Scoprimento del mondo umano…
Scoprimento del mondo umano di Lucio Agatone Prisco opera dell'abate D. Angelo Seravalli canonico regolare del salvatorc, composta sopra l'idea del mondo grandc, contenente gli amori dell'uomo con l'anima, e le relazioni di nuovo terre, mari, isole, citta e monarchic, formate secondo l'cssere delle passioni, costumi, affetti, virtu, e vizj umani.

Siena: Bonetti, 1696.

Thick quarto, with an engraved frontispiece and full-page portrait of the author; a few preliminary margins well renewed with old paper, but a good sound copy in recent vellum over boards, endpapers renewed.

Rare and enigmatic imaginary voyage

Rare and enigmatic imaginary voyage filled with metaphysical allusion, long overlooked by scholars and bibliographers of the genre.

Rare and enigmatic imaginary voyage filled with metaphysical allusion, long overlooked by scholars and bibliographers of the genre.
This mysterious book is the work of the Augustinian priest Angelo Seravalli (1630-1708), who served as abbot of San Jacopo Soprano in Florence, where he was born and died. Aside from a little poetry his literary output is restricted to the present text, where he narrates a journey by himself and a mystical figure known as Lucio Agatone Prisco. In a vast narrative blending the real and the imaginary, Seravalli leads Prisco through the lands, oceans, cities and kingdoms of the world, explaining their nature and formation through human virtues and vices. As a result of the journey, Prisco achieves a spiritual enlightenment of sorts and proposes a vision for future peace on earth.
Seravalli's ambitious literary project had little impact on his contemporaries (although it is mentioned in a handful of late seventeenth-century letters, including a correspondence from Italian bibliophile Antonio Magliabechi to the philosopher Leibniz dated 3 April 1696). Howgego notes (in his study of apocryphal voyage narratives published by Hordern House in 2013) 'It has since been largely ignored by scholars in the field of imaginary voyages, and no further discussion was found in the literature. The book is rare, only nine library copies being recorded worldwide.' Nonetheless, it provides modern readers with an engaging baroque allegory that combines real people, cities and events with mythological characters and esoteric lore - and this at a period when the Inquisition was active.
'Prisco', the main character of the narrative is derived from an late medieval epitaph inscribed on the 'Pietra di Bologna', a stone plaque famous with alchemists and students of the esoteric arts. A mystical riddle of compounded contradictions, the epitaph has defied interpretation for centuries. In more recent times the 'Pietra di Bologna' was treated in detail by Carl Jung in his study of alchemy and the unconscious. Howgego gives a translation as follows: 'Aelia Laelia Crispis, neither male nor female, nor androgynous nor child, neither young nor old, nor chaste, nor whore, but all this together. Killed not by hunger nor by iron nor by poison, but all these things together. Neither in heaven nor in water, nor in earth, but everywhere he lies. Lucius Agatho Priscius, neither husband nor lover, nor relative, neither sad nor happy, nor crying, not pyramid, nor tomb, but all this together, knows and knows not to whom it is dedicated'.
The book includes an ornate engraved frontispiece and a portrait of the author, both by Nicolas Dorigny. Of special interest are the woodcut capitals decorated with scenes of esoteric significance.

BM STC (Italian), p.842; Howgego 'Imaginary Voyages', S21.

Condition Report: Intermittent water-staining, some gatherings a little stained, a few small marginal defects.

Ref: #4202826

Condition Report