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1. 831J. à Kempis, Thomas (1380-1471)

Imatione Christi : libri quatuor auctore Thoma a Kempis, canonico regulari ordinis D. Augustini, ad autographum emendati ; opera, ac studio Henrici Sommalii è Societate Jesu.

Venetiis : Apud Nicolaum Pezzana, 1712                    Price $3,500

Duodecimo: 15.5 x 8 cm. Signatures: A-V¹² X⁶.  With 6 signed engravings by Isabella Piccini : page 14: half-page image of woman kneeling while reading a prayer book, signed “S. Isabella P. F.”; page 23: young man with rosary, signed “S. Isabella”

page 38: secular woman and child, signed “S. Isabella P. E. [sic]”; page 54: man kneeling in prayer, outdoors, under crescent moon, signed “S. I. P. F.”; page 81: man self-flagellating, signed “S. I. P. F.”; page 103: man resting against tree, signed “S. Isabella P. F.” And 21 unsigned engravings: vignette on title-page; half-page engravings on pages A4r, 1, 90, 121, 139, 152, 171, 187, 201, 221, 234, 251, 263, 275, 298, 320, 343, 369, 385, 408 (all are probably by Isabella Piccini).

Bound in full contemporary vellum.  This is one of Sister Piccini’s most impressive books . It is amended and edited by Henricus Sommalius  SJ  (1534-16190). Henricus Sommalius had been a member of the Societas Jesu since 1551 , and was the first rector of the Jesuit college in Douay. He edited several editions of works by medieval theologians and church fathers. Among them are Albertus Magnus : Paradisus animae siue de virtutibus libellus , Antverpiae, Plantiniana, 1602; Aurelius Augustine : Confessions , Douay, 1608; the pseudo-Augustinian Soliloquium, Mediationes und Manuale, Douay, 1607. He wrote the famous edition of Thomas von Kempen ‘s Opera omnia (a Kempis), first edition in 1600, Antwerpen with Nutius, where the second edition was also published in 1607 and the third in 1615, which as first complete edition applies. 

After the Bible, The Imitation of Christ is the all-time favorite book of Catholics throughout the world.  à Kempis or whoever the ‘author was’ presents a path to The Imitation of Christ based on a focus on the interior life and withdrawal from the world. The Imitation of Christ first issued in 1418, Thomas entered Mount St. Agnes in 1406. He was not ordained a priest, however, until almost a decade later. He became a prolific copyist and writer. Thomas received Holy Orders in 1413 and was made sub-prior of the monastery in 1429.

Thomas à Kempis provided specific instructions for imitating Christ. His book is perhaps the most widely read Christian devotional work after the Bible. The approach taken by Kempis is characterized by its emphasis on the interior life and withdrawal from the world, as opposed to an active imitation of Christ (including outward preaching) by other friars.  The book places a high level of emphasis on the devotion to the Eucharist as key element of spiritual life

Kempis’s 1441 autograph manuscript of The Imitation of Christ is available in the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels (shelfmark: MS 5455-61)

DeBacker-Sommervogel Vol VII col. 1377.

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764J  Francesco Marchese

Vita Di S. Pietro D’Alcanrta Riformatore, e Fondatore d’alcune Poruincie de’ Frati Sclazi di S. Francesco nella Spagna. Raccolta dalli Porcessi fatti per la sua Canonizatione, DA FRANCESCO MARCHESE Prete della Congregatione dell’Oratorio. Aggiuntoui il Trattato dell’Oratione, e Meditatione Composto dall’istesso Santo. DEDICATA Alla Molto Illustre, e molto Reuerenda Madre Suor ORSETTA DALLA BELLA Monaca nel Venerando Monasterio di S. Chiara di Venetia.

Venice: il Catani, 1671                                        Price $1,100

Quarto:21 x 15 cm. Signatures a⁸, A-Y⁸, Z³. Bound it carta rustica, never trimmed every leaf has deckle edges and there are many hand written manicules in the book. A  great copy for those who love original condition! An engraved plate by H. Boucher of Teresa of Avila’s vision of Peter of Alcantara on leaf a^2.

Saint Peter of Alacantra, was a contemporary of Ignatius of Loyola and John of the cross , bbut might be best known as the Confessor to Sain Teresa of Avila.  In this book his notes on Alcántara’s relationship with Teresa are given throughout the text of Books II and III.

Teresa of Avila’s vision of Peter of Alcantara (leaf a2 )

“Blessed be the penances which earned me such glory!”

These were the words of St. Peter of Alcântara when, after his death, he appeared to St. Teresa of Avila telling her what had been reserved for him in Heaven.
She recounted those penances that the Saint himself had described to her when he was alive. For a period of 40 years he slept for only one and a half hours each day. To keep sleep from overcoming him, he used to remain standing or kneeling. When he permitted himself to sleep, he did so seated on a bench with his head resting on a block of wood fixed on the wall. He always went barefoot.

St. Teresa of Avila is one of the Church’s great mystics and was one of the first two women to be declared a doctor of the Church, due to her work reforming the Carmelite order, her mystical spiritual life and her luminous writing on contemplative prayer. Just as her contemporary, Ignatius of Loyola, founded the Society of Jesus to reinvigorate the Church of Spain and respond to the Protestant Reformation, Teresa began her own work of reform inside of Carmel. Teresa began her efforts by founding new Carmelite monasteries, known as “discalced” Carmelites because they made it a habit to wear thin sandals instead of shoes. 

