Castrvccii Antelminelli Castracani Lvcensis Dvcis Vita.
Modena, Dominico Rocociolo 1496.
4to (210 x 149 mm.). Contemporary manuscript foliation: 41 leaves. Roman type, white-line woodcut initials.
19th-century half-sheep and marbled boards, spine gilt.
First Edition: THE BIOGRAPHY THAT INSPIRED MACHIAVELLI’S POLITICAL THEORY. “THE MAXIM ‘THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS’ HAD LONG INFORMED CASTRUCCIO’S ACTIONS” (Simonetti, tr.). MACHIAVELLI PRESENTED HIM AS THE ARCHETYPE OF THE PERFECT RULER.
From a family of Lucca bankers and merchants, Castruccio Castracani (1281-1328) turned soldier, consolidated territory in Tuscany and formed international alliances through military ability, political shrewdness, deceit, treachery and corruption. High imperial favor sanctioned his control of Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia, Volterra and more than three hundred castles.
“Written in impeccably humanist prose” (Cochrane), this, the first life of Castracani, alters facts and chronology and inserts fiction to match the condottiere’s actions to ancient models. Machiavelli carried this much farther in his own biography of Castracani, published in 1532 in the first edition of The Prince.
In 1590, Aldo Manuzio the Younger’s laudatory life of Castruccio relied on Tegrimi, while Mary Shelley’s novel, Valperga: or, the Life…of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823), condemned the title character as a despot.
THE CONTEMPORARY ANNOTATOR FOCUSED ON CASTRUCCIO’S VIEW OF GOVERNMENT, noting parallels with Giannozzo Manetti’s Historia Pistoriensis (first printed 1731). In good condition (two pages soiled, some minor spots and light stains), bookplate of General Sigismond du Pouget, marquis de Nadaillac (1787-1837).
¶Simonetti, “I Biografi di Castruccio Castracani” in Studi Storici 2 (1893) 1-24; Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance 267; Bondanella, “Castruccio Castracani: Machiavelli’s Archetypal Prince” in Italica 49 (1972) 302-14; Zuckert, “The Life of Castruccio Castracani: Machiavelli as Literary Artist, Historian…and Philosopher” in History of Political Thought 31 (2010) 577-603; Ilari, Scrittori militari italiani 715; ISTC it00566000; Goff T-566 (two copies).
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