Clerical Conscience Cleanser
[JACOBUS DE GRUYTRODE, attributed.]
Lavacrum conscientie omnibus presbyteris, ac devotis religiosis valde perutile incipit feliciter. Paris, Bernard Aubry, [c. 1517].
Small 8vo, ff. cix, [3]; large woodcut printer’s device to title, initials; a couple of small wormholes, small interlinear worm track to ff. xix–xxvi, small marginal hole to last leaf, some marginal damp-staining and occasional slight foxing; else a very good copy in nineteenth-century sheep, covers blind-tooled with repeated floral stamps, spine lettered in gilt, edges red, decorative endpapers; extremities rubbed; book label of the Belgian collector Anselm van den Bogaerde (1776–1866) to front pastedown, pencil notes to front free endpaper.
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Lavacrum conscientie omnibus presbyteris, ac devotis religiosis valde perutile incipit feliciter.
Rare edition of this popular late medieval treatise, ‘The Bath of Conscience’, widely ascribed to the Carthusian monk and prior of Liège, Jacobus de Gruytrode (d. 1475).
Essentially a handbook for priests, it was first published in the late 1480s. The text, arranged in twenty-one chapters, discusses, inter alia, sacerdotal ornaments; alms giving; prayer; the vice of lust; preaching; ecclesiastical benefices and the abuse thereof; and priestly misdemeanours; and ends with an extended devotional section on Christ’s Passion.
Numerous exempla are supplied along the way to reinforce the author’s arguments. We read, for example, of a countess condemned for her showy dress; a concubinary priest living under the same roof as an adulterous innkeeper; an ignorant cleric only knowing how to read one office; a bad bishop who behaved like a lion and died like a dog; a Parisian arts student who swotted day and night; two women who pulled out a holy man’s hair; and a priest fornicating on Christmas Day.
Bernard Aubry was the son of the binder Jacques Aubry, and succeeded to the business of his father-in-law Denis Roce. The dating of this edition is based upon the printer’s device.
No copies traced in the US, and only one in the UK (Bodleian). BP16 103314; USTC 183750.