MACHIAVEL (NICOLAS) (1469-1527) Lot n° 46

The Prince of Nicolas Machiavelli, secretary and citizen of Florence. Translated from Italian into French by Guillaume Cappel. In Paris, Chez Charles Estienne, imprimeur du Roy, 1553 In-4, 4 ff n. o. ch. (1 bl. f., title, preface on the translation) + 148 pp, (collation : A4 ; a-s4 ; t2). The leaves sig. S2 and sig. S3, slightly shorter, come from another copy. Bound in full contemporary soft vellum, title handwritten in ink on the spine (Stains on the boards, traces of old fastenings (lacunae). Modern slipcase. Dimensions : 220 x 158 mm. Edition of the second French translation (two translations appeared the same year, in Paris - this one - and in Poitiers). Machiavelli's work was first published in Italy in 1532. We owe to Guillaume Cappel this French translation : Nostre autheur Machiavelle applies everything to the way of governing of his time & of his country which is almost ours, because the true goal of an author, & of a political lord, is to preserve & increase the estates : a good way of proceeding, a style proper to the matter, a knowledge of the histories, an assured experience. Four French translations of Machiavelli's Prince are known from the 16th century: those of Jacques de Vintimille (1546), preserved in manuscript form (Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 315), of Guillaume Cappel (1553), of Gaspard d'Auvergne (Poitiers, Enguilbert de Marnef, 1553) and of Jacques Gohory (1571). See Willis H. Bowen, "Sixteenth-Century French Translations of Machiavelli," in Italica 27 (1950); Annamarie Battista, "Al penetrazione del Machiavelli in Francia nel secolo XVIe" in Rassegna di Politica e di Storia 67-68 (1960); Nella Bianchi Bensimon, "La première traduction française du De Principatibus de Nicolas Machiavelli," in The First Translations of the Principe in Early Modern Europe, ed. Roberto de Pol, Amsterdam. Following the work of Adolf Gerber, Niccolo Machiavelli, Turin, 1962, part 3, pp. 30-33, it is admitted that the edition of Enguilbert de Marnef published in Poitiers in 1553 precedes by a little the one given by Charles Estienne in Paris in 1553. By exposing the mechanisms of power, Machiavelli has for a long time provoked reactions of outraged virtue. Frederick II saw in The Prince "an abominable book". It is particularly remarkable to note that his French translator does not have these misgivings. On the contrary, he praises his "whole and sound judgment, not allowing himself to be transported in favor of nations or persons: a good way of proceeding, a style proper to the subject, a knowledge of the histories, an assured experience. In short, he lacks nothing to be a prince except the power and name of the Prince: so much so that he has almost taken away the means for his successors to add or diminish anything, and that those who do not have a good opinion have it contrary to his own. In the eyes of Guillaume Cappel, Machiavelli said the last word on political science and the fortune of this work forever timeless has given him reason. PROVENANCE Handwritten bookplate on the title: "Cuson" or Luson with the motto "Ad usum non abusum", which can be translated as "Il faut en user mais non en abuser". REFERENCES Renouard, I, 104. - Diesbach-Soultrait, V. de, [Bibliothèque Jean Bonna]. Six centuries of French literature. XVIe siècle. Second part (M-Z), Geneva, Paris, 2017, no. 189 (Poitiers edition, 1553; translation by Gaspard d'Auvergne).