pp. (18), 1064, 24 (Index). Double column Latin text. Lacks the frontis portrait found in some copies. Wood engraved head and tail pieces, and initials. Light damp stain. Folio. 400 mm. Original full leather binding; joints and corners worn and cracked. Dedicated to Charles XI. Baron Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-1694), was a German jurist, political philosopher, economist, statesman, and historian. His commentaries and revisions of the theories of Thomas Hobbes and Hugo Grotius advanced the development of the theory of natural law and distinguished between the hegemony of church and state. Unlike Hobbes, he believed that it was the nature of human beings to live sociably in peace. In 1658 as Magister and, with the help of his brother Esaias, a diplomat in the Swedish service, became a tutor in the family of Petrus Julius Coyet, one of the resident ministers of King Charles X of Sweden, at Copenhagen. At this time, Charles Gustavus was endeavoring to impose an unwanted alliance on Denmark, and in the middle of the negotiations he opened hostilities. The anger of the Danes was turned against the envoys of the Swedish sovereign; Coyet succeeded in escaping, but the second minister, Sten Bielke, and the rest of the staff, including Pufendorf, were arrested and thrown into prison. During his eight months of captivity, Pufendorf occupied himself in meditating upon what he had read in the works of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes and mentally constructed a system of universal law. At the end of his captivity, he accompanied his pupils, the sons of Coyet, to the University of Leiden, where he was permitted to publish his reflections in 1661, under the title of Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis libri duo (Elements of Universal Jurisprudence). From 1677-1688 Pufendorf returned to Stockholm as Royal Historiographer, and produced several works, including this large and significant history, dedicated to Charles XI, which was first published in Utrecht in 1686. Scarce. LIVING ROOM
