BETROTHAL AND MARRIAGE
[DENS, Pierre, editor.]
Tractatus selecti de sponsalibus et matrimonio. Duae partes.
Louvain, Louis Joseph Urban, 1775.
12mo, pp. [4], 366, [6], large folding plate with letterpress tables of consanguinity facing p. 205; woodcut ornament to title, woodcut and typographic head- and tail-pieces; some creasing to folding plate, occasional light foxing, but a very good copy; bound in contemporary red morocco for Jean Baptiste Théodore De Jonghe with his arms blocked in gilt to boards (see below), borders roll-tooled in gilt with further floral tooling, spine gilt in compartments with De Jonghe’s arms gilt in one and lettered directly in gilt in another, edges gilt, marbled endpapers; extremities slightly rubbed; De Jonghe’s armorial bookplate to front pastedown.
Uncommon first edition of this interesting work on the legal aspects of betrothal and marriage, in a handsome contemporary binding.
The work is attributed to the Belgian Catholic theologian Pierre Dens (1690–1775) who served for many years as reader in theology and president at the archiepiscopal seminary in Mechelen. The content is presented in question and answer format; the first part on betrothal covers, for example, parental consent, clandestine engagements, and ‘carnal commerce’ with third parties; the second longer part on marriage deals with, inter alia, its sacramental aspects, divorce, polygamy, consanguinity, adultery, homicide, secret marriages contracted in Holland, rape, officiating priests, and witnesses. A second edition appeared the following year.
Provenance:
1. Bound for the Belgian bibliophile Jean Baptiste Théodore De Jonghe (1801–1860), who began collecting books while a student; while writing his doctoral dissertation De Matrimonio et ejusque impedimentis (Louvain, 1823), he ‘gathered over a long period all the necessary materials for the completion of this scientific work. One still finds a good assortment in his library of dissertations … on marriage, its forms, and its laws among different peoples’ (Catalogue des livres …, p. xi, trans.). He went on, alongside a distinguished career as a lawyer and diplomat, to assemble a substantial library, dispersed across ten days after his death.
2. Catalogue des livres et manuscrits formant la bibliothèque de feu M. J. B. Th. De Jonghe … (Brussels, Heussner, 5–15 November 1860), lot 1636.
Only one copy traced in the UK (Ushaw College) and three in the US (Loyola University Chicago, Saint Louis University, Xavier University).
