THE ANTI-SPANISH REVOLT OF MESSINA
LANCINA, Juan Alfonso Rodríguez de.
Historia de las reboluciones del Senado de Messina, que ofrece al sacro, Catolico, real nombre de D. Carlos Segundo nuestro Señor.
Madrid, Por Julian de Paredes, impressor de libros, en la Plaçuela del Angel, 1692.
Folio, pp. [xii], 522, [14], with an engraved portrait of the author by Diego de Obregón; title within typographic frame; light waterstain to upper margin of last few leaves, paper flaw to E3 with no loss, otherwise a very good copy; bound in contemporary Spanish limp vellum, title in elegant manuscript to spine, rear endpapers of contemporary Spanish printed waste; errata-corrige paper slips correcting ‘Iunio’ into ‘Julio’ pp. 154 and 161; from the library of Giovanni Leonardo Sanna (1680–1741), bishop of Ampurias and Civita and later of Bosa, in Sardinia, with his ownership inscription to front flyleaf (where he describes himself as ‘canonico cagliaritano’, a canon from Cagliari), title, p. 1, and last page (with purchase note dated 1712); contemporary ?ownership inscription ‘Ignacio Cordilla’ to p. 155.
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Historia de las reboluciones del Senado de Messina, que ofrece al sacro, Catolico, real nombre de D. Carlos Segundo nuestro Señor.
First and only edition of this rare account of the anti-Spanish revolt of Messina, in Sicily, which broke out in 1674 and lasted until 1678, by Juan Alfonso Rodríguez de Lancina (c. 1649–1703). Lancina, a judge of the Grand Court of the Vicaria, the highest criminal court of the Kingdom of Naples, witnessed first-hand the events as at that time he was stationed in nearby Calabria as Superintendent tasked with fighting conspiracies and smuggling, specifically in relation to the riots of Messina.
Riots in Messina had already started in 1672, orchestrated by the local Spanish captain-general, Luis de Hojo, who, feeling the mounting hostility against Spanish rule from the local patrician government (the senate), covertly incited the lower class and skilled workers against the nobility. The plan, initially successful, eventually backfired and in 1674 the working class joined forces with the patricians in a revolt against the Spanish, who were driven out of the city, thanks also to the support the rebels received from the French. Following the end of the Franco-Dutch War and the signing of the Anglo-Dutch treaty of alliance, though, the French decided to withdraw from Sicily and the Spanish soon regained control.
‘A rare work which is little known even in Spain. There is no copy in the Salvá collection’ (Quaritch, catalogue 1884–1885, n. 27319).
OCLC finds three copies each in the US (Illinois, Harvard, and Michigan) and in the UK (BL, Cambridge, and NLS).
Palau y Dulcet, 130926; Díaz, Bibliografia de la literatura hispánica XII, 5461. Not in Moncada Lo Giudice or Mongitore.
