Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

A Tuscan farmer-priest 

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[LANDESCHI, Giovanni Battista]. SAGGI DI AGRICOLTURA di un paroco samminiatese. In Firenze: per Gaetano Cambiagi stampator grand., MDCCLXXV [1775]. £500

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FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. 293, [1] blank, [1] errata, [1] blank; woodcut headpieces; some light foxing, mainly marginal, but otherwise largely clean and fresh; in contemporary vellum; spine gilt with painted bands; block-printed decorative endpapers; K2 to K8 loose but holding; binding heavily soiled and stained, but sound.

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First edition of the best-known work of the Tuscan parish priest Giovanni Battista Landeschi (1721-1783).

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There was a vogue in the latter half of the seventeenth century for the clergy to disseminate agricultural ideas, with the similar works by Lastri and Ippoliti appearing in the 1770s, while the Venetian priest Francescao Griselini had written on the duties of parish priests to educate peasants in agricultural methods and rural economis in his 1773 Del debito che hanno i parochi e curati di campagna di educare ed istruire i contadini nelle migliori regole dell'agricoltura ed in qualunque ramo dell'economia rurale. The theme was also repeated throughout the decade in the pages of the Magazzino georgico. In the present work, Landeschi, who had been appointed to the parish of San Miniato near Empoli in 1753, opens with a discussion of the relationship between landowners and peasants, the roles of each, and that of the parish priest-farmer. He is conscious to place the onus for improving the lot of the peasants both on them (through the eradication of bad agricultural practice) and on landowners (both through fair rents and through being present). Landeschi emphasises that rural priests should also be farmers, both to set an example of good practice and to avoid idleness, and proposes that the subject be taught to seminarians.

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The second part of the work goes more into the technicalities of agriculture within the specific situation of rural Tuscany, with particular attention paid to the management of water; his recommendations, for a system of ditches (”tagliapoggio”) arranged horizontally on hillsides to channel rainfall in a way that would minimise landslides and erosion, he had already put into place, almost entirely remodelling the hills around San Miniato. He also offers much practical advice on everything from the importance of woodland, to the dangers of goats.

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A second, expanded, edition appeared in 1807, and was reprinted in 1810. 

Melzi vol. 3, p. 5; for more on Landeschi, see DBI vol.63; SBN: IT\ICCU\VIAE\001305; OCLC records no copies outside Italy. 

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