Vita, et morte della Serenissima Prencipessa di Parma, et Piazenza

12mo (149x78 mm). 78, [2] pp. Collation: A-B12 C16. The last leaf is a blank. Text within a double typographic frame. Contemporary flexible vellum, inked title on spine (traces of ties, slightly rubbed and stained). Some occasional staining (larger stain on pp. 71-74), all in all a good, genuine copy.
Rare edition. The work was printed by Benacci in the same year also in a 4to edition. Other 12mo editions appeared in Milan (Michele Tini and Pacifico da Ponte) and in Rome (Antonio Blado's heirs) in 1578, and then again in Parma (1582), Venice (1583, 1584 and 1585), Verona (1592), and Rome (1602).
The work, dedicated by the men of the oratory of the Cathedral of St. Peter in Bologna to the noblewomen of the Company of Communion of the same church, is written in the form of a letter addressed by Sebastião de Morais to an unspecified lady on 15 July 1577, a few days after the death of Maria of Portugal, wife of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, of whom Morais was the confessor.
The letter sketches a brief biography and praises the Infanta Maria of Guimarães (1538-1577), daughter of the Infante Duarte, Duke of Guimarães (son of King Manuel I of Portugal) and Isabel of Braganza. Maria married Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, on 11 November 1565, and became hereditary princess of Parma by marriage. She died on 9 July 1577.
Sebastião de Morais (or Moraes), born in 1534 in Funchal (Madeira), entered the Order in 1550. He taught philosophy and moral theology. Maria of Portugal asked Father de Moraes to be her confessor in Parma; at that time he became also rector of Parma and visitor to the provinces of Rome and Milan. After the death of the princess, he returned to Portugal and governed this province from 1580 to 1587, until Sixtus V, at the request of Philip II, appointed him first bishop of Japan. He was consecrated Bishop of Funar on March 27, 1588, but died at sea near Mozambique on August 20, 1588.
Edit 16, CNCE32453; G. Melzi, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime, Milan, 1859, III, p. 252 (1583 edition); A. & A. De Backer-C. Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1894, V, col. 1279, no. 1.