jamesgray2

394G Saint Augustine   (354-430 AD) :    translator . John Floyd 1572 – 1649

The meditations, soliloquia, and manual of the glorious doctor St. Augustine. Translated into English.

London : printed for Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn, 1686.       $1,100
Octavo A-T12 5 3/4 X 3 1/4 inches. This is the second edition of the Floyd translation. This copy is bound full original calf beautifully rebacked.

John Floyd was an English Jesuit, known as a controversialist. He was known both as a preacher and teacher, and was frequently arrested in England. He was born in Cambridgeshire in 1572. After studying in the school of the English Jesuits at Eu, Normandy, he was admitted on 17 March 1588 to the English College, Reims, where he studied humanities and philosophy. Next he went to the English College, Rome, admitted there 9 October 1590, and joined the Society of Jesus on 1 November 1592. On 18 August 1593 Floyd received minor orders at Reims or Douai, and on the 22nd of the same month he was sent back to the English College at Rome with nine companions, where he taught philosophy and theology, and became known as a preacher. In 1609 he became a professed father of the Jesuit order. He worked for a long time on the English mission. Having visited Edward Olscorne in Worcester gaol in 1606, he was detained, and he was unable either by entreaties or bribes to escape Sir John Popham. After a year’s imprisonment he was sent into exile with forty-six other priests, and he went to St. Omer where he composing controversial works. Then he returned to England, where he was often captured, and frequently contrived to pay off the pursuivants.

This selection of extracts from Saint Augustine’s Meditations and his Manual, the two together are considered a single work. It is a hand-sized devotional work, meant for pious reflection and inspiration. “A dialogic monologue, the Soliloquia are usually read as representing Augustine’s personal testimony, a more intimate witness than the dialogues to his state of mind between conversion and baptism. That they are a personal witness is patent, but the first book in particular should also be read as programmatic, reflecting Augustine’s mind at the beginning of his country retreat, as he set out not only to analyze his spiritual and intellectual aspirations but to begin to fulfill them. Recalling the one constant of the last decade, during which all had been in flux except the desire for intellectual integrity, Soliloquia sets the agenda for the dialogues but does not anticipate their conclusions.
Wing A4212A
See also Allison & Rogers #306; Clancy 43; deBacker-Sommervogel III col 814 no 8

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886 G     Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo (354-430 AD); translator  William  Watts (1590?-1649),

London: printed by Iohn Norton, for Iohn Partridge: and are to be sold at the signe of the Sunne in Pauls Church-yard, 1631

$4,500.00
Duodecimo: 14 x 8.1 cm. [12], 1012, [8] p., [1] With an added engraved title page. Collation: A B-2V 2X

FIRST EDITION.

A fine copy bound in contemporary vellum, soiled, and with minor faults. Complete with the engraved frontispiece depicting Augustine in his garden in Milan at the moment of his conversion. A small bird is shown uttering the fateful words, “Tolle, Lege” (“take up and read”). The text is complete and has only a little minor staining. The first leaf is soiled and a little loose. There is a natural paper flaw in leaf D6 and a clean tear in leaf Ff3. A nice copy of a book rarely found in its contemporary binding.

First edition of William Watts’ translation, written in part as a response to the “popish” translation of Sir Tobie Matthew (1577-1655) printed at the English College press of St. Omer in 1620. Watts began his translation as a Lenten devotion, but, he tells us, “I quickly found it to exercise more than my devotion: it exercised my skill (all I had): it exercised my patience, it exercised my friends too, for ‘tis incomparably the hardest taske that ever I undertooke.” The book is dedicated to Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry’s daughter Elizabeth, Lady Hare of Stow, Norfolk.”The ‘Confessions’ were something quite new to literary composition. Their frank description of both emotional and intellectual problems, their acute psychological observations and analysis of complex sentiments, and at the same time their obvious sincerity and humility, account for their immediate and lasting influence.”The ‘Confessions’ is the first great autobiography in which personal confession and revelations are linked with the spirit of Christian piety and devotion. It was written soon after Augustine became Bishop of Hippo in 397, and none of his other writings, apart from ‘The City of God’, has been more universally read or admired. Its strength of though and confession of weakness have been a constant support to Christians ever since.” (Printing and the Mind of Man)”Augustine is remarkable for what he did and extraordinary for what he wrote. If none of his written works had survived, he would still have been a figure to be reckoned with. However, more than five million words of his writings survive, virtually all displaying the strength and sharpness of his mind and some possessing the rare power to attract and hold the attention of readers in both his day and ours. His distinctive theological style shaped Latin Christianity in a way surpassed only by scripture itself.”(Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition)”Augustine’s complicated personal journey has enriched his thought with a large number of themes and starting points, which may not have found a definitive systematic placement but precisely for this reason exercise all the greater a fascination upon those periods that, like the present, shun naively integral constructions. A schoolteacher, he was brought up on texts of the classical period, and from these he got to know the best products of Greek and Latin culture. A Manichean, he came into contact with the thought of a sect that was one of the liveliest and most stimulating of the period, a sect whose importance in ancient thought is an object of careful analysis and revaluation today. A Neoplatonist, he learned deeply the lesson of the one who is for him the greatest philosopher of antiquity, Plato, and at the same time he took part in the philosophical developments of the latest current of pagan thought. In the “De Civitate Dei” he reappraises the role of Rome and her empire, yet he does not hesitate to request, in letters of impressive harshness, the aid of the state in repressing the Donatist schism. Profoundly tied to classical culture, he does not hesitate to question it in the “De Doctrina Christiana”. A sophisticated intellectual, he chose to wrestle with the most complex problems, which for some time had agitated the toughest thinkers, and he also focused on new questions, ones no less anxious and difficult than the earlier ones. A man of the Church, he considered it his duty to reach the weakest and least educated of his flock, and he strove to write for all, not only for an elite of scholars. The greatest intelligences of all times have struggled with Augustine, but it is not easy to find one who has been able to interpret and to comprehend his vital difficulty without somehow diminishing it.” (Gian Biagio Conte).

STC 912