Lettres interceptes du Cardinal de Granvelle & autres

Formato: in ottavo antico

4to (195x134 mm). Collation: A-G⁴, H² (l. H2 blank). [30] leaves. With woodcut printer's device on the title-page, woodcut initial, head-piece, printed marginalia and maniculae. Later half-vellum (binding slightly stained). Small worm hole to the first 3 leaves, title-page reinforced at the inner margin, central fold marks (the book was previously folded before being bound), some foxing.

First Plantin edition of this “series of letters of Cardinal Granvelle and other partisans of the King sent to personalities in the Netherlands and intercepted by the party of the States-General” (Voet, 1930). The work comprises letters written in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese by Granvelle and others to Maximilian Morillon,Archdeacon of Mechelen, Margaret Duchess of Parma and Alessandro Farnese Duke of Parma and Piacenza, among others. The book's layout is interesting, with large parts in italics alongside the Latin characters of Plantin. Some parts of the text remain undeciphered, having been written using a cryptographic code. Clearly, the attempt to create the 'Leyenda Negra' against the Spanish monarch and his state was well underway, even though this contribution missed its mark. Antwerp surrendered to Spanish troops under Alessandro Farnese  in 1585, and Plantin, suspected of having Protestant sympathies, had to keep a low profile during his final years.

Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, Comte de La Baume Saint Amour, typically known as Cardinal Granvelle, was a Burgundian statesman, made a cardinal, who followed his father as a leading minister of the Spanish Habsburgs. He was one of the most influential European politicians at the time of the emergence of Protestantism.

OCLC, 1439741172; Adams, G-1005; Knuttel 611; J. Peeters-Fontainas, Impressions espagnoles des Pays-Bas, 69; F. Muller, Bibliografie van Nederlandsche pamfletten, no. 257; Ruelens-de Backer, Annales plantiniennes, 1582, p. 247, no. 42; Voet, 1930; BN Paris (4); Tiele, 257.

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