Hoc opere continentur, Liber de passione Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, carnine hexame tro, incerto autore ad Donatum Episcopum scriptus. Abdiae Babyloniæ episcopi, & Apostolurum discipuli, de historia certaminis apostolici, libri decem [...]

Full title: Hoc opere continentur, Liber de passione Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, carnine hexame tro, incerto autore ad Donatum Episcopum scriptus. Abdiae Babyloniæ episcopi, & Apostolurum discipuli, de historia certaminis apostolici, libri decem, Iulio Africano, cuius subinde Hieronymus meminit, interprete. apostolici; Mathiæ apostoli vita, ex Hebraica lingua incerto interprete versa. Beatorum, Marci, Clementis, Cypriani & Apollinaris historiæ, ex scriniis & archivis primitivæ Ecclesiæ notariorum. Vita B. Martini Sabariensis, episcopi Turonensis, à Sulpitio Severo Rhetore Latine conscripta. Quos omnes autores multis seculis latentes, dum Antiquitatem sacrosanctam rimatur, unà cum aliis pluribus, à blattis & tineis eruit Wolfgangus Lazius Viennensis Austriacus, D. Ferdinandi Rom. Regis à consiliis & historiis. Adiecimus & Ioachimi Perionii, doctissimi viri, librum de rebus gestis vitisq[ue] Apostolorum: & locupletem rerum ac verborum in his omnibus memorabilium Indicem.

Folio. ff. [12], pp. 219, 114, ff. [6]. Signatures: a-b⁶ c-z⁴ 2A-2E⁴ 2F⁶ ; A-Q⁴ (Q4 blank). Contemporary pigskin boards. Contains numerous ownership inscriptions and stamps on title page (“Sum Monasterii Augiae Minoris n˚ 1608,” “Domus Gorheim,” “Archivum V. Prov. Helveticae,” “Monasterii [????]”).

First printing of De historia certaminis apostolici, attributed to Abdias, said to have been one of the 72 disciples of Christ and the (imaginary) apostle and first bishop of Babylon, from a manuscript that Lazius claimed to have found in a cave in the Austrian duchy of Carinthia. Supposedly written in Hebrew in the first century AD, translated into Greek by Abdias’s disciple Eutropius, and into Latin by Julius Africanus in the third century, the text is now dated 6th century (France) or later. See H. M. Adams, Catalogue of Books Printed on the Continent of Europe, 1501-1600, in Cambridge Libraries. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1967, L350.

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