GALLUZZI, Tarquinio. Carminum libri tres.
Poems on Devotion and Natural Disaster GALLUZZI, Tarquinio. Carminum libri tres. Rome: Jacopo Mascardi. 1611. 8vo. Contemporary brown morocco, spine and boards gilt with alternating hatched lozenges and small floral tools, floral cornerpieces, borders gilt aux petits fers, edges gilt; pp. [xvi], 341, [1], [2 (blank)]; title-page engraved with elaborate architectural border, woodcut initials, typographic tailpieces; corners and extremities worn, ties and endcaps perished, small wormhole to lower corner of upper board; uniform light toning, sporadic light foxing (heavier to quire D), quires G, I, and L browned, small wormhole to inner margin of quires A–P; a very good copy; early shelfmark to title. Scarce first edition of the sole collection of neo-Latin verse by the Jesuit professor of rhetoric Tarquinio Galluzzi (1573–1649), a key figure in solidifying the seventeenth-century rhetorical tradition at the Collegio Romano, our copy in a handsome contemporary binding. Born in Montebuono near the Sabine city of Rieti, Galluzzi entered the Roman novitiate of S. Andrea at the age of seventeen and quickly became distinguished as an orator. He taught rhetoric at the Collegio Romano, established by St Ignatius of Loyola in 1551, from 1606 to 1617, and subsequently taught large classes of ethics and moral philosophy until 1620. He spent the last eighteen years of his life as rector of the Pontifical Greek College of St Athanasius and was frequently entrusted with delivering speeches during the visits of illustrious guests, or to celebrate important occasions, most famously his funeral orations for Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino (1621) and Cardinal Arnaud d’Ossat (1604). As professor of oratory at the Collegio Romano, he was tasked with reciting the Oratio Christi Domini morte in the Papal chapel during the Good Friday liturgy before the Pope and the College of Cardinals, an institutional privilege of the Jesuit college first granted by Pope Gregory XIII. The present collection of verse combines devotional themes with glimpses into Galluzzi’s life in Rome: there are poems on the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Assumption, the severed breasts of St Agatha, and the Miracle of the Snow (the commemoration of a miraculous snowfall on the Esquiline Hill in 352 A.D. following the intervention of the Virgin Mary), for example. Many of the poems are dedicated to his students of rhetoric, amongst them panegyrics to Virgil and Horace and poems on the autumn recess, as well as an ode to the study of rhetoric itself. Of particular interest are Galluzzi’s many poems providing insights into contemporary politics, relationships with the Roman Curia, as well as happenings at the Collegio Romano. He commemorates in verse the 1598 peace between France and Spain under the Peace of Vervins, ending Spanish intervention in the French Wars of Religion; Pope Clement’s 1601 approval of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, used at the Marian shrine at the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto; the admission of Cardinal Scipione Borghese to the Collegio Romano (thanks to the efforts of Borghese's uncle, Pope Paul V), and on a statue of Urania from the cardinal’s collection; Cardinal Cesare Baronio’s extensive restoration of the basilica of Santi Nereo ed Achilleo after having been assigned Cardinal-Priest of the church in 1599; and an elegy to the physician Marsilio Cagnati (1543–1612) on the death of his son. Perhaps the most poignant of Galluzzi’s Roman poems is his harrowing firsthand recounting of the 1598 Christmas Eve flooding of the Tiber, during which the river surged some twenty metres and claimed over three thousand lives; here, he emphasises the futility of human labour in the face of nature and describes the destruction of homes, people barricaded within their houses, the numerous funerals of children, and families torn apart by devastation. Galluzzi’s poems were widely appreciated by his contemporaries, including Galileo, who owned a copy of this edition. A second, expanded edition was published in 1616. The lovely gilt morocco binding is similar to that of the 1617 Paris-printed Breviarum romanum from the collection of Michel Wittock (Christie’s, 8–9 November 2004, lot 59). OCLC finds six copies in the US (Brown, College of the Holy Cross, Huntington, JHU, Loyola University of Chicago, Yale). Library Hub finds no copies in the UK. USTC 4022054; Sommervogel III, col. 1142, no. 2. Not in BM STC Italian (see p. 375) Brunet, nor Graesse. SKU: 2123410