The Franciscan ascetic Pedro de Alcántara (1499-1562). Among his chief correspondents was the Spanish nun

who went on to found her own reformed order based – according to her own writings – on the counsel of Alcántara in the months before his death. The close relationship between these religiously-unaffiliated male and female reformers is captured in the evocative frontispiece here – appearing for the first time, and untraced in other editions of this Vita. The present edition is also dedicated to a local nun, Sor Orsetta della Bella of the Poor Clares of Venice, and now includes an account of, and documents relating to, Alcántara’s canonization in 1669.

Although Teresa did not intend to become a nun, she eventually changed her mind and entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation in 1536. In Teresa’s day, most people recited existing prayers and observed mechanically the rituals of the Church. Her Uncle Pedro introduced her to Francisco Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet, a book that acquainted her with a different kind of spiritual practice—one that stressed interiority and mental prayer.     

In the mid-1550s, Teresa began to have intense supernatural experiences. Some dismissed her experiences as demonic, but her Jesuit confessors encouraged her to practice mental prayer and to meditate on the humanity of Christ, probably introducing her to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. On 24 August 1562, Teresa founded a new convent, San José. Known as Discalced Carmelites, the San José nuns remained cloistered and practiced mental prayer. That same year, Teresa finished the first draft of her Vida, which Fray Luis de León published in 1588.

Teresa of Avila’s vision of Peter of Alcantara (leaf a² )

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820J Casalicchio Carlo 

Gli stimoli al santo timor di dio Cauati  da scrlter  Historie Dello Sdegno Diuino. Vsato contro diuersi Peccatori nel punto della morte, DAL Padre CARLO CASALICCHIO Della Compagnia di Giesù.

Venetia Combi & La Nou 1681.   Price $2,800

Quarto 16.5×11.5cm. [16], 328, [8] p. One of my favorite frontis pieces by Isabella Piccini. A great impression with nice margins. Bound in contemporary vellum. 

Jesuit, preacher and moralist novelist. Born in S. Angelo le Fratte (Basilicata) in 1624, he lived almost always in Naples, where in 1651 he entered the Society of Jesus. There he distinguished himself as a simple and zealous writer, and for works of Christian charity, especially during the plague of 1656. He died in 1700, leaving an instructive and moral book, L’utile col dolce, which from 1671 to 1764 had twelve Italian editions, and in 1703 a German translation.  In this book he collected, under various theses of an ethical-religious nature, no less than three hundred speeches, written in a simple manner and without oratorical poses, in which he served up a picturesque and not too serious mixture for reading, of sacred and profane erudition, of sincere devotion and good morals, continually varied by observations, quotations and sentences, and enlivened by parables, fables, anecdotes and jokes. Not only the complicated structure, but also the unseasoned piling up of copious materials of every sort, and even more the prolixity and slovenliness of the form, are detrimental to the work. But the defects are largely compensated by the wealth of materials accumulated from every side, classical, popular, modern.

Bibl.: G.B. Marchesi, Per la storia della novella ital. nel sec. XVII, Roma 1897, p. 164 segg.; E. Mele, Opere del Gracián e d’altir autori spagn. fra le mani del p. C., in Giorn. stor. d. lett. ital., LXXXII (1923), p. 71 segg.

© Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani – Riproduzione riservata.

 Spigolature giuridiche in Carlo Casalicchio, S.J.  Andrea Scasso Source: Angelicum, 2009, Vol. 86, No. 4 (2009), pp. 931-937 Published by: Pontificia Studiorum Universitas a Sancto Thomas Aquinate in Urbe

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44618620

very rare no copy in OCLC Italy              PROVINCIA DITALIA DELLA COMPAGNIA DI GESU. 

deBacker-Sommervogel vol.1, col.795 Nº1

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832J Aloisio  Carnoli S.J. (known also under the pseudonyms of Virgilio Nolarci and Giulio Laranci)

Compendio della vita di s. ignatio di loiola Raccolto con fedeltà, e con breuità da quanto n’hanno prouatamente stam-pato in vn secolo graui Autori per opera di don Vigilio Nolarci, e con maggior diligenza corretto in questa nuoua impressione.

Venetia … : Presso Combi & La Noù, 1680.           Price $1,500

Quarto 21x 15 cm. Signatures:  *⁴,**⁴, A-Z⁴, Aa-Zz⁴, Aaa-Iii⁴, Kkk². Bound in original carta rustica,  untrimmed with many deckell edges. wide margins. Book’s title neatly written in ink on spine with artistic small calligraphic decoration. VG, minor wear on cover,  with a engraved frontis signed “Il Curti f.””and a full page engraving of Saint Ignatius.

Carnoli, Luigi (known also under the pseudonyms of Virgilio Nolarci and Giulio Laranci), an Italian biographer, was born at Bologna in 1618. He became a Jesuit, and for six years taught grammar and rhetoric, and for eight years philosophy and theology. He died at the city of his birth in 1693, leaving Vita Venerabilis Hieronyini Taurellii (Forligno, 1652): — Della Virtit d’Ignazio di Loyola (Bologna, 1658): —Vita d’Ignazio di Loyola (Venice, 1680): — Oratio ins Erectione Academice Accensorum Mantuce (Bologna, 1655). See Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Géneralé, s.v.

deBacker-Sommervogel vol. II col.760 Nº5; BL Italian 17th cent., vol. 2, p. 616.