The text of the Nevv Testament of Iesus Christ, translated out of the vulgar Latine by the papists of the traiterous seminarie at Rhemes. With arguments of bookes, chapters, and annotations, pretending to discouer the corruptions of diuers translations, and to cleare the controuersies of these dayes. VVhereunto is added the translation out of the original Greeke, commonly vsed in the Church of England, with a confutation of all such arguments, glosses, and annotations, as conteine manifest impietie, of heresie, treason and slander, against the catholike Church of God, and the true teachers thereof, or the translations vsed in the Church of England … By William Fulke, Doctor in Diuinitie
London: Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie 1589 Sold
Folio * A-Y 2A-2Y 3A-3Y 4A-4V 4X First Edition
This copy is bound in full older calf, a very sound and impressive copy.
The Rheims version and the Bishops’ Bible version in parallel columns, with Fulke’s commentary at the end of each chapter. The Rheims version is translated from the Vulgate chiefly by Gregory Martin; the Bishops’ Bible translation was overseen by Matthew Parker.In England the Protestant William Fulke ironically popularized the Rheims New Testament through his collation of the Rheims text and annotations in parallel columns alongside the 1572 Protestant Bishops’ Bible. Fulke’s work (as here) was first published in 1589; and as a consequence the Rheims text and notes became easily available without fear of criminal sanctions.
Not only did Douay-Rheims influence Catholics, but also it had a substantive influence on the later creation of the King James Bible. The Authorized Version is distinguished from previous English Protestant versions by a greater tendency to employ Latinate vocabulary, and the translators were able to find many such terms (for example: emulation Romans 11:14) in the Rheims New Testament. Consequently, a number of the latinisms of the Douay–Rheims, through their use in the King James Bible, have entered standard literary English. Douay-Rheims would go on through several re-printings on both sides of the continent.
The translators of the Rheims New Testament appended a list of neologisms in their work, including many latinate terms that have since become assimilated into standard English. Examples include “acquisition”, “adulterate”, “advent”, “allegory”, “verity”, “calumniate”, “character”, “cooperate”, “prescience”, “resuscitate”, “victim”, and “evangelise”.
While such English may have been generated through independent creation, nevertheless the totality demonstrates a lasting influence on the development of English vocabulary. In addition the editors chose to transliterate rather than translate a number of technical Greek or Hebrew terms, such as “azymes” for unleavened bread, and “pasch” for Passover. Few of these have been assimilated into standard English. One that has is “holocaust” for burnt offering.
The First English Catholic New Testament in English,printed in England.
“The ‘editio princeps’ of the Roman Catholic version of the New Testament in English. Translated from the Vulgate by Gregory Martin, under the supervision of William Allen and Richard Bristow. According to the “Douai Diaries”, Martin began the translation in October1578 and completed it in March 1582.
“The translation adheres very closely to the Latin, though it shows traces of careful comparison with the Greek. But its groundwork was practically supplied by the existing English versions, from which Martin did not hesitate to borrow freely. In particular there are very many striking resemblances between Martin’s renderings and those in Coverdale’s diglot of 1538. Martin’s own style is often disfigured by Latinisms.
“This Rheims New Testament exerted a very considerable influence on the King James version of 1611, transmitting to it not only an extensive vocabulary, but also numerous distinctive phrases and turns of expression. (See J.G. Carleton’s exhaustive analysis, The Part of Rheims in the Making of the English Bible. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.)
“Since the English Protestants used their vernacular translations not only as the foundation of their own faith but as siege artillery in the assault on Rome, a Catholic translation became more and more necessary in order that the faithful could answer, text for text, against the ‘intolerable ignorance and importunity of the heretics of this time.’ The chief translator was Gregory Martin… Technical words were transliterated rather than translated. Thus many new words came to birth… Not only was [Martin] steeped in the Vulgate, he was, every day, involved in the immortal liturgical Latin of his church. The resulting Latinisms added a majesty to his English prose, and many a dignified or felicitous phrase was silently lifted by the editors of the King James Version and thus passed into the language” (Great Books and Book Collectors, 108).
