. During the year 1760, Ascione published two or three pamphlets against the Genoese and the French, but also the first official Corsican newspaper, entitled Raguagli dell'isola di Corsica, which appeared until the defeat of Ponte Novu in May 1769. Born in Belgodère, Corsica, Father Bonfigliu Guelfucci (1721-1813), secretary general of the order of the servites of Mary, was a friend and adviser to Pasquale Paoli and took part in the struggle against the Republic of Genoa and the army of Louis XV. From 1765, he taught theology at the new university of Corte and became, in his Memorie per servire alla storia delle rivoluzioni di Corsica (read and appreciated by the young Bonaparte), the historiographer of the Corsican revolution. In 1794, he wrote the Constitution of the Kingdom of Corsica with Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo. In La Corsica a suoi figli, Guelfucci asserts the need for a republican government based on just laws, seeking public utility and the good of the subjects, which "requires a spirit of equality." He also opposes archaic values such as "the point of honor, plague and poison of human society." It is wrongly that one sometimes confuses La Corsica a suoi figli ("Corsica to its children") with another pamphlet printed the same year on the same presses, La Corsica a suoi figli sleali ("Corsica to its disloyal children"). Both works were reprinted in Bastia in 1886. From the library of the Neapolitan collector Francesco Carafa (1781-1846), Duke of Forlì and Count of Policastro, with ex-libris. Stamps of Me Vincentelli, solicitor in Bastia, at the bottom of the title and at the end of the text. Small tear on spine; interior foxed, as always; tear repaired pp. 47-48 and small marginal repairs on verso of title and p. 7. Flori, n°13303.