Polydore Vergil, Anglicæ Historiæ libri vigintisex: ab ipso autore postremùm iam recogniti, ádque amussim, salua tamen historiæ veritate, expoliti (Ghent: Cornelius Manilius, 1556).
This is a copy of Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historia published in Ghent in 1556, a year after the author's death. The original version of the book was completed by 1513, covering events up to this year, and its manuscript is preserved in the Vatican Library. Vergil revised and partly rewrote it and published it in 1534. This first edition covers events up to 1509. Vergil revised it further and published the second edition in 1546, while in the year of his death, in 1555, he published the third and last edition, adding a new book covering events up to 1537. All the three editions were published in two folio volumes in Basel.
Mine is a reprint of the 1546 edition, and is a small and fat, octavo copy, covering up to Book 16, to the end of the thirteenth century. It is a very nice copy with a contemporary binding.
Polydore Vergil (or Polidoro Virgilio of Urbino; c. 1470-1555) is a priest, scholar and historian from the Duchy of Urbino, Italy. He was appointed Bishop of Bath and Wells as proxy for Cardinal Adriano Castellesi in 1504, and in 1508, he was appointed Archdeacon of Wells, which office he held until 1546, when he resigned perhaps in anticipation of retirement to Italy. He returned to Italy two years before his death in 1555.
His Anglica Historia is partially translated into early Modern English in the Tudor period, which is preserved in the British Library, Royal MS 18 C viii and ix.
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