The names, numbers, and chapters of the Douay–Rheims Bible and the Challoner revision follow that of the Vulgate and therefore differ from those of the King James Version and its modern successors, making direct comparison of versions tricky in some places. For instance, the books called Ezra and Nehemiah in the King James Version are called 1 and 2 Esdras in the Douay–Rheims Bible. The books called 1 and 2 Esdras in the KJV are called 3 and 4 Esdras in the Douay, and were classed as apocrypha.
The text of the Nevv Testament of Iesus Christ, translated out of the vulgar Latine by the papists of the traiterous seminarie at Rhemes. With arguments of bookes, chapters, and annotations, pretending to discouer the corruptions of diuers translations, and to cleare the controuersies of these dayes. VVhereunto is added the translation out of the original Greeke, commonly vsed in the Church of England, with a confutation of all such arguments, glosses, and annotations, as conteine manifest impietie, of heresie, treason and slander, against the catholike Church of God, and the true teachers thereof, or the translations vsed in the Church of England … By William Fulke, Doctor in Diuinitie
London: Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie 1589 Sold
Folio * A-Y 2A-2Y 3A-3Y 4A-4V 4X First Edition
This copy is bound in full older calf, a very sound and impressive copy.
The Rheims version and the Bishops’ Bible version in parallel columns, with Fulke’s commentary at the end of each chapter. The Rheims version is translated from the Vulgate chiefly by Gregory Martin; the Bishops’ Bible translation was overseen by Matthew Parker.In England the Protestant William Fulke ironically popularized the Rheims New Testament through his collation of the Rheims text and annotations in parallel columns alongside the 1572 Protestant Bishops’ Bible. Fulke’s work (as here) was first published in 1589; and as a consequence the Rheims text and notes became easily available without fear of criminal sanctions.
Not only did Douay-Rheims influence Catholics, but also it had a substantive influence on the later creation of the King James Bible. The Authorized Version is distinguished from previous English Protestant versions by a greater tendency to employ Latinate vocabulary, and the translators were able to find many such terms (for example: emulation Romans 11:14) in the Rheims New Testament. Consequently, a number of the latinisms of the Douay–Rheims, through their use in the King James Bible, have entered standard literary English. Douay-Rheims would go on through several re-printings on both sides of the continent.
The translators of the Rheims New Testament appended a list of neologisms in their work, including many latinate terms that have since become assimilated into standard English. Examples include “acquisition”, “adulterate”, “advent”, “allegory”, “verity”, “calumniate”, “character”, “cooperate”, “prescience”, “resuscitate”, “victim”, and “evangelise”.
While such English may have been generated through independent creation, nevertheless the totality demonstrates a lasting influence on the development of English vocabulary. In addition the editors chose to transliterate rather than translate a number of technical Greek or Hebrew terms, such as “azymes” for unleavened bread, and “pasch” for Passover. Few of these have been assimilated into standard English. One that has is “holocaust” for burnt offering.
The First English Catholic New Testament in English,printed in England.
“The ‘editio princeps’ of the Roman Catholic version of the New Testament in English. Translated from the Vulgate by Gregory Martin, under the supervision of William Allen and Richard Bristow. According to the “Douai Diaries”, Martin began the translation in October1578 and completed it in March 1582.
“The translation adheres very closely to the Latin, though it shows traces of careful comparison with the Greek. But its groundwork was practically supplied by the existing English versions, from which Martin did not hesitate to borrow freely. In particular there are very many striking resemblances between Martin’s renderings and those in Coverdale’s diglot of 1538. Martin’s own style is often disfigured by Latinisms.
“This Rheims New Testament exerted a very considerable influence on the King James version of 1611, transmitting to it not only an extensive vocabulary, but also numerous distinctive phrases and turns of expression. (See J.G. Carleton’s exhaustive analysis, The Part of Rheims in the Making of the English Bible. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.)
“Since the English Protestants used their vernacular translations not only as the foundation of their own faith but as siege artillery in the assault on Rome, a Catholic translation became more and more necessary in order that the faithful could answer, text for text, against the ‘intolerable ignorance and importunity of the heretics of this time.’ The chief translator was Gregory Martin… Technical words were transliterated rather than translated. Thus many new words came to birth… Not only was [Martin] steeped in the Vulgate, he was, every day, involved in the immortal liturgical Latin of his church. The resulting Latinisms added a majesty to his English prose, and many a dignified or felicitous phrase was silently lifted by the editors of the King James Version and thus passed into the language” (Great Books and Book Collectors, 108).
