AUBIGNÉ (Agrippa d'). Histoire universelle. Maillé, Jean Mou - Lot 175

AUBIGNÉ (Agrippa d'). Histoire universelle. Maillé, Jean Moussat, Imprimeur ordinaire dudit sieur, 1616-1620. In-folio, brown calf, double cold fillet, central coat of arms, spine decorated with a repeated monstrance iron (period binding). First edition of this major historical work by Agrippa d'Aubigné (1552-1630), who gives his personal account of the Wars of Religion in which he participated. After the abjuration of Henri IV, whom he had served, the author withdrew to his estate in Maillé (Vendée), where he set up a private printing house and enlisted the services of Jean Moussat, a Huguenot printer from Niort. The work, an essential book for the history of religious unrest in France, was condemned to be burnt at the stake on publication. A copy bearing the coat of arms of the town of Roanne, with its motto Crescam et Lucebo surrounding the crescent: this is the town's former coat of arms, without the cross of the Legion of Honor, which was added to the shield in the time of Napoleon III, in memory of its resistance to the Austrians during the Napoleonic campaign of 1814. Binding restored, notably at lower head, and arms retouched on second board.