La Monarchie des Solipses...

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n.p., Ansterdam, 1721. Duodecimo, woodcut device on title; a very good copy in contemporary mottledcalf gilt. First French edition of this satirical fantasy on the Jesuits, exaggerating their society as a separate world with a 'nouvelle forme de Gouvernement inconnue dans nôtre Hémisphere'.

Scotti (1602-1669), an Italian from an influential patrician family and a Jesuit himself, had a turbulent career marred by a series of public quarrels with both the Order and the various universities at which he was professor. His Monarchie des Solipses (first published in Venice in 1645) takes the form of an 'ingenious satire against the Jesuits achieved by describing their society as the monarchy of Solipsia' (Gibson). Scotti's scathing account of a narcissistic society separated from the world struck a chord: indeed, his apparent invention of the word 'solipsist' to describe the Jesuits was popularly used as a derogatory term for some time after publication.

The thoroughness of the work and the consistency of the allegory were widely praised, although its obscurity was a problem: 'Peu de lecteurs sont en état d'entendre le style obscur, plein d'allusions et de réticences, de cet ouvrage, qui, à part endroits curieux, n'est qu'une satire dictée par le dépit' (NBG). No doubt this accounts for the fact that this French translation is furnished with extensive notes clarifying and explaining the allusions.
Barbier, III, p. 333; Gibson, 'St. Thomas More... with a Bibliography of Utopiana', 768.

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