CORDARA Guilio Cesare Capitolo Sopra il Pallone-volante, Recitato nell’Adunanza degli Immobili in Alessandria, Dal Sigr. Abate Giulio-Cesare CORDAR De’ Conti di Calamandrana.

See De Backer & Sommervogel II, 1425 n°61.

A handwritten copy of this poem in praise of aerostation, written in large, handsome brown ink, contemporary with the edition printed in Rome in 1784. Father Cordara is a vivid defender of the Montgolfier brothers' brand-new invention, citing against its detractors "Il Signor Montgolfier, Il Galileo, Il Toricelli, La Nave aerea del P. Lana, Vedi il Poema del P. Lamagna". At the end one finds the Latin version of this Tetrastichon : De Machina Aerostatica Montgolferiana, Incerti Auctoris. Guilio Cesare Cordara (1704-1785), born in Alessandria in Piemont, entered the Jesuit Order at a very young age. Teaching at various colleges of his order, he had acquired a great reputation in the fields of poetry, rhetoric and history.