BIZZARRI, Pietro (Petrus BIZARUS).

Persicarum Rerum Historia in XII. libros descripta, totius gentis initia, mores, instituta, et rerum domi forisque gestarum .Antwerp, Christoffel Plantin, 1583.WITH: MINADOI, Giovanni Tommaso. Persische Historia, das ist: Warhaffte und außführliche Beschreibung von dem langwirigen und erschröcklichen Krieg, der Türcken, wider die Persier, welcher sich im . 1577. angesponnen, und bißanhero . verhalten hat.Frankfurt am Main, (colophon: Peter Fischer, printed by Johann Feyrabendt), 1592. Folio. 2 works in 1 volume. The Bizzarri with Plantin’s woodcut device in a scrollwork frame on the title-page, the woodcut arms of the dedicatee on the back of the title-page (Augustus I, Elector of Saxony), and 10 large (30-51 mm) woodcut decorated initials

      - (12), 451, (24); (32), 294, (2 blank), (18), (2 blank) pp. Adams B-2088 (Bizzarri; cf. M-1455: 1588 Venice ed. of Minadoi); Belg. Typ. 320 (Bizzarri); BMC STC Dutch, p. 35 (Bizzarri); VD16 M-5416 (Minadoi); Voet 727 (Bizzarri); Minadoi not in BMC STC German; for Minadoi: Lucia Samaden, "Giovanni Tommaso Minadoi (1548-1615):." in: Quaderni per la Storia dell’ Università di Padova 31 (1998), pp. 91-164. First edition, printed by Christoffel Plantin in Antwerp, of Bizzarri’s classic history of Persia in twelve books, from antiquity to 1581. Bound with it is the German translation of the second (enlarged Italian) edition (Venice, 1588) of Minadoi’s eye-witness account of the Turko-Persian War, 1577-1590, still in progress when the Italian edition appeared. It includes graphic descriptions of the atrocities, such as the live flaying of a Druse leader by the Turks.Bizzarri (ca. 1525/30-ca. 1586) studied in Venice, but lived in Germany and England after his early conversion to Protestantism and gathered intelligence for the English government. He returned to Venice in the 1560s, moved to Antwerp by 1578 and to Leiden around the time Antwerp fell to Spain in 1585. Minadoi (1548-1615) was physician to the Venetian community in the Middle East, where he lived for at least seven years, and professor at the University of Padova.The inscription on the title-page (covered with a slip) reads "Monasterii Augiæ Minoris" referring to the twelfth-century Weißenau Monastery near Ravensberg, dissolved in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the armorial bookplate (with initials "BAZW") is that of its Abbot, Benedict Rheindl (see Warnecke, Die deutschen Bücherzeichen 2409). The endpapers are watermarked: gothic "p" with the arms of the Elector of Bavaria and an "A" (for Augsburg) = --, similar to Piccard IV, XVII, 791-797 (Augsburg et al., 1588-1593). With occasional underlining or marginal notes. With occasional minor browning in the Minadoi but otherwise in fine condition, with only two tiny holes affecting a few letters of the text in the Bizzarus and a small marginal chip or water stain in 4 leaves of the Minadoi. The binding is good, with the vellum slightly wrinkled and rubbed, and lacking the ties. A fine copy of two important sixteenth-century works on Persia, the Bizzarri a Plantin first edition.