[GENTILLET (Innocent)]. - Lot 27

[GENTILLET (Innocent)]. Commentariorum de regno aut quouis principatu rectè & tranquillè administrando. S.l., 1577. - In-8, supple parchment, double cold fillet framing the boards, leather laces, ribbed spine (period binding). First Latin edition of this work by the jurist Innocent Gentillet (1532?-1588), criticizing the ideas of Machiavelli, who was very much in vogue at the time, and proposing a form of governance based on virtue and justice, legitimizing respect for laws, institutions and the morality of leaders. It is divided into three speeches dealing successively with the Council, Religion and the Police. It was in these speeches that the term "Machiavellian" first appeared. A copy in contemporary binding, with several contemporary notes on the endpapers, as well as a few ancient and modern notes in the margins. In particular, the first endpapers are composed of leaves taken from an early 16th-century Gothic edition of André de Villedieu's "Doctrinale totius grammatices". Hinges cracked, some soiling, tears to endpapers. Slight soiling to title and occasional angular wetness.