SEYSSEL Les Louenges du roy Louys XIIe de ce nom nouvellement composées en latin par maistre Claude de Seyssel docteur en tous droits et maistre des requestes ordinaires de l’hostel du Roy… Cum privilegio. – Cy finist les louenges du roy Louys XIIe […] imprime a Paris nouvellement par Anthoine Verard le xxiiiie iour de decembre mil cinq cens et huit.

Very rare first edition of this Chronicle of the reign of Louis XII. Picot, Catalogue Rothschild, 2105 ; Bibliothèque Edouard Rahir 676 ; Macfarlane 89 ; Brunet, V, 329.

Originally written in Latin, the work was printed for the first time in French, in the translation given by the author himself. No Latin edition of this work is known.

The Louenges du roy Louis XII were reprinted under several titles in 1558, 1587 and 1615.

Claude de Seyssel (1450-1520) went to the court of Louis XII and he was sent in 1508 on a mission to Henri VII, king of England. At that time Claude was an ecclesiastic. In 1509 he was elected bishop of Marseille. As the French ambassador, he was present at the famous diet of Treves in 1512 and at the Latran Council in 1514. In 1517 he accepted the archbishopric of Turin offered by the Duke of Savoy.

The present work is illustrated on the back of the title-page with a full-page woodcut showing the author giving his book to the king. There is also the large printer’s mark of Verard on the last leaf.

A precious wide-margined copy, gilt over untrimmed edges, from the prestigious collections of the comte de Lurde, baron de Ruble, Edouard Rahir and Laurent Meeûs, with their ex libris, richly bound in morocco with morocco doublures by Trautz-Bauzonnet.

We were able to locate only 3 copies of the present work in institutions: at the Bibliothèque of Aix-en-Provence, at the B.n.F. and at the British Museum. The Bibliothèque Méjanes of Aix-en-Provence owns a copy bound with the cypher of Louis XII. OCLC doesn’t record any copy.