Stanze per l'unione de' Prencipi Christiani scritte nella perdita di Giavarino al Sommo, e Santissimo pontefice Clemente VIII. Dall'Ardito Academico Risoluto. All'ill.mo et R.mo Sig. D. Alessandro d'Este da Agostino Michele consacrate

4to (200x137 mm). 91, [1] pp. Collation: a⁴ B-L⁴ M². Leaf a3 wrongly signed A. Printer's device on the title page. Woodcut initials and headpieces. Contemporary flexible vellum (spine recently reinforced, worn and rubbed, lacking a small portion of the lower outer corner of the front panel). Book block a bit loose, worm track in about 10 leaves at the center of the volume not affecting the text, some marginal staining and foxing, all in all a genuine, wide-margined copy.

First edition, dedicated by the editor Agostino Michele to Alessandro d'Este (from Venice, 28 April 1595), of this anonymous poem written and dedicated to Pope Clement VIII on the occasion of the loss of the city of Győr (in Italian Giavarino), an important fortress during the period of the Turkish penetration into Hungary, which was conquered by the Ottomans in 1594 but returned to the Habsburgs soon after (1598).

The author is disguised under the name of “Ardito Accademico Risoluto”. In the dedication Michele states that “queste Stanze pellegrine, che hor le consacra; sieno da felicissimo ingegno, e non dalla mia povera penna prodotte, & a me l'habbia l'altrui meravigliosa gentilezza, e non alcun mio studio concesse” (‘these wandering Stanzas, which I now consecrate to you, are by the most brilliant intellect, and not by my poor pen produced, and they were granted to me by the wonderful kindness of others, and not by any study of my own', l. a2v). It is not clear though which academy the anonymous author was affiliated to as apparently there is no record of an Accademia dei Risoluti in either Venice or Bergamo. According to M. Maylender (Storia delle accademie d'Italia, Bologna, 1930, IV, pp. 16-18), at the end of the 16^th century there were only three academies recorded under this name: one in Naples, one in Palermo, and one in Siena, which merged with the Accademia degli Intronati in 1603. Historical information is extremely scarse on all of them.

Agostino Michele (or Michiel) was a Venetian scholar who published several orations as well as a Discorso on comedies and tragedies (Venice, 1592) and a Trattato della grandezza dell'acqua et della terra (Venice, 1583). He also collected and edited the letters of Battista Guarini (1593).

Edit 16, CNCE2350; G. Savoldelli, Comino Ventura. Annali tipografici dello stampatore a Bergamo dal 1578 al 1616, Florence, 2011, p. 128, no. 189.