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Promptuarium Catholicum ad instructionem concionatorum contra haereticos nostri temporis, super omnia evangelia totius anni, tam Dominicalia, quam de festis …  Pars prima Dominicalis …  Editio tertia ab authore recognita et locupletata.  Additus est index rerum copiosissimus. 

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Rare third edition, expanded, of Stapleton’s handbook or ‘storehouse’ of scriptural devotions for Sundays and feast days, first published in 1589.  An independent companion volume for the weekdays in Lent was first published in 1594. 

The ‘most learned Roman Catholic of his time’ (Wood), Stapleton was destined for a promising academic career before the death of Queen Mary; in exile under Elizabeth he became one of the most skilful of Catholic controversialists.  His Promptuarium Catholicum was widely used, the volume for Sundays and feast days running to twenty-three editions by 1631, and for weekdays in Lent to eighteen.  In it, Stapleton ‘sought to focus on those phrases which directly challenged his Protestant opponents, or at least his view of what those Protestant opponents claimed, and he confronted their arguments directly, citing them by name and imputing dishonesty and fraud to them.  Beyond scripture itself, chief among the authorities referred to by Stapleton in his commentaries were the writings of Augustine.  This was typical of Stapleton’s approach in the Promptuarium Catholicum for the Sunday gospels’ (Sheils, ‘The Gospel, liturgy and controversy in the 1590s: Thomas Stalpeton’s Promptuaria’ in Early Modern English Catholicism (ed. Kelly & Royal, 2016), pp. 189-205, p. 198). 

No copies traced in the US.  OCLC shows only one copy in the British Isles, at University College Dublin. 

Allison & Rogers 1169. 

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