STRATENUS, PETRUS. Petri Stratini Iuris Cti Venus Zeelanda et alia ejus poëmata. C. Boyus I.C. collegit & edidit. The Hague (Hagae-Comitis), Ex officina Theodori Maire, 1641. 12mo. (XX),218,(2 blank) p. Vellum 15 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 85221460X; Oberlé no. 495; IJsewijn p. 152; Graesse 6,509; Brunet Supplément 2,699: 'Poésies fort rares') (Details: 6 thongs laced through the joints. Frontispiece, depicting the personification of the Dutch province of Zeeland, a half naked Venus Zeelanda, who floats in a boatlike shell; in her hands she holds a burning heart and an arrow; in the background the skyline of Goes, the birthplace of Stratenus; in the sky a soaring Amor, Venus' companion, who holds in each hand a medallion with a portrait of a young woman, called Chloe and Blonda. § Engraved portrait of Petrus Stratenus, with a 3 elegiac couplets by the editor C. Boyus; the portrait is probably engraved by Cornelis van Dalen, who made the frontispiece. (rijksmuseum.nl/nl/zoeken?q=%22cornelis%20van%20dalen%22&v=&s=&ondisplay=False&ii=0&p=1) § Woodcut printer's mark of Maire on the title, depicting a farmer who stamps a shovel into the ground, above the head of the farmer the motto: 'fac et spera', and the divine tetragrammaton, a four-letter Hebrew word, the name Jahweh, the biblical God of Israel) (Condition: Binding spotted and age-toned. Edges of the first gathering thumbed. Small paper repair at the blank right margin of the frontispiece. Name on the title page. Pastedown of the lower board detached. Waterstained) (Note: The neolatin poet Petrus Stratenus, in Dutch Pieter van der Straeten, or van der Straten, 1616-1640, was born in Goes, in the province Zeeland. He died at the age of 24. To study law he went in 1633 to Leiden, where he met Cornelis Boy, who became his soul mate. After obtaining his doctorate in law, Stratenus traveled through France and England, and was appointed immediately after his return Secretary (Civitati Goesanae a Secretis et Legationibus) of his hometown Goes. On the 27th of October 1640 he died, only twenty-four years old, in The Hague, where he was managing affairs on behalf of Goes. The death of this promising young man appears to have made in Goes a deep impression, and the city council decided to pay the doctor's bill and to convey his body to Goes at her expense. A year after his death Boy published the collected Latin poems of his friend: 'Venus Zeelanda et alia ejus poemata' (1641), which collection he arranged in seven parts. The first part, 'Venus Zeelanda, sive Amores Chloes et Blondae Petri van der Straten, et Cornelii Boyi', from which the book takes its general title, consists of thirty elegies, alternately addressed to Boyus by Stratenus and by Boyus to Stratenus, in which the young men sing their love for their girlfriends Chloe and Blonda. The poems follow the model of the Roman elegies of the first century A.D., but they are situated in 17th century Zeeland. The worship of Stratenus and Boyus was however fiction, because when Stratenus traveled through France, Boyus wrote him that he had exchanged his imaginary love for a real one, and he advised his friend to follow his example. The other 6 parts of the collection consist of a book of 14 Elegies (Liber Elegiarum), Basia (Kisses), Epigrammata, a 'Sylvarum Liber', among which poems for Hugo Grotius, Prince Frederik Hendrik, J.F. Gronovius, and Daniel Heinsius. A Latin translation of Anacreontic songs (Anacreon Latinus, seu Opera Anacreontis versibus elegiacis latine expressa) testifies of his interest in Greek literature. In the style of Anacreon at the end also the long poem 'Praelium rosarum inter Nymphas et Cupidinem'. (P.J. Meertens, 'Letterkundig leven in Zeeland in de zestiende en de eerste helft der zeventiende eeuw', Amsterdam 1943, p. 45/46, 'Verhandelingen der Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, XLVIII, No. 1)) The friend and editor Cornelis Boey, also Boy, Boyus, Boius, was born in Zeeland in the city of Zierikzee in 1611. After his studies he became a civil servant and man of letters. His poetry was praised by Huygens and Barlaeus, but ridiculed by Heinsius and Gronovius) (Provenance: On the front flyleaf the name of 'A.P. Stratenus, 1842'. We found a A.P. Stratenus who received a certificate of mathematics and geography, in the 6th (lowest) grade of the Gymnasium of The Hague in 1837. 5 years later he must have been able to read Latin poems. In 1840 was awarded a certificate of his progress in German. § Below this name, the name A. Snethlage. § On the title 'S: de Bvcqvoy'. In 1695 the Frisian jurist Tobias Gutberleth dedicated his dissertation 'de mysteriis deorum cabirorum' to his 'cognato suo' Suffridus de Bucquoy. Sjoerd (Suffridus) de Bucquoy, 1665-1725, got his doctorate in law in 1685. On the title of his own dissertation he presents himself as 'Frisius'. And in 1697 he wrote a congratulary poem in Dutch to a publication of Gutberleth signed as 'S: de Bucquoy'. At the end of the 16th century quite a number of 'Bucquoy's' emigrated from the North of France to the Netherlands. (See also at16home.demon.nl/BEKOOY.htm and boekgeschiedenis.be/kroniek/kron89.html) (Collation: *10, A-I12, K2 (leaf K2 blank)) (Photographs on request)
Book number: 159078 Euro 200.00

Keywords: (Oude Druk), (Rare Books), Neolatin, Neolatin poetry, Neulatein, Neulateinische Dichtkunst, antike altertum antiquity