11

Cornelius a Lapide (Flemish, 1567-1637), Great Commentary

17th century, Antwerp, an assembled partial set in nine volumes, with six first editions, including:

Pauline Epistles (Martin Nuyts II heirs and Jan van Meurs, 1617-22?)
Major Prophets I (Martin Nuyts III & brothers, 1621), first edition
Major Prophets II (Martin Nuyts III & brothers, 1622), first edition
Minor Prophets (Martin Nuyts III, 1625), first edition
Catholic Epistles (Martin Nuyts III, 1627), first edition
Solomonic Books I (Martin Nuyts III, 1635), first edition
Solomonic Books II (Jacob van Meurs, 1670)
Four Evangelists (Jacob van Meurs, 1670)
Historical Books I (Jan van Meurs, 1642) , first edition

Demy folio, most in period tooled leather-covered wood boards, one in vellum, one in pigskin, two in late 19th-century American half leather.

Detailed bibliographic descriptions available on request.
approximately 14" x 9-1/2"

Literature: Sommervogel 1511-1522, passim.

Notes: Flemish Jesuit Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637) studied philosophy, humanities and theology in Maastricht and Cologne, entered the Society of Jesus in 1592 and was ordained in 1595. He was professor of Holy Scripture in Leuven from 1596 to 1616 and thence to the Roman College in the same capacity until his death. Much of his tenure in Rome, however, was devoted to his Great Commentary on Holy Scripture. The first two volumes - on the Pauline Epistles and the Pentateuch - had been completed in Flanders, and he would finish commentaries on nearly all the books of the Old and New Testaments and Deuterocanonicals in Rome. He lived to see several editions of his earlier volumes, but the sheer scope of the work prohibited its publication during his lifetime, and the complete text was not published until the decade after his death. (Nor did he live to finish commentaries on Job or the Psalms; the Great Commentary is canonically completed with commentaries by Balthasar Cordier (1592-1654) and St. Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), respectively.)

The ambitious exegesis - at once scholarly and personal - is expansive in its survey of the four classical methods of textual interpretation: literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical. It has been republished several times in every century since it was written, and its status as one of the most important works of Biblical scholarship of the Counter-Reformation may be judged by its wide appeal among both Catholics and Protestants; indeed, the first complete English translation was overseen by Anglican clergyman Thomas W. Mossman (1826-1885).

The various owners' statements and stamps show an impressive provenance for this set. The earliest dated (1640) autograph statements tie some of the volumes to the Corsendonk Priory, founded in 1393 by Maria, daughter of the Duke of Brabant. The Priory was noted for its scriptorium and library, and one volume here has written the name of Fr. Johannes Hoybergius, who compiled an inventory of Priory library manuscripts in 1633, served as prior from 1642 and finished the history of the monastery begun by former prior Johannes Latomus (1520-1578) - Corsendonca - in 1644; he died in 1647. The Priory was closed by Emperor Joseph II in 1785, and the property seized and sold during the failed Brabant Revolution subsequent to Napoleonic occupation. Nearly a century later, the Corsendonk and other volumes found their way into the library of the Rev. Fr. John Baptist Eis (1845-1922), the German-born pastor of the Sacred Heart parish in Columbus, Ohio, from its formation in 1875 until his death in 1922. (Eis had been a chaplain in the Franco-Prussian War, after which he taught in Blois, where he may have obtained the Corsendonk volumes; two other volumes bear binder's labels for late 19th-century Columbus bindery The Ruggles-Gales Company, suggesting that Father Eis obtained - or at least re-bound - some volumes in the United States.) The set next passed to the Society of the Divine Word in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, which had founded there in 1923 St. Augustine's Seminary: the first Catholic Seminary in the United States for African Americans. The set at the time was still used for theological instruction, as evidenced by the contemporary library markings, pockets and cards. Thus is the importance of this work documented in the signs and marks left by its readers, recording three centuries of study by Catholic clergy.


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