THE DEATHS OF BLOODY MARY AND CHARLES V
[MARY I.] VISDOMINI, Francesco.
Oratione funebre fatta in Napoli nell’hon. essequie della serenissima regina d’Ingliterra dal’ R. frà Francisco Vis domini ferrarese del ordine Conventuale alli XXVII. di febraro nel 1559.
[Naples, Raimondo Amato, 1559.]
4to, ff. [6], large woodcut on title of a catafalque surmounted by a sphere bearing celestial signs and by the double-headed eagle and imperial crown of the Holy Roman Emperor, woodcut Pillars of Hercules imprese of Charles V on verso of final leaf, one large and one small woodcut initial in the text; some very light marginal foxing and staining, paper-flaw in fore-margin of final leaf, but a very good copy in nineteenth-century decorated paper boards; slightly soiled and faded, paper shelf-label at foot of spine.
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Oratione funebre fatta in Napoli nell’hon. essequie della serenissima regina d’Ingliterra dal’ R. frà Francisco Vis domini ferrarese del ordine Conventuale alli XXVII. di febraro nel 1559.
First edition, extremely rare, of this Italian sermon on the death of Mary I of England. Our copy appears to be an unrecorded issue, omitting from the title-page the imprint recorded by EDIT16 (‘se vendeno ala porta piccola de s. Laurentio appresso à Raymondo Amato’).
Francesco Visdomini (1509–1573) was a Ferrarese Conventual Franciscan who travelled throughout Italy preaching sermons for special occasions, in the process becoming one of the most frequently printed Italian preachers of his generation. In 1554 he had delivered a sermon to mark Mary I’s efforts to reconcile the Church of England with Rome. In the present sermon he ‘first recounted Mary’s childhood, her piety and her great suffering during her childhood in exile from the court. He moved on to her triumph, and her restoration of the “true church” in England. He then put the vicissitudes of Marian England in a continental context, and finally addressed the big questions raised by such an unwelcome death – how to live with God’s will and the inevitability of death. In considering these three contexts – English, continental, and theological – readers must notice not only what is in the sermon, but also some of what has been left out. Doing so reveals how the sermon, although severely constrained by political sensitivities, a disappointing subject, and formulaic conventions, still sought to deliver a providential interpretation of Mary’s reign and of England’s Reformation’ (Emily Michelson, ‘An Italian explains the English Reformation (with God’s help)’, in E. Michelson, S. K. Taylor and M. Noll Venables, eds., A linking of heaven and earth. Studies in religious and cultural history in honor of Carlos. M. N. Eire, 2012, pp. 33–48, at p. 40).
Although printed in Spanish-controlled Naples, the imperial and Hapsburg woodcuts here are perhaps rather to be explained by the content of Visdomini’s text: ‘the sermon reads like a double elegy, both for Mary and her Hapsburg father-in-law, Charles V, who died two months before her. Both Mary’s life and her death were intertwined with Charles V throughout the sermon. Even though the title names Mary, Charles’ death was presented first, with Mary’s only introduced subsequently. Visdomini lamented the death of Charles V, who thought he had guaranteed the security of England, not knowing that both he and Mary would meet their maker in the coming months’ (ibid., p. 44).
EDIT16 CNCE 50488, recording five copies (two in Ferrara, two in Naples, and one in Rome); USTC 863549. OCLC records two copies only: British Library (‘slightly mutilated’) and Geneva.
