Historia Iesuitici Ordinis, Das ist: Grundliche Beschreibung deß Jesuitischen Ordens [...].

CONTROVERSIAL ACCOUNT OF THE JESUITS BY A CONVERT TO LUTHERANISM

Title printed in red and black, verso with woodcut portrait of Ignatius of Loyola.

4to (193 x 150mm). [18]ff, 660pp. Contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over bevelled wooden boards, upper cover with central stamp depicting Fides and Spes (Faith and Hope) with Justitia, Prudentia, Fortitudo and Temperantia in surrounding corners, with inner roll-tooled border of volutes, outer border of heads in medallions ('CARO', 'OCDA', 'SOLI', 'HEIN'), all from the workshop of 'H.B.M.' (Haebler I 50 f.), lower cover with central stamp of Charity and the Beggar, with Pietas, Patientia, Castitas and Amicitia in surrounding corners, same rolls, spine with six raised bands, remnants of title at head, original clasps, lacking one catch (binding discoloured, some stains, worn at extremities).

Frankfurt am Main, [Johann Spieß], 1594.

First edition in German of Jesuit-turned-Lutheran Elias Hasenmuller's account of the Society of Jesus, translated by Melchior Leporinus. Both this and the first edition in Latin (Frankfurt, Spieß, 1593) were published after Hasenmuller's death in 1587. Prefacing the text here are Leporinus' dedicatory preface to Joachim Friedrich of Brandenburg, and Protestant editor Polycarp Leyser's preface. This edition is the first to contain the woodcut portrait of Ignatius de Loyola on the verso of the title page.

Little is known of Hasenmuller himself, though his account has become an important and much-cited source of information on the Jesuit order for contemporaries and subsequent scholars. 'It defines the goal of the Jesuit foundation as resistance to heretics, especially the Lutherans' (Maryks, 'Protestantism and the Early Jesuits', 8) and has been described as a tell-all exposé of Jesuit practices and secrets, built on Hasenmuller's own experiences within the order. Another of Hasenmuller's works, also of 1593, examines the lives of Martin Luther and Bishop Martin of Tours, on whose feast day Luther was apparently baptised.

Provenance: Title page with stamp in red ink of an open-bottomed square surmounted by a cross - possibly a variation on calvary cross - offset on front free endpaper.

Some browning, water stain at lower blank margin of just over half of leaves, not affecting text.

VD16 H719. (Binding: Haebler I, 50 f.) Not in Sommervogel. Ref: R. Maryks, ‘Protestantism and Early Jesuits’, in R. Maryks & F. Mkenda eds, Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa (Brill, 2018), pp.1-10.

[OCLC: North America & Canada: Stanford, UPenn, Harvard, Syracuse University, University of Ontario, Algonquin College. UK: Oxford.]

Stock Code: 221448