MACEDO, Antonio Sousa de.

Flores de España, excelencias de Portugal, en que brevemente se trata lo mejor de sus historias . . . Primera parte @[all published].

      Coimbra, Antonio Simoens Ferreira, 1737. Title-page printed in red and black. Woodcut headpieces, tailpieces and initials. (6 ll.), 300, 78 pp. Folio, contemporary speckled calf, spine gilt, worn, spine ends chipped, light worming. Some worming, mostly marginal, but touching a letter or two in the sidenotes, and occasionally in the text, on many pages. Some light marginal dampstaining and stains. Bookseller's blindstamp in blank portion of title-page. Second edition of a historical work "of considerable interest and importance" (Bell). In the course of describing the Portuguese climate, people, religion and nobility, Sousa de Macedo mentions Portuguese activities in America, Asia and Africa. @Flores de España, written when Sousa de Macedo was only twenty-two, was composed in Spanish in order to reach a wider audience. To this edition is appended the author's @Armonia politica (second edition; first published 1651), lacking in the first edition of Lisbon, 1631. Drawing his examples from past kings of Portugal, he describes how a ruler should apply justice to himself and to his relations with God and his subjects. The work was written and first published while Sousa de Macedo was on a ticklish diplomatic mission to Holland in 1650-52, to negotiate the status of Pernambuco.Sousa de Macedo (1606-1682), a native of Porto who studied law at Coimbra, reached the highest echelons of the magistracy and diplomatic service, in part because he had played an important role in the restoration of Portuguese independence, and won the trust of D. João IV. When @Flores de España was first published he was Secretary to the Portuguese Ambassador to London (where he received a British peerage from Charles I); later he became Ambassador to the States of Holland, and Secretary of State to D. Affonso VI. A man of vast erudition, he published works in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin. Among the best known are @Ulyssipo, 1640, and @Lusitania liberata, 1645. He has also been proposed as the author of the classic @Arte de furtar (see Saraiva & Lopes, @História da literatura portuguesa [1976], pp. 401-2 @et passim).Innocêncio I, 276-8. Barbosa Machado I, 401. Pinto de Mattos (1970) p. 592. Garcia Peres p. 542. Azevedo-Samodães 3263. Ameal 2300. Palha 2778. Bell, @Portuguese Literature pp. 260-1. NUC: DLC, DFo, KU, InU