Historia de Goti antichi, Con varie digressioni in materie parimentate antiche e singolari [...] Insertovi l'Apologia per Frate Giovanni Annio Viterbese

Folio (263 x 187 mm). [2], 203, [1] pp. Numerous pagination errors. Collation: A - Z²  Aa-Zz²  Aaa - Zzz² Aaaa - Gggg². Eighteenth-century marbled cardboards, lettering piece on spine. Woodcut printer's device on the title page (three-headed dog within an architectural frame with the motto “Vis Vincitur Arte”). Woodcut ornament and initials. Some occasional light foxing and staining (small worm holes on a few pages). 

The work Historia de Goti antichi, published under the pseudonym Didimo Ropaligero Liviano —behind which lies the Dominican friar Tommaso Mazza— is part of the scholarly historiography of the late seventeenth century, characterized by a blend of historical reconstruction, antiquarian scholarship, and polemical-apologetic aims. Published in Verona in 1677 (with subsequent reprints, including this one from 1679), the work is formally presented as a history of the Goths, particularly of the invasions of Italy between the 5th and 6th centuries, and is constructed using traditional historical sources such as Cassiodorus and Procopius, but is constantly interrupted by extensive digressions of an antiquarian and philological nature, in a manner typical of Baroque scholarship. A central element of the work is the inclusion of the Apologia for Friar Giovanni Annio of Viterbo, which constitutes its true ideological core. In it, Mazza sets out to defend the figure of Annio of Viterbo (1437-1502) against accusations, already widespread in the humanist and modern eras, of having falsified ancient sources. Mazza's work thus takes the form not only of a historical treatise but also of a polemical intervention in the scholarly controversy over the credibility of ancient sources.

Italian Union Catalog, IT\ICCU\CFIE\005820. 

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