Machon, Louis

Discours Ou Sermon Apologetique En Faveur Des Fammes. Question Nouvelle curieuse, & non jamais soustenue.#11;[bound with:]#11;Sermon Pour Le Jour De l'Assomption Nostre Dame, au retour de la Procession generale, establie par le Roy Louis XIII. s

      Paris:: T. Blaise,, 1641.. First Editions.. Contemp.calf, gilt rules on covers. title in old hand, front hinge cracked, old book-label (owner rubbed-out), minor stains, minor blank margin wormhole at end.. 8vo. 2 works in 1 vol.. Printer's devices on t.p.s, head-pieces. Machon (1603- c1672) archdeacon of the Port and canon of Toul, moralist and bibliophile and counsellor r to Louis XIV. He authored only a few works. The Discours is a feminist sermon dedicated to the Marquise De Coislin. The second work is dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, Machon's mentor. In his anti-Machiavellian work, written to appeal to Richelieu, Machon states that kings possess magical powers by virtue of their access to secrets and occult wisdom withheld from their subjects: 'It is specifically the violence, obscurity and ineffable quality of the gods that must be imitated . . . the coups d'etat are princely imitations of all those attributes of divinity that were thought to be either beyond human power (like miracles) or beyond the laws and moral prescriptions that bound men but not God'."[ Peter S. Donaldson, Machiavelli and the Mystery of State, 1988,]#11; Cioranescu 44204 & 44205. Gay/Lemonnyer I,924. Barbier I,1021.