The names, numbers, and chapters of the Douay–Rheims Bible and the Challoner revision follow that of the Vulgate and therefore differ from those of the King James Version and its modern successors, making direct comparison of versions tricky in some places. For instance, the books called Ezra and Nehemiah in the King James Version are called 1 and 2 Esdras in the Douay–Rheims Bible. The books called 1 and 2 Esdras in the KJV are called 3 and 4 Esdras in the Douay, and were classed as apocrypha.
The text of the Nevv Testament of Iesus Christ, translated out of the vulgar Latine by the papists of the traiterous seminarie at Rhemes. With arguments of bookes, chapters, and annotations, pretending to discouer the corruptions of diuers translations, and to cleare the controuersies of these dayes. VVhereunto is added the translation out of the original Greeke, commonly vsed in the Church of England, with a confutation of all such arguments, glosses, and annotations, as conteine manifest impietie, of heresie, treason and slander, against the catholike Church of God, and the true teachers thereof, or the translations vsed in the Church of England … By William Fulke, Doctor in Diuinitie
London: Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie 1589 $18,000
Folio * A-Y 2A-2Y 3A-3Y 4A-4V 4X First Edition
This copy is bound in full older calf, a very sound and impressive copy.
The Rheims version and the Bishops’ Bible version in parallel columns, with Fulke’s commentary at the end of each chapter. The Rheims version is translated from the Vulgate chiefly by Gregory Martin; the Bishops’ Bible translation was overseen by Matthew Parker.In England the Protestant William Fulke ironically popularized the Rheims New Testament through his collation of the Rheims text and annotations in parallel columns alongside the 1572 Protestant Bishops’ Bible. Fulke’s work (as here) was first published in 1589; and as a consequence the Rheims text and notes became easily available without fear of criminal sanctions.
Not only did Douay-Rheims influence Catholics, but also it had a substantive influence on the later creation of the King James Bible. The Authorized Version is distinguished from previous English Protestant versions by a greater tendency to employ Latinate vocabulary, and the translators were able to find many such terms (for example: emulation Romans 11:14) in the Rheims New Testament. Consequently, a number of the latinisms of the Douay–Rheims, through their use in the King James Bible, have entered standard literary English. Douay-Rheims would go on through several re-printings on both sides of the continent.
The translators of the Rheims New Testament appended a list of neologisms in their work, including many latinate terms that have since become assimilated into standard English. Examples include “acquisition”, “adulterate”, “advent”, “allegory”, “verity”, “calumniate”, “character”, “cooperate”, “prescience”, “resuscitate”, “victim”, and “evangelise”.
While such English may have been generated through independent creation, nevertheless the totality demonstrates a lasting influence on the development of English vocabulary. In addition the editors chose to transliterate rather than translate a number of technical Greek or Hebrew terms, such as “azymes” for unleavened bread, and “pasch” for Passover. Few of these have been assimilated into standard English. One that has is “holocaust” for burnt offering.
The First English Catholic New Testament in English,printed in England.
“The ‘editio princeps’ of the Roman Catholic version of the New Testament in English. Translated from the Vulgate by Gregory Martin, under the supervision of William Allen and Richard Bristow. According to the “Douai Diaries”, Martin began the translation in October1578 and completed it in March 1582.
“The translation adheres very closely to the Latin, though it shows traces of careful comparison with the Greek. But its groundwork was practically supplied by the existing English versions, from which Martin did not hesitate to borrow freely. In particular there are very many striking resemblances between Martin’s renderings and those in Coverdale’s diglot of 1538. Martin’s own style is often disfigured by Latinisms.
“This Rheims New Testament exerted a very considerable influence on the King James version of 1611, transmitting to it not only an extensive vocabulary, but also numerous distinctive phrases and turns of expression. (See J.G. Carleton’s exhaustive analysis, The Part of Rheims in the Making of the English Bible. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.)
“Since the English Protestants used their vernacular translations not only as the foundation of their own faith but as siege artillery in the assault on Rome, a Catholic translation became more and more necessary in order that the faithful could answer, text for text, against the ‘intolerable ignorance and importunity of the heretics of this time.’ The chief translator was Gregory Martin… Technical words were transliterated rather than translated. Thus many new words came to birth… Not only was [Martin] steeped in the Vulgate, he was, every day, involved in the immortal liturgical Latin of his church. The resulting Latinisms added a majesty to his English prose, and many a dignified or felicitous phrase was silently lifted by the editors of the King James Version and thus passed into the language” (Great Books and Book Collectors, 108).
