961J José Acosta 1540-1600

Josephi Acostae e Societate Jesu Conciones de Adventu, id est, De omnibus Dominicis & festis diebus a Dominica vigesimaquarta post Pentecosten usque ad Quadragesimam : quarum numerum & locum index initio praefixus ostendit : res vero, & insigniores Scripturae locos tractatos duo alii Indices continent.

Coloniæ Agrippinæ : apud Antonium Hierat, Nunc primum in Germania in lucem editæ.1601.                Price $1,400

Octavo  x  cm  Signatures :)(⁸A-Ccc⁸Ddd⁴. The first time printed in Germany  (1601) of Acosta’s sermon collection, originally issued in Spain in 1597 and published here the year following the author’s death. Bound in contemporary rolled pigskin over wooden boards, remains of clasps (one intact). The binding rubbed and bumped; outer hinges at lower spine reinforced; scattered worming to binding and a few wormholes through the text (heavier at beginning and end). Interior lightly browned but generally clean and solid. Early marginal annotations. From a dissolved monastery library, with corresponding markings.

This 1601 Cologne edition of Conciones de Adventu… — marked “Nunc primum in Germania in lucem editae” — is the first German printing of Acosta’s Advent sermon cycle. Printed by Anton Hierat with a detailed dedication to Valentin Feucht, papal and imperial book commissioner, it exemplifies the post-Reformation Catholic strategy of transmitting Jesuit homiletic literature into German Catholic regions under confessional imprimatur. 

The choice to publish a structured cycle of Advent sermons in 1601 is itself meaningful. In post-Reformation Germany, preaching had become a primary arena of confessional identity. Lutheran reform retained the liturgical calendar but reshaped its theological emphases, foregrounding justification and a more streamlined scriptural hermeneutic. Jesuit homiletic collections such as Acosta’s offered something different: a fully ordered liturgical sequence, dense with typological interpretation, patristic continuity, and sacramental theology. Without direct controversy, the text models a disciplined Catholic preaching framework — reinforcing ecclesial authority, Christological orthodoxy, and the integrity of the Church year. In that sense, the work functions as constructive resistance: not attacking Protestant doctrine, but stabilizing Catholic form.

The place of publication intensifies that meaning. Issued at Cologne — a major Catholic stronghold within the Holy Roman Empire — and explicitly marked “now first published in Germany,” the edition situates a Spanish Jesuit voice within German confessional territory. Printing location in this period was rarely neutral; it signaled alignment, oversight, and distribution networks. By transmitting Acosta’s mature pastoral theology into German lands under Catholic print supervision, the Cologne edition becomes part of a broader post-Tridentine strategy of clerical formation and territorial consolidation. The geography of the imprint reinforces the theology of the text.

DeBacker -Sommervogel  vol. I col. 37/38  nº 10: VD17 12:190730W; Palau I 12.