SANSOVINO

HISTORIA UNIVERSALE DELL’ORIGINE ET IMPERIO DE TURCHI

RACCOLTA, & IN DIVERSI LUOGHI DI NUOVO AMPLIATA, … CON LE QUERREVSUCCESSE IN PERSIA, IN ONGARIA, IN TRANSILVANIA, VALCHIA, SINO L ANNO 1600.

M. Fracesco SANSOVINO

Venetia, 1600

First published at Venice in 1560 – 1561 without illustrations.  The work contains an important collection of source material of the Turks edited by Sansovino. It includes the report by the Bishop Leonoard of Chios on the fall of Constantiniople, written only a few weeks after the Turks took over the city, and also the important work by Spandugino comprising the earliest description of Ottoman manners, religion and government. Excerpts from Menavino, Cambini, Giovio and Barletius are also included (Blackmer p. 314).Francesco Sansovino was born in Rome in 1521 and brought to Venice following the sack of his native city in 1527. He studied law in Padua and Bologna. After attempting a career as courtier at the court of Pope Julius III, he eventually returned to Venice. There he married and lived quiet until his death in 1583. A more favourable view of the Turks was put forwards by the famous Venetian historiographer Francesco Sansovino, where he depicted a more enlightened vision of the Ottoman prince within the Renaissance framework, drawing similarities between the figures of the Greaco-Roman antiquity and certain Ottoman Sultan (Soykut 2003 / p. 58).Atabey Collection 1088 (ed. of 1560): an important and influential history; Blackmer Collection. 1487 (ed. of 1654); Göllner 1243.