‘The First Great Catholic Theologian’: Edited by Erasmus
IRENAEUS.
Opus eruditissimum divi Irenaei episcopi Lugdunensis, in quinque libros digestum, in quibus mire retegit et confutat veterum haereseon impias ac portentosas opiniones, ex vetustissimorum codicum collatione qua[n]tum licuit Des. Erasmi Roterodami opera emendatum …
Paris, Oudin Petit, 1563.
8vo, ff. [8], 368, [28 (index)]; woodcut device to title, woodcut initials and headpieces; some marginal toning and dampstaining; good in seventeenth-century stiff vellum, yapp fore-edges, title in ink at head of spine, edges blue; some staining to spine and covers, upper joint split at head, front hinge split; washed inscription to title, bookplate of Jean François Foppens to front pastedown, inscriptions of Charles Daman (1839) and H. Daman (1868) to front free endpaper; long manuscript note to f. [6]v (washed).
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Opus eruditissimum divi Irenaei episcopi Lugdunensis, in quinque libros digestum, in quibus mire retegit et confutat veterum haereseon impias ac portentosas opiniones, ex vetustissimorum codicum collatione qua[n]tum licuit Des. Erasmi Roterodami opera emendatum …
Jean François Foppens’s copy of Erasmus’s pioneering edition of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, first published at Basel by Johann Froben in 1526.
Irenaeus (c. 130–c. 200) served as bishop of Lyons. ‘His theological writing grew out of his work as a missionary and pastoral bishop in an era when Gnosticism was a serious threat to the Church. His principal treatise, the ‘Adversus omnes haereses’ … is a detailed attack on Gnosticism, and especially on the system of Valentinus. Part of it is preserved in Greek, but the whole text survives in a literal Latin version … As sources Irenaeus appears to have drawn upon Justin and Theophilus of Antioch, and he was himself drawn upon regularly by subsequent heresiologists … Irenaeus is the first great Catholic theologian … he opposed Gnosticism … by emphasising the traditional elements of the Church, especially the Episcopate, Scripture … and the religious and theological tradition’ (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church). Erasmus much admired Irenaeus; in his introductory epistle he hopes that some new ‘Irenaei’ might rise to bring peace to his troubled times.
Oudin Petit, grandson of Jean, served as printer to the university of Paris. Four years after the publication of this work, however, he was stripped of the title on account of his Protestantism, in spite of the backing of the faculties of medicine and canon law. In 1572 he fell victim to the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, assassinated by thugs in the pay of his father-in-law Jacques Kerver.
Provenance: with the bookplate of the Belgian historian Jean François Foppens (1689–1761), best known for his Bibliotheca Belgica (1739), a catalogue of Belgian authors and their works.
Adams I155; USTC 153450.
