Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance by MORE, Sir Thomas - 1533

The Balance of Power Between Church and State MORE, Sir Thomas. The Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance. London: Printed by W. Rastell, 1533. First edition. Two parts in one small octavo volume. ciiii, clxxiii, [2, "The fautes escaped in the pryntynge"] leaves. Bound without final blank leaf. This copy has leaf c8 in probable facsimile. Black letter. Title within woodcut border (McKerrow and Ferguson 27). Woodcut historiated initials. Early twentieth-century brown crushed levan morocco by Riviere and Son. Covers ruled in gilt and blind with gilt corner ornaments, spine ruled in gilt and blind decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, board edges ruled in gilt, turn-ins ruled in gilt and blind, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers. Washed preliminaries and a few other leaves with slight discoloration at upper corners, leaf a4 with crease marks to corners and short tear at upper margin, final leaves slightly discolored. An excellent copy of this extremely rare work. From the library of William Foyle with his bookplate. Housed in a custom quarter brown morocco clamshell. Only one other copy has appeared at auction in the last 25 years, the Bute-Martin copy, in which the second part was somewhat wormed and restored, costing a few letters per page. "Thomas More's Debellation of Salem and Bizance is one of his most intriguing works...John Guy convincingly establishes that both St. German's Salem and Bizance and More's counterblast were written in the context of Henry VIII's attempt to secure a political revolution by altering the balance of power between church and state...This at last reveals the Debellation in it's true light , as a document that embodies the struggle between adherents of the old and new orders at a stage when the outcome was by no means certain (Alistair Fox's review of Volume 10 of The Yale Edition of the complete Works of St. Thomas More, edited by John Guy, in the Catholic Historic Review). "In 'The Apologye of Syr Thomas More, Knyght, made by him Anno 1533 after he had geuen over the office of Lord Chancellour of Englande' ([published] by W. Rastell), 1533...More defended himself against charges of undue length and personal abuse in his controversial writing; he renews the attack on Tindal and Barnes and on Christopher St. German, the anonymous author of 'The Pacifier of the Division between Spirituality and the Temporality,' and defends a rigorous treatment of heretics. This was answered by St. German in 'Salem and Bizance,' to which More retorted within a month in the 'Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance'...another vindication of the severe punishment of heresy" (D.N.B.). "Probably in 1532 [legal writer and contraversialist Christopher Saint-German] issued, anonymously, his 'Treatise concernynge the division betwene the spiritualite and the temporaltie'...In it Saint-German lays the blame of the division on the clergy. It is said to have been commended to Sir Thomas More for its moderation, in contrast to his own intemperance of language. Early in 1533 More made a vigorous attack upon it in his 'Apology', referring to the author as 'the pacifier'. This provoked a reply from Saint-German entitled 'A Dialogue betwixte two Englishmen, whereof one was called Salem and the other Bizance,' which ended the controversy" (D.N.B.). Gibson, More, 50. STC 18081. HBS 66435. $12,500