Life of the Grand Duke of Muscovy Ivan Vasilyevich

Full title: "I. Ioannis Basilidis magni Moscoviae Ducis vita, a Paullo [sic] Oderbornio tribus libris conscripta. Ad Henricum Iulium episcopum Halberstadensem." (Life of the Grand Duke of Muscovy Ivan Vasilyevich, Described in Three Books by Paullo [sic] Oderbornio. For the Bishop of Halberstadt Henry Julius.)

Lutheran pastor Paul Orderborn (~1555–1604) was a preacher in the Lutheran community of Vilnius from 1578, participated in the battles of the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Stephen Bathory, and later became a priest in Kaunas. It was there that he wrote the biography of Ivan IV the Terrible, Life of the Grand Duke of Muscovy Ivan Vasilyevich. The book is considered to be the first biographical novel in the literary history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Orderborn based it on his own impressions and the testimony of participants in the Livonian war, envoys to Moscow from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and others. The book became popular and was republished in Latin in 1594 and 1600 as well as translated into German. This is a very rare first edition. The book is bound with Notes on Hebraic Phrases (De phrasibus ebraeis commentariolus) by German Reformat theologian Abdias Praetorius (1524–1573), published in 1561 in Wittenberg.