De La République des Turcs, & là ou l'occasion s'offrera, des meurs & loy de tous Muhamedistes.
Par Guillaume Postel Cosmopolite.
A Poitier Par Enguilbert de Marnef. 1560
In-4, 163 x 227 mm. (4) ff. title, privilege, dedication, printer's note, 127 pp., 57 pp., (1) blank f., (4) ff. title, privilege, dedication, 90 pp. Complete in three parts. Pagination error: p. 85 numbered 58. Complete in three parts.
17th-century orange-brown calf, spine with five raised bands. Gilt compartments with gilt title label. Gilt fillet on the edges of the boards. Triple gilt fillet border on the covers. Gilt roll on the turn-ins, visible on the squares. Marbled paper pastedowns and endpapers. Red edges.
Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) was one of the most singular minds of the Renaissance, an "unclassifiable" intellectual, in the words of Claude Postel (1). Born into a poor family in Barenton, Normandy, and orphaned at the age of eight, he was teaching by the age of thirteen to earn enough to go up to Paris (2).
With the support of Marguerite de Navarre, he set out in 1535 with Jean de La Forest, François I's first ambassador to Suleiman. In Constantinople he came into contact with Barbarossa and the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha, mastered Arabic, took up Turkish and brought back Arabic manuscripts for the royal library. In 1538 François I made him one of his royal lecturers; he taught mathematics and oriental languages in what would become the Collège de France. What followed reads like a novel. A novice dismissed from the Society of Jesus, he translated the Zohar and became the spiritual director of a Venetian visionary in whom he saw the "new Eve". The Venetian Inquisition judged him mad rather than heretical; he spent four years in prison in Rome and ended his life confined in the priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs (2).
The first book opens with an epistle to the Dauphin that makes no secret of its purpose: to know the Ottoman Empire in detail is to acquire the means of confronting it one day. Yet Postel does not write as a compiler. He had seen Constantinople and come close to the court of Suleiman, and it is this first-hand view that gives the book its value. For Robert Irwin, the work offers an unusually sympathetic picture: without being blind to their faults, Postel gives the Turks the advantage over the Christians in charity, education, marriage law and the observance of prayer (3).
The three books complement one another. The first describes Ottoman society, its laws, religion and customs. The second goes back to the origins of the "Ishmaelite" peoples, Arabs, Persians, Tartars and Turks, and of their law. The third surveys the provinces, administration and revenues of the empire, an account that the Blackmer catalogue considers remarkably complete and accurate (4). Its title admits the ulterior motive: to give the Most Christian princes, "aînés au Droict du Monde" (elder sons by right of the World), the knowledge of these lands and the desire to conquer them. Here we find the utopia of his whole life: to unite all peoples under a single faith and a single monarch, the King of France (2).
Finally, the first title bears a word destined for a long career. Postel signs himself "Cosmopolite", citizen of the world, and the Trésor de la langue française dates the first known attestation of the word in French to this title (5). The word fits him like a glove.
A fine copy with good margins, in an elegant 17th-century binding.
Adams P 2015. Göllner 1004. Atabey 977. Blackmer 1335. Brunet IV, 839.
Condition: p. 85 numbered 58; stain on p. 19; first title page browned, with short lower margin; restored tear to pp. 100–101.
(1) Claude Postel, « Les écrits de Guillaume Postel publiés en France et leurs éditeurs (1538-1579) », résumé du diplôme de l'EPHE soutenu le 18 avril 1991, Annuaire de l'EPHE, section des sciences religieuses, t. 99, 1990-1991, p. 483-484. https://www.persee.fr/doc/ephe_0000-0002_1990_num_103_99_14524
(2) François Secret, « Postel Guillaume (1510-1581) », Encyclopædia Universalis
(3) Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing. The Orientalists and their Enemies, Londres, Allen Lane, 2006, cité par Antiquariaat Forum.
(4) Catalogue de la collection Blackmer, n° 1335, cité par Bonhams, Londres, vente du 4 décembre 2013
(5) Trésor de la langue française informatisé (ATILF-CNRS), article « cosmopolite ».
