Abregé de l'histoire de Provence contenant plusieurs memoires qui ont êté inconnûs aux auteurs qui ont écrit l'histoire de ce païs

First edition of this important work by Pierre Louvet devoted to the history of Provence, published in Aix in 1676 in two volumes. It forms the first part of the three major works that Louvet was to devote to the province, followed by L’Histoire des troubles de Provence in 1679 and the Additions et illustrations sur les deux tomes de l’Histoire des troubles de Provence in 1680, the latter two both published in Aix by Charles David.

The present copy is illustrated with an armorial frontispiece and 27 engraved portraits. The iconographic make-up varies considerably between surviving copies: some contain only 22, 25, or 26 portraits, while others also include a portrait of the author. One of the plates is explicitly signed “M. Frosne fecit”, with the subsequent portraits bearing the initials “MF”, allowing a substantial part of the suite to be attributed to the Paris engraver Jean Frosne.

Contemporary full red morocco, spines with raised bands richly gilt, covers decorated in the Du Seuil style with a central triple-fillet panel, corner tools and a further triple-fillet border, all edges gilt. Loss at the head of both volumes and four corners slightly worn. The final five leaves of volume I show traces of damp and staining, as do pp. 523-556 of volume II; the final two leaves of the latter have been backed with Japanese paper, with small losses to a few letters. The areas affected by damp have been stabilised and the final two endleaves in each volume renewed in Japanese paper.

Both title pages bear an early manuscript ownership inscription including the first name “Maria”, together with further notes now partly illegible.

A doctor of medicine, Pierre Louvet (1617-1684) gradually turned his attention towards teaching, archival work, and local history. His career took him through Languedoc, Guyenne, Beaujolais, and Dombes before bringing him back towards Provence, where he maintained particularly close ties with Sisteron. Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, the Grande Mademoiselle, granted him the title of councillor and historiographer of the sovereignty of Dombes, a distinction that appears in full on the title pages of the present work.

In his preface Louvet explicitly defends the form of the abridgement. In support of this method he invokes learned predecessors such as Henri de Sponde and the Jesuit Jacques Salian, who had themselves condensed vast historical undertakings. He thus places his work within a tradition of scholarly synthesis, conceived not as a diminution of historical material but as a means of rendering a considerable body of knowledge more accessible and manageable.

This ambition is also evident in the dialogue he maintains with earlier historians of Provence, notably César de Nostredame, Antoine de Ruffi, and Honoré Bouche. Louvet’s aim is less to displace their work than to gather, organise, and make it available to a broader readership within a continuous historical framework.

The two volumes follow a clear division. The first traces the political and comital history of Provence, from the ancient dominations through the major families and principal towns of the province. The second is entirely devoted to “l’état ecclésiastique du Païs”, covering archbishoprics, bishoprics, religious houses, and sacred traditions, beginning with the legend of Saint Maximin and the earliest evangelisers of Provence.

The iconographic programme directly supports this double history. The frontispiece brings together the arms of the principal comital houses, while the 27 portraits give visual form to the succession of rulers and counts of Provence. Text, genealogy, dynastic memory, and ecclesiastical history thus form complementary parts of the same provincial synthesis.

The first instalment of a larger undertaking that Louvet would continue through 1680, this Abrégé brings together within a single structure the political and ecclesiastical memory of Provence; the rich iconographic programme of the present copy and its remarkable contemporary red morocco give that historical ambition an especially accomplished bibliophilic form.