Noted Anti-Slavery Advocate’s Copy of Anti-Aristotle Education Reform

Parisiis: Apud Andream Wechelum, sub Pegaso, in vico Bellouaco, Anno salutis 1555. 226 x 162 mm (9 x 6 ½ in). Quarto. [8], 186 [i.e. 188], [8] pp. In Latin.

Bound in vellum over boards, faded manuscript spine title. Ink shelf mark and armorial bookplate on front pastedown: ​“Edward Lord Suffield.”

Very good to very good plus. Some soiling to covers; overall a clean copy. 

An extensive commentary on the rhetoric of the six satires of Persius in which Foquelin attempts to apply the theoretical and pedagogical principles devised by Peter Ramus and his followers. 

An anti-Aristotlian treatise in support of Renaissance education reform. In a dedication to Peter Ramus, Foquelin describes reading Persius’s Satires to his students and, finding them to be fine rhetorical specimens, sets out to use the Satires as a platform on which to model Ramist principles of rhetoric and logic. A biography of Persius is followed by the satires themselves, which are split into brief segments with several pages of commentary between, breaking down each satire word by word. Ramists were anti-Aristotleian, anti-Scholasticist humanists who sought to do away with some aspects of university education they saw as relics of a by-gone era, such as metaphysics, while reforming the curricula around trendier subjects, like rhetoric and logic. Ramus was a well-respected scholar but fell out of favor among some upon his conversion to Protestantism in 1562. Unable to secure work elsewhere, Ramus moved to Paris in the 1570s and was killed during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, upon which he was taken up as a martyr.

Owned by noted anti-slavery advocate. This copy from the collection of Edward Harbord, 3rd Baron Suffield (1781–1835) and bears his bookplate. Suffield was himself a reformer, as well as a philanthropist active in prison, parliamentary, and anti-slavery reform movements of the early 19th century. He was active in the House of Lords, especially in advocating the abolition of slavery. Suffield took over leadership of the British anti-slavery movement and chaired the general meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society on 23 April 1831 before 3,000 people, shortly after which he became Chairman of the organization. A House of Lords Committee was appointed in 1832 to inquire into the ​‘true’ nature of slavery. Of the 25 members of the Committee, 10 had slave-holding interests, and Suffield was the only avowed abolitionist.

USTC 151817

Quite scarce with oclc WorldCat locating only three copies in the United States. Only one other copy on the market for 2,500 Euros.