A BYZANTINE CRUSADER EPIC
BRACCIOLINI, Francesco.
Della croce racquistata, poema heroico libri XV.
Paris, René Ruelle, 1605.
8vo, pp. 376 [i.e. 375], [1, errata]; woodcut vignette depicting the True Cross on Calvary to title-page, woodcut and typographical ornaments and tailpieces; paper now generally toned, small holes to foot of first two leaves, quire O loose, some corners creased, but a good copy; bound in contemporary limp vellum, ink manuscript title to spine, stubs from two pairs of alum-tawed ties; binding slightly cockled; inscription to front flyleaf (crossed through) of Geronimo Franciotti, seventeenth-century inscriptions to verso of flyleaf of Ascanio Franciotti and of Joannes Franciscus Trecardi[?] (see below).
First edition of Francesco Bracciolini’s epic poem modelled on Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1591), narrating the recovery of the True Cross by the seventh-century Byzantine Emperor Heraclius from the Persian Emperor Khosrow II, and its return to Jerusalem in 629–630 AD. It is possible that Bracciolini made use of Cardinal Baronio’s Annales as his main source, interspersing the history with episodes of chivalry and the supernatural.
The writer and poet Francesco Bracciolini (1566–1645), from Pistoia, was a member of the Accademia Fiorentina, where he became acquainted with Maffeo Barberini (the future Urban VIII). He later became secretary to Barberini, who was appointed papal nuncio to France in 1601, accompanying him to Paris where this work was first printed, still unfinished and uncorrected, as explained in Ruelle’s postscript (p. 376; and on p. 185 there appears a stanza omitted from its correct location). Bracciolini returned to Pistoia shortly before publication and had the first fifteen books of his epic reprinted in Lucca in 1606, with the text corrected; he spent the following years completing and reworking it, and the full thirty-five books finally appeared in Venice in 1611. Many of Bracciolini’s drafts and notes on this work are contained in the Barberini manuscripts, now at the Vatican.
This bears marks of ownership from multiple members of the Franciotti family of Lucca; one of the early owners, Ascanio Franciotti (d. 1675), is buried near Lucca (his relative Marcantonio was made a cardinal by Urban VIII in 1633).
Library Hub, OCLC, and USTC together list a single copy in the UK (British Library) and five in the US (Stanford, Yale, Pennsylvania, Tennessee University Library and Wisconsin).
BM STC Italian, p. 142; USTC 6016187.
