Isaaci Casauboni De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI. Ad Cardinalis Baronii Prolegomena in Annales, & primam eorum partem, de Domini Nostri Iesu Christi Nativitate, Vita, Paßione, Assumtione [...]

Full title: Isaaci Casauboni De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI. Ad Cardinalis Baronii Prolegomena in Annales, & primam eorum partem, de Domini Nostri Iesu Christi Nativitate, Vita, Paßione, Assumtione. Ad Iacobum, Dei gratia, Magnæ Britanniæ, &c. Regem serenissimum.

Folio. f. [1] (blank), pp. [70], 678, [30], f. [1] (blank). Signatures: *-7*⁴, A⁶, A-5D⁴ 5E⁶ 5F-5K². Bound in contemporary vellum over boards. Gilded spine title on brown lettering panel with gilded border. Armorial bookplate of the Hon. George Baillie, 1724, and his signature on the title page. Crossed out manuscript signature on first blank. Pencil marks. From the library of the humanist Gottschalk Duve, author of an Oratio de studio et cultura humanioris literaturae, with note of his purchase at Leiden in 1645 (‘Em[p]tum Lugduni in Batavis, Ao MDCLXV. M. Godeschalcus Duvius’).

Bound with Richard Montagu, Analecta ecclesiasticarum exercitationum. London, 1622 (see also Bib# 4102854/Fr# 326 in this collection for another copy of this work).

First edition, the first and only volume of what was intended to be a more extended reply to the Annales ecclesiastici of Cardinal Cesare Baronio (see Bib# 4102666/Fr# 118), along the way demolishing the authenticity of the legendary philosopher Hermes Trismegistus, one of Baronio’s incidental sources, and demonstrating the hermetic texts and their supposedly ancient doctrine to be Hellenistic in origin. Casaubon’s effectively finished text was edited for the press by Richard Montagu (1577-1641), subsequently dean and archdeacon of Hereford, and Montagu then deceptively used Casaubon’s further notes on Baronio in an extended critique of 1622, without citing Casaubon as his source. See also W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, & K. F. Pantzer (eds.), Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640. 3 vols. London, 1976–91 (2nd ed.), 4745.

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