WITH EXTENSIVE ADDITIONS
BELLARMINO, Roberto.
De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis liber unus. Adiunctis indicibus undecim, & brevi chronologia ab orbe condito usque ad annum MDCXII. Ultima editio a mendis praecedentium sedulo ac diligenter expurgata. Cum appendice philologica & chronologica R.P. Philippi Labbe …
Paris, Sébastien Cramoisy, 1658.
8vo, pp. [xxiv], 573, [3, blank]; woodcut printer’s device to title-page, woodcut initials and headpieces; a little toned throughout with occasional light spots, but a very good copy; uncut in contemporary vellum, sewn on 3 tawed thongs laced in, later manuscript title in ink to spine; recased, endpapers and endbands renewed; eighteenth-century annotations to c. 230 pp. (see below); some show-through and bleeding of ink from annotations.
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De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis liber unus. Adiunctis indicibus undecim, & brevi chronologia ab orbe condito usque ad annum MDCXII. Ultima editio a mendis praecedentium sedulo ac diligenter expurgata. Cum appendice philologica & chronologica R.P. Philippi Labbe …
An uncut copy of Bellarmino’s bibliography of ecclesiastical writers, with extensive eighteenth-century annotations and additions.
Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino (1542–1621) was a prominent figure in the Catholic Reformation. A Jesuit, he studied in Rome, Padua and Louvain, and held high office in the Church, as papal legate and, more notably, as an investigator into Galileo’s heliocentrism in 1616 (he affirmed afterwards to Galileo that his opinions had not been condemned). From 1587 he worked for the Congregation of the Index for Prohibited Books, becoming prefect in 1605, a post he held until his death.
His bibliography of ecclesiastical writers, originally devised as a guide to patristic literature, first appeared in 1616, and is arranged chronologically, beginning with Moses and the writers of the Old Testament, ending in 1500 with Martinus Azpilcueta. The volume opens with an alphabetical list of authors, and the entries are followed by various indexes of writers by subject: biblical commentaries (divided into old and new writers), works against heresy, scholastic theology, history, and other smaller categories. The volume concludes with Bellarmino’s chronology of the world, up to the year 1612, listing kings, patriarchs, popes, writers, and heresiarchs. He also includes comments in the entries about what he has read and his personal opinions.
The annotator is not just marking passages but providing additional information including dates of authors and other biographical details (alternative forms of name or towns of origin), mentioning other bibliographies by Antonio Possevino, Philippe Labbe, and Photius, in particular noting later editions of the texts mentioned in Bellarmino’s entries in order to expand and update them. The annotator also marks omissions by Bellarmino, adding the titles of books by various authors, and comments on the editions noted: in the list of poetical works by Gregory of Nazianzus, taken by Bellarmino from the 1570 Cologne edition, the annotator states ‘multa et plurima desiderantur in hac editione’ (p. 123).
USTC 6127031.
