Bellarmine’s Biobibliography
BELLARMINE, Robert.
De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis liber unus. Cum adiunctis indicibus undecim, et brevi chronologia ab orbe condito usque ad annum M.DC.XII … Rome, Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1613.
4to, pp. [12], 258, [14, index], 37 [tables], [3, errata and colophon]; woodcut Jesuit device to title, initials, tailpieces, device of Francesco Zanetti to last leaf; some foxing and browning; good in eighteenth-century half vellum, red patterned paper sides, spine lettered in gilt, red edges; slight wear to extremities and rubbing to covers; inscription to title crossed through in ink.
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De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis liber unus. Cum adiunctis indicibus undecim, et brevi chronologia ab orbe condito usque ad annum M.DC.XII …
First edition of a remarkable biobibliography of ‘ecclesiastical writers’ by the great Jesuit theologian and controversialist, Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), one of the most important figures of the Counter-Reformation.
The entries run from Moses (dated to 2483 BC) to Martín de Azpilcueta (1492–1586) via King David, the Evangelists, the Church Fathers, Bede, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Petrarch, Jean Gerson, Thomas à Kempis, Marsilio Ficino, John Fisher, and Thomas More. The useful indexes guide the reader to, for example, expositors on the scriptures, writers against heretics, scholastic theologians, orators, poets, and historians.
The chronological table at the end, running from AD 1 to 1612 has a whole column devoted to heresies through history, positively jammed with text from the opening of the sixteenth century. On p. 35 we find the following entry, for example: ‘Martin Luther the German heresiarch, and father of heresiarchs, began to disturb the Church in the year 1517 and disturbed it until 1546 when he died miserably; he taught very many errors’ (trans.). Editions appeared at Lyon and Cologne in the same year, a testament to the work’s success.
Sommervogel I, 1226; USTC 4026683. Library Hub records 4 copies in the UK (BL, Cambridge UL, All Souls Oxford, Lincoln Cathedral).