First edition, illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of the author in the first volume, 6 maps and plans, and 70 engraved portraits hors-texte, including 65 depicting the Grand Masters of the Order of Malta. (cf. Brunet, V, 1149. Cohen 1011. Saffroy 5420.)
Some restorations to the joints, early marginal annotations at the bottom of pages, library stamp on all three volumes, the third of which is bound slightly differently with regard to the gilt tooling; a loss on the endpaper of the first volume, which has been partially cut out.
A good copy.
The illustrations are distributed as follows:
Volume 1: 1 frontispiece, 3 folding maps, and 26 full-page portraits.
Volume 2: 1 plan and 20 full-page portraits.
Volume 3: 2 folding maps and 5 full-page portraits.
Volume 4: 19 full-page portraits.
Contemporary full speckled tan calf bindings, spines with five raised bands, richly gilt in double-panel compartments, gilt fillets along the board edges, marbled endpapers and pastedowns.
A writer, historian, and member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Abbé de Vertot (1655–1735) authored several notable works, including Révolutions romaines (1719). Dedicated to the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Dom Antoine Manoel de Vilhena, the Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers offers a chronological account of key events from the Order’s founding in Jerusalem in 1099. The final section includes a Dissertation on the Government of the Order of Malta, the Old and New Statutes of the Order, and an Alphabetical List of the Knight Brothers from the Langues of Provence, Auvergne, and France, as well as the Grand Priories of Aquitaine and Champagne.
