TEVIUS, Jacobus (c.1514-c.1569). Comentarius de rebus in India apud Dium gestis. Coimbra: João de Barreira, and João Alvares, 1548.

First edition of Diogo de Teive’s account of Portuguese conflicts in western India, particularly the 1546 siege of Diu. The José Mindlin copy. Diogo de Teive, who only ever published under his Latinized name, was born in Braga c.1514. Like Góis, his career followed the larger Portuguese trajectory of cosmopolitan humanism withering under the Inquisition. This is his first published work and in it he lauds the Portuguese defense of Diu—the key port for the Indian spice trade—against superior Turkish forces. Diu had been besieged in both 1538 and 1546. When news reached Europe of this second repulsion by Portuguese Christians against the Turkish and Gujarati forces, the Pope ordered a formal thanksgiving service in Rome.

“Drawing on now lost vernacular reports, Tevius composed [this] elegant Ciceronian account of the second siege of Diu by the Portuguese. As an example of Renaissance networking (or mutual backscratching), the preliminary texts include laudatory epigrams by [George] Buchanan and João da Costa” (B. Taylor, Recent Acquisitions: a Rare Work by Jacobus Tevius, BL, 2003). All three of these men, Buchanan, da Costa, and Teive himself were accused of heresy and sentenced to imprisonment by the Inquisition in 1550. Rare. Only one other copy appears in the records of RBH for the past century. Anselmo 254; Palau 328839.

Quarto (183 x 136mm). Large woodcut coat of arms on title-page. 19th century morocco gilt by Emile Rouselle, spine gilt in compartments, gilt turn-ins, all edges gilt. Provenance: with Maggs Bros., Bibliotheca Asiatica et Africana part IV, 1929, no. 67, illustrated (slip tipped to f.f.e.) – José Mindlin, 1914-2010 (bookplate).