Erased Royal Arms
HOSPINIAN, Rudolf.
Historia Jesuitica. Hoc est, de origine, regulis, constitutionibus, privilegiis, incrementis, progressu et propagatione ordinis Jesuitarum. Item de eorum dolis, fraudibus, imposturis, nefariis facinoribus, cruentis consiliis, falsa quoque seditiosa, et sanguinolenta doctrina. Zurich, Johannes Rudolph Wolf, 1670.
Folio, pp. [xxx], 418, [2 (blank)], without the half-title, text in Latin with some German, title printed in red and black, woodcut initials, woodcut head- and tailpieces, large woodcut on title of a basket filled with fruit and flowers; some light foxing and marginal dampstaining, small paper flaw in one leaf (H4) affecting running title only; eighteenth-century vellum, contrasting black and red lettering-pieces on spine; soiled and slightly rubbed; manuscript notes in Latin in an eighteenth-century hand on front free endpaper.
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Historia Jesuitica. Hoc est, de origine, regulis, constitutionibus, privilegiis, incrementis, progressu et propagatione ordinis Jesuitarum. Item de eorum dolis, fraudibus, imposturis, nefariis facinoribus, cruentis consiliis, falsa quoque seditiosa, et sanguinolenta doctrina.
Second edition of Hospinian’s vast and vitriolic attack on the Jesuits, first published in 1619 (also in Zurich by Wolf); both editions are scarce.
The Swiss Reformed theologian Rudolf Hospinian (Rudolf Wirth, 1547–1626) was appointed archdeacon of the Grossmünster in Zurich in 1588 and became pastor of the Fraumünster in 1594. ‘After 1623 he was no longer able to fulfil this office because of his declining health. He expressed his opinion on controversial matters such as the sacraments, the church, feast days, monastic orders, the papacy, funerals, and the Jesuits. By showing their historical development he sought to justify his own Reformed tradition vis-à-vis the other confessions’ (Martin Sallmann in Religion Past and Present 6, p. 260).
A curious feature of the binding is that the covers were once stamped with the arms of George III (see University of Toronto British Armorial Bindings database, stamp 18). At an early date, perhaps even while still in the binder’s workshop, these arms were erased and the present rather ungainly arabesque design tooled over them.
Provenance: from the library at West Horsley Place, once the home of Robert Crewe-Milnes, first Marquess of Crewe (1858–1945), but without his bookplate.
VD17 12.114276G. Sommervogel XI 57 records the first edition.