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RARE NEAPOLITAN PSALMODY

[NAPLES]. HOLMES, Daniel. Psalms hymns and canticles as appointed to be sung in the british chapel at naples.

[Naples]. [s.n.], 1850.
8vo. vi, [2]pp, 72ff. The main body of the text with printed music to versos, and libretti to rectos. Contemporary (perhaps original) purple cloth, gilt, titled to spine and upper board. Marbled endpapers. Marked (with some remains of what is presumably candle wax to lower board), slightly faded and rubbed, small wormhole at the head of spine, bumping to corners.
A rare survival of a Neapolitan-printed psalmody/hymnal produced for the use of the English Protestant congregation at Naples, 'revised by Daniel Holmes, organist to the chapel'.

Traditionally a room in the house of the Consul-General was provided for the English of Naples to worship, but with the reduction in stature of the Consul during the early nineteenth-century pressure mounted for the construction of a permanent - and separate - home. Despite strong ties between the Bourbon monarchy and the English establishment, disputes between the congregation and the government of Naples ensued. Newly built premises were vetoed, and so instead the first separate and permanent Chapel, which opened in 1841, consisted of a part of the Palazzo Calabritti paid for, after successful appeal to Lord Palmerston, by Her Majesty's foreign office.

Rare; OCLC and COPAC locate only three copies, all in the UK (BL, Glasgow and Oxford).
£ 325.00 Antiquates Ref: 23584