Hystoire agregative des annalles et cronicques danjou

Extremely rare first edition featuring a full-page engraving on the verso of leaf aiiii showing a scene where the author, kneeling, offers his work to Louise de Savoie, mother of François I^er, in the presence of an important assembly. Title page in red and black, text entirely ruled and set in 49 lines.
Half brown sheep binding, spine with six raised bands set with gilt fillets, compartments underlined with cold-stamped fillets, gilt roulette and double gilt fillet at foot, brown paste-paper boards, all edges speckled red. Very small wormhole on the final gatherings affecting the text in places without concern, dampstain in the upper right corner throughout the work, small yellow stains not affecting the text on verso of leaf vii.
Manuscript ink ownership inscription in the lower portion of the title page, reading "du couvent des ff. Minimes de Paris". Several manuscript annotations of the period, as well as several marginal manicules.
The first recorded history of the duchy of Anjou, this work is placed under the patronage of Louise de Savoie who was its duchess. The frontispiece, essentially centered on female figures, shows them as veritable icons, allegories of Knowledge and Wisdom. Alongside Louise de Savoie, two other women dominate the crowd: Judith on the left and Esther on the right. Together, they form a new trinity united under the motto from the Book of Proverbs, "the wise woman builds a house".
By furthermore nicknameing Louise de Savoie "Pallas", after the Greek goddess of Knowledge, Jehan de Bourdigné inaugurates a history of Anjou constructed along two axes: the importance of historians' work and the place of this work in a historiography oscillating between medieval and Renaissance material.
Bourdigné thus establishes himself as a true defender of historians and their work and presents them as the "valiant and warlike knights who for renown battle continually against death and accomplish so much through their prowess that renown obtains victory". At a time when history was part of belles-lettres and was not truly recognized as an independent discipline, it is remarkable that historians should be thus considered. Bourdigné's work is rich in detail and apt to awaken the reader's interest. It is notable to observe that he borrows from the medieval historical manner by proposing a narrative in the form of chronicles: rich in novelistic details, with historical precision sometimes neglected but nevertheless demonstrating true erudition.
Indeed, he explains in the prologue that his decision to write annals and chronicles is not insignificant, this approach allowing him according to his view to "have experience of cases that occurred in times past as if we had been present when they had produced their effect". This book thus plays a pivotal role in Angevin and more broadly Gallican historiography by linking two historical manners: the medieval one represented by chronicles and that which was born in the Renaissance, stemming from a humanist logic advocating a more linear narrative less inclined to subjectivity.
A work on Angevin history but also, more generally, on Gallican history, this work is celebrated by Bertoldi in his Angevins célèbres for its "many precious details" of which Bourdigné becomes the "eyewitness".
Very rare first edition of the very first history of the duchy of Anjou.