17th-century academic work on Elizabeth I, Queen of England. Rare.

[Elizabeth I, Queen of England] / [Jakob Thomasius] / Wolff Christoph Pitterlin. Q. D. B. V. Ex Historia proximi Seculi De Elisabetha Angliae Regina Ampliss. Facult. Philosoph. indultu Sub Praesidio… Lipsiae [Leipzig]: Stanno Wittigaviano, 1674. 4to [19.3 x 15.7 cm], [16] ff., with woodcut head-piece and initials. Spine covered in marbled paper. Minor toning.
 
 
Rare (2 U.S. copies) first and only edition of this 1674 Leipzig dissertation on the life of Elizabeth I, Queen of England (1533-1603). The treatise ranks among the earliest academic treatments of the Tudor queen. It records the formal examination of Wolff Christoph Pitterlin (1651-1703) by faculty headed by Jakob Thomasius (1622-1684), who famously was the teacher of Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) at Leipzig and who also was an early opponent of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670).
 
De Elisabetha Angliae Regina is concerned with establishing facts about Elizabeth’s ancestors, parentage, infancy & adolescence, the divorce of Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn, her illegitimacy and subsequent restoration to the succession in 1543, her accession to the throne, trouble with Mary, Queen of Scots, France and foreign policy, the defeat of Spanish Armada, etc.
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate two U.S. copies of this work: Yale & United Lutheran Seminary.
 
*VD17 14:083529E; B. Begley, “Naturalism and its political dangers: Jakob Thomasius against Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A study and the Translation of Thomasius’ text,” The Seventeenth Century, vol. 34, no. 5 (2018), pp. 649-70; C. Mercer, “Leibniz and His Master: The Correspondence with Jakob Thomasius,” in C. Mercer, Leibniz and his Correspondents, pp. 10-46.