Endecasyllabi Di Essione Partico Callifilo Archilvdimagistro.
Viterbo, [M. Diotallevi] 1661.
12mo (137 x 73 mm.). 117, [1], [2 blank]p.
Contemporary vellum over flexible boards (slightly soiled), gilt-lettered spine title, modern paper spine label lettered 60 A 27 in manuscript, blue edges, manuscript title on the top edge.
FIRST EDITION OF THIS PEDERASTIC FANTASY IN VERSE, celebrating the obsession of Sicilian schoolmaster Callifilo with his sickly ten-year-old pupil Fabritio, who grows up and runs away with a married woman named Prasilla, from whom he contracts syphilis. He refuses medical treatment and dies. Romei remarks on the “sadistic misogyny” (tr.) of some episodes.
THE AUTHOR’S MORBID FASCINATION WITH THE MALE BODY occupies more than three hundred verses — Fabritio’s surgery, his use of laxatives and suppositories and the advance of his venereal disease.Only the second (final) antiquarian printing is held by a North American library (two copies).
In good condition (minor foxing); manuscript inscription of Roman physician Gennaro Giannelli (fl. 1719-27), notes of Macerata citizens Ascanio Pellicani (dated 1768), Gius. Ant. Compagnoni (dated 1770) and Mario Compagnoni Floriani (dated 1781); modern blind-stamped bookplate with a crowned l.
The browned line across the middle of four leaves in the first quire marks the central central fold of the ream’s outer sheet, before it was cut and folded into a common duodecimo gathering.
¶Endecasyllabi di Essione Partico ed. Romei; Carosi, Le Edizioni di…Girolamo Diotallevi 143,166; see Encyclopedia of Homosexuality ed. Dynes I: 397-8.
Price: $9,800.00