Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

How to read, learn, and teach

 

POSSEVINO, Antonio. COLTURA DE GL'INGEGNI del M.R.P. Antonio Possevino della Compagnia di Giesu. Nella quale con molta dottrina, & giuditio si mostrano li doni che ne hl’Ingegni dell’huomo ha posto Iddio, La varietà, & inclinatione loro, e di dove nasce, & come si conosca, Li modi, e mezi d’essercitarli per le discipline, Li rimedii a gl’impedimenti, Li coleggi, & università, L’uso de’ buoni Libri, e la correttione de’ cattivi. In Vicenza: Appresso Giorgio Greco, MDXCVIII [1598]. £2,150

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FIRST ITALIAN TRANSLATION. 4to, pp. [16], 115, [1 (blank)]; woodcut headpieces, ornamented initials and printer’s device to title-page; some sections browned, scattered light foxing to margins, else a good copy; in later carta rustica.

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First Italian translation, and the first separate publication in any language, of the first twelve chapters of Possevino’s Bibliotheca selecta, which had appeared in Latin in 1593, and is here translated by Possevino himself, divided into fifty-six chapters, each with its own title. This treatise on the cultivation of the mind, which Possevino gave to Mariano Lauretti to publish, was the most widely circulated part of the book. It was published separately in Latin in 1604 and was ultimately incorporated into the Ratio Studiorum of the Society of Jesus.

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After an introduction dedicated to Baron Oswald Trapp (or Tropp?) from Lauretti, the book is divided into fifty-six chapters. Possevino establishes that God has endowed all humans with reason (or ‘sapienza Divina’) and senses so that they can learn about the world surrounding them, ultimately, in order for them to grow in truth and religion. He argues that people are born with various talents and degrees of intelligence to suit them for the different purposes determined by Divine Providence, and discusses how students, and their teachers, can come to identify and thus cultivate these individual talents. He also suggests how teachers can cultivate the intelligence of their students through play, as well as through a combination of lecturing and reading. Towards the end of the book, Possevino describes various educational institutions, beginning with the University of Salamanca, discusses the teaching at the Collegio Romano, and finally discusses printing, censorship, and the selection of books appropriate for different people according to their background (as well as how to keep books in good physical condition).

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Born in Mantua, Possevino joined the Society of Jesus in 1559, and was soon after sent to Savoy to proselytise amongst the Waldensians and establish a Jesuit College. Following his ordination to the priesthood in 1561, he was posted to southern France for ten years before being called to Rome to serve as secretary to the Superior General of the Jesuit Order. In 1577, Gregory XIII sent Possevino as papal legate to Sweden, where he converted King John III to Catholicism and distributed his first Communion to him. He was dispatched to the court of Ivan IV in Moscow in 1580 to mediate between the tsar and the Polish king Stefan Báthory during the Livonian Wars, whilst also (unsuccessfully) attempting to convert the former and persuade him to launch a crusade against the Ottoman Empire. In Moscovia (1586), Possevino gave his account of the Russian court and realm. He then served as envoy to the Polish court, and again assisted in peace negotiations, this time between Báthory and the Holy Roman Emperor. Possevino fell out of favour with the papacy when he back Sigismund of Sweden as successor to the Polish throne and was recalled and posted to the Republic of Venice. It was during this period that he published several of his most famous works, among them the Bibliotheca selecta, the anti-Machiavellian Iudicium (1594), Apparatus ad omnium gentium historiam (1597), Coltura de gl’ingegni, and Apparatus sacer (1603). Before the expulsion of the Jesuits from Venice, Possevino was also a prominent polemicist for the pro-Papal camp in the Interdict Controversy. 

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Outside continental Europe, OCLC records copies at only six institutions: the British Library, Oxford, Cornell, Folger Shakespeare Library, Newberry Library and Boston College. 

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