La spada di honore libro primo. Delle Osservationi Cavaleresche […] All'illustriss. e reverendiss. Monsignore Francesco Giudice [...]

12mo (144x77 mm). [50], 374, [58] pp. and 11 engraved plates by Lorenzo Tinti, including the frontispiece and the portrait of the author. Collation: a-b 12 A-S 12 . Several head-, tail-pieces, and initials. Contemporary stiff vellum binding, with inked title and ornaments on the spine (slightly worn and stained, recent restoration to the back panel). On the front pastedown manuscript ownership entries “Marius Antonin Pr. Lancia 1810”; on the back flyleaf another entry “Io Giuseppe Lancia 1721”. Some marginal staining, lack of paper to the margin of the last ten leaves not affecting the text.

Second edition (the first 4to edition was published in 1671 at Bologna). This moral treatise is divided into 8 parts on the duties of the knight, “a veritable code of honor” (J. Gelli, Bibliografia generale della scherma, Milan, 1895, p. 195). La spada di honore can be counted both as an emblem and a fencing book. The woodcut plates illustrate passages or verses of Tasso, Guarini, Plato, Horace, Thesaurus, etc., relevant to the subject. A second volume was published in Bologna in 1676 with no illustrations. Berlingiero Gessi, usually known under the pseudonym Gregorio Belsensi, was a member of the Accademia degli Ardenti and of the Accademia dei Gelati. He studied letters and law in Rome and mathematics and astronomy under B. Cavalieri in Bologna. In this city in 1635 he was elected senator and in the following years he made several missions to Rome as ambassador of the Holy See. He became an expert in the science and ethics of chivalry, as his rich printed production attests, even his fellow citizens sought his advice, that was regarded as a legal norm, to settle lawsuits and legal disputes (cfr. D.B.I., LIII, pp. 477-479).

M. Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, Rome, 1975, p. 348; Vinciana, nos. 298.

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