[MICHELI, Raphel]
De miseriis et fragilitate humanae vitae libellus. Per R. M. Impressum Anno 1570. [Followed by:] Raphel Micheli Sonet. S.l.n.d. [London, John Charlewood], Impressum Anno 1570. 2 parts in one volume in-8, brown calf, double framed with cold fillets, gilt fleuron on the corners, three-ribbed spine (Modern binding in the taste of the time).
Very rare literary forgery of the 16th century.
It is divided into two parts which are not at all the work of Raphel Micheli as it is written on the title. Rather, it is the work of two different authors whose texts had been published some years earlier. In fact, this Raphel Micheli never existed, it is an assumed name created to serve an editorial deception.
Thus, the De miseriis et fragilitate humanae vitae is due to the Belgian writer Melchior Barlaeus, published by Plantin in 1566. And the Raphel Micheli sonet, a collection of about sixty sonnets in French, is taken from a volume of Poetry by the poet and jurisconsult Louis Le Caron, printed in Paris by Vincent Sertenas in 1554. These sonnets had already been the subject of a misleading edition in 1569 by the same printer, under a slightly different title (Le premier livre des poèmes de Raphel Micheli).
The edition was printed by John Charlewood, an important British printer known for being the first in England to publish Italian authors, including Giordano Bruno, in the 1580's. It is decorated with a woodcut frame on the title.
Stéphan Geonget, professor of French Renaissance literature at the Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours, who is working on a forthcoming book on Louis le Caron, recently unraveled the mystery of Raphel Micheli.
Only one other copy of this edition is known to exist, in the Bibliothèque Mazarine.
The copy belonged to Theophilus Paulus Christius, professor and librarian of the city of Ansbach in the 18th century. It bears on the title this inscription: Libellus cum an elegantissiam tum ab raritatem memorabilis.
Some annotations in the text and on the verso of the last leaf.
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