The names, numbers, and chapters of the Douay–Rheims Bible and the Challoner revision follow that of the Vulgate and therefore differ from those of the King James Version and its modern successors, making direct comparison of versions tricky in some places. For instance, the books called Ezra and Nehemiah in the King James Version are called 1 and 2 Esdras in the Douay–Rheims Bible. The books called 1 and 2 Esdras in the KJV are called 3 and 4 Esdras in the Douay, and were classed as apocrypha.
Some how I managed to take three classes from Huston Smith (The World’s Religions (originally titled The Religions of Man) has sold over two million copies) I misdeed this story, I was perhaps distracted by His notion of “”empirical metaphysics” which he writes about in his book Cleansing the Doors of Perception which was more the direction I was exploring at that time (organically). Now some thirty years later, The ‘ inorganic’ spread of mystical states/texts interest me and I was informed of this Great Story of textual transmission by my colleague Paul Dowling of Liber Antiquus. http://www.liberantiquus.com
The Greek legend of “Barlaam and Ioasaph” which is sometimes attributed to the 7th century John of Damascus, but actually it was transcribed by the Georgian monk Euthymius in the 11th century. The first Christianized adaptation was the Georgian epic Balavariani dating back to the 10th century. A Georgian monk, Euthymios of Athos, translated the story into Greek, some time before he was killed while visiting Constantinople in 1028. There the Greek adaptation was translated into Latin in 1048 and soon became well-known in Western Europe as Barlaam and Josaphat.
The story of Barlaam and Josaphat or Joasaph is a Christianized and later version of the story of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha.
901G Billy, Jacques de,; 1535-1581. translator Traditionally (but incorrectly)–attributed to St. John of Damascus
S. Ioannis Damasceni Historia, De Vitis Et Rebvs Gestis SS. Barlaam Eremitæ, & Iosaphat Indiæ regis, Iacobo Billio Prunæo, S. Michaelis in eremo Coenobiarcha interprete.
Coloniæ, In Officina Birckmannica, sumptibus Arnoldi Mylij. ANNO M.D.XCIII. Duodecimo A-S12 T6 ( -T6). $950
This copy is bound in contemporary vellum, an ownership stamp has been ripped out of the title page (see image )
VD 16 J 533; AdamsB 206.
One of the best known examples of the hagiographic novel, this is the tale of an Indian prince who becomes aware of the world’s miseries and is converted to Christianity by the monk Barlaam. Barlaam and Josaphat (Ioasaph) were believed to have re-converted India after her lapse from conversion to Christianity, and they were numbered among the Christian saints. Centuries ago likenesses were noticed between the life of Josaphat and the life of the Buddha; the resemblances are in incidents, doctrine, and philosophy, and Barlaam’s rules of abstinence resemble the Buddhist monk’s. But not till the mid-nineteenth century was it recognised that, in Josaphat, the Buddha had been venerated as a Christian saint for about a thousand years.
The origin of the story of Barlaam and Ioasaph—which in itself has little peculiar to Buddhism—appears to be a Manichaean tract produced in Central Asia
It was welcomed by the Arabs and by the Georgians. The Greek romance of Barlaam appears separately first in the 11th century. Most of the Greek manuscripts attribute the story to John the Monk, and it is only some later scribes who identify this John with John Damascene (ca. 676–749). There is strong evidence in Latin and Georgian as well as Greek that it was the Georgian Euthymius (who died in 1028) who caused the story to be translated from Georgian into Greek, the whole being reshaped and supplemented.
The Greek romance soon spread throughout Christendom, and was translated into Latin, Old Slavonic, Armenian, and Arabic. An English version (from Latin) was used by Shakespeare in his caskets scene in The Merchant of Venice.
