King Louis XIV, The Sun King
King Louis XIV (1683 – 1715), known as the Sun King, was the son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. A popular and well-liked king, he also had one of the longest reigns of any French monarch. Louis XIV is most noted for his efforts to solidify the central authority of monarchs. He accomplished Cardinal Richelieu’s dream when he successfully established an absolute monarchy. This meant that he believed kings were chosen by God to rule. Further, he arranged for the aristocrats and nobles to live at the Palace of Versailles, a move that helped him ensure that absolute monarchy lasted in France until the days of the French Revolution. He abolished the Edict of Nantes, which had granted rights to Huguenots, and made France the leading European power at the time. Another factor that historians have attributed to his success as a monarch is his excision of the Cardinal as Minister, something he changed after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu’s successor [1]. He married his first cousin, Maria Theresa of Spain, also a Habsburg, in 1660, one year before he ascended to the throne.
During Louis XIV’s reign, “newsbooks” circulated and made the rounds to informing people of news. However, they presented both true and false information with no real way to tell the difference. [2]
La magnifique et superbe entree du roy et de la reyne en la ville de Paris
This book has some unusual but notable features, the primary of which is that it is actually two books in one. The "Magnifique et Superbe" book is the second one and describes, in vivid detail, what the streets of Paris looked like on the day of the wedding between Louis XIV and Marie Therese. Prior to that, for the first 80 or so pages, is another book that centers around the treaty between France and Spain for the marriage of King Louis XIV and Marie Therese of Spain, his first cousin, in 1660. The first book indicates that it was printed avec privilege de sa majesté, with the king's permission, but the second book does not. Whereas the first book indicates that the king's royal printers produced this book, the second book in the collection does not.
As mentioned in the bibliographic notes for this book, it is likely that one of the owners of this book decided he wanted to combine the two related texts into one, as they were both slim volumes, but it is unclear why the binder mixed up all the pages of the second book and spliced the two texts together rather than accurately preserving both.
Although a collation formula for this book was attempted, because of the odd numbering and unconventional methodology of fastening disjunct leaves together, it would have proven a very difficult undertaking on the basis of consistency. As a result of being rebound and trimmed, the paper in this volume has frayed edges and the length of pages is uneven.
Copperplate engraving for the two frontispieces would have been very costly at the time, which could, perphaps, explain why the rest of the book does not match the quality of the front matter. Another imporant note is to highlight the use of both Spanish and French, particularly in the first book of the set, which could have been a means of assuming that the reader understood both.