Commentarius brevis rerum in orbe gestarum ab anno salutis M.D. usque in annum M.D.LXXIIII. Ex optimis quibusque scriptoribus congestus, & nunc recens non parùm auctus & locupletatus.
Cologne (Coloniae) : Gervinum Calenium et haeredes Ioannis Quentelii, 1574
Price. $1,600
Octavo 16.5 x 10.5 cm. Signatures: a-e8A-Z8Aa-Zz8Aaa-Fff8 Ggg4 Bound in contemporary limp vellum over leather cords. From the Bibliothecae Steinfeldensis: Steinfeld Abbey (founded 920-Reichsdeputationshauptschluss 1810) Dissolved and dispersed.
A compact yet remarkably wide-ranging world chronicle by the Carthusian historian Laurentius Surius, covering the decisive years 1500–1574. Compiled “from the best authors,” Surius brings together political, ecclesiastical, and global events in a form designed for consultation and synthesis rather than narrative flourish.
Of particular interest is the work’s early modern global scope, including repeated references to the New World and European expansion overseas. Figures such as Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and Amerigo Vespucci appear alongside notices of Mexico, Peru, and Florida, making this an unexpectedly useful Catholic chronicle for the study of exploration, conquest, and global awareness in the sixteenth century.
Surius spent much of his life at the Charterhouse of St. Barbara in Cologne and is best known today as a leading Counter-Reformation hagiographer and church historian. This expanded 1574 issue, published by the important Cologne house of Calenius and Quentel, reflects the mature phase of his historical project and incorporates substantial additions and revisions over earlier states.
According to a remark made by Peter Canisius (“Epistolæ”, ed. Braunsberger, I, 36), he was born a heretic and was brought into the Church by Canisius. Surius studied at the universities of Frankfort-on-the-Oder and Cologne. In the latter university Peter Canisius was a fellow-student. Surius also met there Johannes Justus Lansperger, who induced him to enter the Carthusian monastery at Cologne, in 1542. The greater part of his life after this was spent in his monastery, where he was a model of piety, of rigid observance of the rules of the order, and of earnest work as a scholar; for these reasons he was held in high esteem by St. Pius V. He devoted himself chiefly to the domains of church history and hagiography, and wrote a large number of works on these subjects. He also translated into Latin many works, mainly ascetical and theological. Among these translations should be mentioned writings by Tauler, Heinrich Seuse, Ruysbroeck, Gropper’s work on the reality of Christ’s Flesh and Blood, the sermons of Michael Sidonius, the apologies of Friedrich Staphylus, and an oration by Martin Eisengrein. He completed the “Institutiones” of Florentius of Haarlem, prior of the Carthusians of Louvain, and edited a new edition of the “Homiliarium” of Charlemagne. He wrote against Sleidanus his “Commentarius brevis rerum in orbe gestarum ab a. 1500 ad a. 1564” (Cologne, 1566), which was continued by others. He was also the author of a collection of the Acts of the councils: “Concilia omnia tum generalia tum provincialia” (4 vols., Cologne, 1567).’ (CE) Kirsch, J.P. (1912). Laurentius Surius. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14343c.htm
VD16 S 10244; Alden, J.E. European Americana,; 566/51
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