JOSAPHAT, a corruption of Bodhisatwa. Barlaam and Josaphat,
{Ioasaph (Georgian Iodasaph, Arabic Yūdhasaf or Būdhasaf) is derived from the Sanskrit Bodhisattva. The Sanskrit word was changed to Bodisav in Persian texts in the 6th or 7th century, then to Budhasaf or Yudasaf in an 8th-century Arabic document (possibly Arabic initial “b” ﺑ changed to “y” ﻳ by duplication of a dot in handwriting). This became Iodasaph in Georgia in the 10th century, and that name was adapted as Ioasaph in Greece in the 11th century, and then as Iosaphat or Josaphat in Latin}
has been so completely received into the bosom of the Latin Church, that the names of ‘ the holy saints Barlaam and Josaphat of India, on the borders of Persia,’ have been canonized, and have their proper day, November 27th, as may be read in the Martyrologium of Cardinal Baronius, authorized by Pope Sextus v. for general use in the Catholic world, at page 177 of the 1873 edition, endorsed by His Holiness Pius IX. The Greek Church assigns a different day to the holy Iosaph, sou of Abener, king of India, and omits Barlaam. Josaphat or Iosaph is Bodhisat, or the condition of Sakya before he became a Buddha, and the religious romance of St. John of Damascus is simply a Greek version of the life of Gautama. Professor Max Muller pointed out the fact that Gautama, under the name of St. Josaphat, is now officially recognised and honoured and worshipped throughout the whole of Roman Catholic Christendom as a Christian saint! And just as Barlaam and Josaphat is an offshoot of Buddhist literature, so the wide series of tales represented by the Pancha Tantra, Kalila and Damna, Fables of Bidpai, Æsop’s Fables and La Fontaine’s, are mainly traceable not only to an Indian, but to a Buddhist source. Sindbad the Sailor, and other tales of the Arabian Nights, have their birth in Buddhist Jutakas; Boccaccio, Chaucer, Gower, and Spencer have been indebted to this treasurehouse of Buddhist folk-lore; even the three caskets and the pound of flesh in the Merchant of Venice are ideas found in this wonderful old story-book. —Contemporary Review, 1870.
ON THE MIGRATION OF FABLES.
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, ON FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1870.
From Chips from a German Workshop, by F. Max Müller, Vol. IV, pp. 139–198. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons [1881].
At the court of Khalif Almansur, where Abdallah ibn Almokaffa translated the fables of Calla and Dimna from Persian into Arabic, there lived a Christian of the name of Sergius, who for many years held the high office of treasurer to the Khalif. He had a son to whom he gave the best education that could then be given, his chief tutor being one Cosmas, an Italian monk, who had been taken prisoner by the Saracens, and sold as a slave at Bagdad. After the death of Sergius, his son succeeded him for some time as chief councillor (πρωτοσύμβουλος) to the Khalif Almansur. Such, however, had been the influence of the Italian monk on his pupil’s mind, that he suddenly resolved to retire from the world, and to devote himself to study, meditation, and pious works. From the monastery of St. Saba, near Jerusalem, this former minister of the Khalif issued the most learned works on theology, particularly his “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.” He soon became the highest authority on matters of dogma in the Eastern Church, and he still holds his place among the saints both of the Eastern and Western Churches. His name was Joannes, and from being born at Damascus, the former capital of the Khalifs, he is best known in history as Joannes Damascenus, or St. John of Damascus. He must
p. 168
have known Arabic, and probably Persian; but his mastery of Greek earned him, later in life, the name of Chrysorrhoas, or Gold-flowing. He became famous as the defender of the sacred images, and as the determined opponent of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, about 726. It is difficult in his life to distinguish between legend and history, but that he had held high office at the court of the Khalif Almansur, that he boldly opposed the iconoclastic policy of the Emperor Leo, and that he wrote the most learned theological works of his time, cannot be easily questioned.
Among the works ascribed to him is a story called “Barlaam and Joasaph.” 1 There has been a fierce controversy as to whether he was the author of it or not. Though for our own immediate purposes it would be of little consequence whether the book was written by Joannes Damascenus or by some less distinguished ecclesiastic, I must confess that the arguments hitherto adduced against his authorship seem to me very weak.
