Joannes de Laet & Thomas Segetho
First Edition | Elzevir | 1628
De principatibus Italiae (Of the Principalities of Italy) is a collection of notable treatises and essays about the Italian government and politics written by the scholars Thomas Segetho and Joannes de Laet. De Laet was a notable Dutch geographer and director of the Dutch West India Company, and Segetho, while not a particularly well-known scholar, studied under Galileo.
Like many 17th century books, De principatibus Italiae is written entirely in Latin, which was considered the acceptable language for scholarship at the time. Because of this, its modern audience has dwindled to the handful classicists who could and would still read and understand it. So where does its value come from? In a few years, De principatibus Italiae will celebrate its 400th birthday, and books of this age are more than just text on a page — they’re historical artifacts, material records of their individual life and the evolution of the business and craft of bookmaking.
The book’s distinctive small size is a feature of many books published by Elzevir (sometimes spelled Elzevier), a renowned family of Dutch booksellers, publishers, and printers active in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Elzevir family, like most publishers at the time, made their books with animal products such as vellum (prepared animal skin) binding and animal glue. This made them targets for creatures such as bookworms, who burrowed into the binding in distinctive patterns in order to eat the glue. Vellum is typically more durable than paper — it’s still used for important record-keeping at certain institutions, such as the Catholic Church and British Parliament — but 400 years is a long time for any material to stay intact. Still, our De principatibus Italiae has been preserved in remarkable condition, with only a few small markings from bookworms, and even those are special parts of this book’s unique life story.
Come by the Dawn Treader today to take a look at De principatibus Italiae and other antiquarian gems!