Apparatus ad omnium gentium historiam (Apparatus to the history of all peoples) 1597

The author of this bibliographical guide is Antonio Possevino

Antonio Possevino

Antonio Possevino was a Jesuit protagonist of Counter Reformation as a papal diplomat and a Jesuit controversialist, encyclopedist and bibliographer...

, a major fugure in the diplomatic and intellectual life of the Counter Reformation. His Bibliotheca selecta

Bibliotheca selecta

Bibliotheca selecta is a bibliographical encyclopedia by the Jesuit Antonio Possevino, printed in two folio volumes at the Typographia Apostolica Vaticana by Domenico Basa in 1593...

 1593 announces a programmatic role for history as a guiding principle in his organization of his select library "in Historia, in Disciplinis". Possevino's De Humana Historia, Book 16 is a first elaboration of his re-edition of the culture of the ars historica

Ars historica

Ars Historica was a genre of humanist historiography in the later Renaissance. It produced a small library of treatises underscoring the stylistic aspects of writing history as a work of art, but also introducing the contributions of philology and textual criticism in its precepts and...

 as part of a papally sanctioned programme of Catholic learning. In 1597 with the printer G.B.Ciotti of Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 Possevino expanded this material to a book with this ambitious title in seven parts. whose title is in direct contest with the Methodus Ad facilem historiarum cognitionem 1560 of Jean Bodin

Jean Bodin

Jean Bodin was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. He is best known for his theory of sovereignty; he was also an influential writer on demonology....