Compendivm manvalis Navarri, ad commodiorem vsv tvm confessariorvm, tvm poenitentium, confectum, Petro Givvara Petro Giwara, Theologo Avctore. Nunc demum singulari diligentia recognitu[m], omnibusque mendis, quibus scatebat, studiosissimè purgatum.

Coloniæ: InOfficina Birckmannica, sumptibus Arnoldi Mylij, 1591/2. Price $ 900

Duodecimo: 13 x 8 cm. signatures A-S12 T 6. This is most likely a second edition. This copy is bound in full contemporary vellum with yapp edges missing ties.

. This copy has a nice early (1706) book plate from the Bibliothecæ S. Elisabethæ. Alagona was born in Syracuse. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1564, taught philosophy and theology, and was Rector of Trapani. He died in Rome. This, and his other first works were published under the family name of his mother, Givarra. Later on he used his own name, Alagona, and is best known for his Compendium of the works of Martin Aspilcueta, who was a doctor of theology in Navarre. Martin Aspilcueta was the uncle of St. Francis Xavier. The Enchiridion, seu Manuale Confessariorum, which was compiled by Alagona, went through at least twenty-three editions. A translation of this book into French by Legard, was condemned by the Parliament of Rouen, 12 February 1762. He also published a compendium of the “Summa”, which ran through twenty-five editions, and a compendium of the whole of Canon Law in two volumes, quarto. In the Jesuit College of Palermo there is also found a treatise by Alagona on Logic and Physics.
Navarrus, Martinus Aspilcueta studied at Alcalá and in France, and became professor of canon law at Toulouse and Cahors. Later, he returned to Spain and occupied the same chair for fourteen years at Salamanca, and for seven years at Coimbra in Portugal. At the age of eighty he went to Rome to defend his friend Bartolomeo Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, accused before the Tribunal of the Inquisition. Though he failed to exculpate the Archbishop, Aspilcueta was highly honoured at Rome by several popes, and was looked on as an oracle of learning and prudence. His humility, disinterestedness, and charity were proverbial.
This Manuale sive Enchiridion Confessariorum et Poenitentium (Rome, 1568) originally written in Spanish and was long a classical text in the schools and in ecclesiastical practice. In his work on the revenues of benefices, first published in Spanish (Salamanca, 1566), translated into Latin (1568), he maintained that beneficed clergymen were free to expend the fruits of their benefices only for their own necessary support and that of the poor. He wrote numerous other works, e.g. on the Breviary, the regulars, ecclesiastical property, the jubilee year, etc. He allegedly invented the mathematical concept of “the time value of money”.
DeBacker-Sommervogel vol. I col. 109. ;VD16.; ZV 957; Adams. A- 208.