BOTERO, Giovanni., Relatione della republica venetiana. Con un Discorso intorno allo Stato della Chiesa., Appresso Giorgio Varisco, 1605

8vo., contemporary vellum, pp. [16], 124, with two versions of the printer’s colophon copper-engraved on title page (coat of arms with two putti), opposite the first page of libro II of the first part, on the title page of the ‘Discorso’, and on the final page (a two-tailed mermaid, known sometimes as a Melusine). Some worm damage to binding and pages (with no loss of text), some stains to boards, browning to title page; otherwise a very good copy. A rare first edition of this important text by the Italian political thinker and economist, and Jesuit priest, Giovanni Botero (c. 1544-1617). Considered one of the foremost intellectuals in Europe in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and to have foreshadowed liberal thinkers such as John Locke and Adam Smith, Botero is best known for his book Della ragion di Stato (The Reason of State) which first appeared in Venice in 1589. In the book here cataloged, Relatione della republica venetiana, Botero applies his moralistic theorization of statecraft (put forward in Della ragion di Stato) in a commentary on the state of the Venetian Republic at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Text in Italian.