The Jesuits did not like the book, because it was
p. 169
a religious novel. They pointed to a passage in which the Holy Ghost is represented as proceeding from the Father “and the Son,” as incompatible with the creed of an Eastern ecclesiastic. That very passage, however, has now been proved to be spurious; and it should be borne in mind, besides, that the controversy on the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, or from the Father through the Son, dates a century later than Joannes. The fact, again, that the author does not mention Mohammedanism, 1 proves nothing against the authorship of Joannes, because, as he places Barlaam and Joasaph in the early centuries of Christianity, he would have ruined his story by any allusion to Mohammed’s religion, then only a hundred years old. Besides, he had written a separate work, in which the relative merits of Christianity and Mohammedanism are discussed. The prominence given to the question of the worship of images shows that the story could not have been written much before the time of Joannes Damascenus, and there is nothing in the style of our author that could be pointed out as incompatible with the style of the great theologian. On the contrary, the author of “Barlaam and Joasaph” quotes the same authors whom Joannes Damascenus quotes most frequently—eg., Basilius and Gregorius Nazianzenus. And no one but Joannes could have taken long passages from his own works without saying where he borrowed them. 2
p. 170
The story of “Barlaam and Joasaph”—or, as he is more commonly called, Josaphat—may be told in a few words: “A king in India, an enemy and persecutor of the Christians, has an only son. The astrologers have predicted that he would embrace the new doctrine. His father, therefore, tries by all means in his power to keep him ignorant of the miseries of the world, and to create in him a taste for pleasure and enjoyment. A Christian hermit, however, gains access to the prince, and instructs him in the doctrines of the Christian religion. The young prince is not only baptized, but resolves to give up all his earthly riches; and after having converted his own father and many of his subjects, he follows his teacher into the desert.”
The real object of the book is to give a simple exposition of the principal doctrines of the Christian religion. It also contains a first attempt at comparative theology, for in the course of the story there is a disputation on the merits of the principal religions of the world—the Chaldæan, the Egyptian, the Greek, the Jewish, and the Christian. But one of the chief attractions of this manual of Christian theology consisted in a number of fables and parables with which it is enlivened. Most of them have been traced to an Indian source. I shall mention one only which has found its way into almost every literature of the world: 1—
“A man was pursued by a unicorn, and while he tried to flee from it, he fell into a pit. In falling he stretched out both his
p. 171
arms, and laid hold of a small tree that was growing on one side of the pit. Having gained a firm footing, and holding to the tree, he fancied he was safe, when he saw two mice, a black and a white one, busy gnawing the root of the tree to which he was clinging. Looking down into the pit, he perceived a horrid dragon with his mouth wide open, ready to devour him, and when examining the place on which his feet rested, the heads of four serpents glared at him. Then he looked up, and observed drops of honey falling down from the tree to which he clung. Suddenly the unicorn, the dragon, the mice, and the serpents were all forgotten, and his mind was intent only on catching the drops of sweet honey trickling down from the tree.”
An explanation is hardly required. The unicorn is Death, always chasing man; the pit is the world; the small tree is man’s life, constantly gnawed by the black and the white mouse—i.e., by night and day; the four serpents are the four elements which compose the human body; the dragon below is meant for the jaws of hell. Surrounded by all these horrors, man is yet able to forget them all, and to think only of the pleasures of life, which, like a few drops of honey, fall into his mouth from the tree of life. 1
But what is still more curious is, that the author of “Barlaam and Josaphat” has evidently taken his very hero, the Indian Prince Josaphat, from an Indian source. In the “Lalita Vistara”—the life, though no doubt the legendary life, of Buddha—the father of Buddha is a king. When his son is born, the Brahman Asita predicts that he will rise to great glory, and become either a powerful king, or, renouncing the throne and embracing the life of a hermit
p. 172
become a Buddha. 1 The great object of his father is to prevent this. He therefore keeps the young prince, when he grows up, in his garden and palaces, surrounded by all pleasures which might turn his mind from contemplation to enjoyment. More especially he is to know nothing of illness, old age, and death, which might open his eyes to the misery and unreality of life. After a time, however, the prince receives permission to drive out; and then follow the four drives, 2 so famous in Buddhist history. The places where these drives took place were commemorated by towers still standing in the time of Fa Hian’s visit to India, early in the fifth century after Christ, and even in the time of Hiouen Thsang, in the seventh century. I shall read you a short account of the three drives: 3—
“One day when the prince with a large retinue was driving through the eastern gate of the city, on the way to one of his parks, he met on the road an old man, broken and decrepit. One could see the veins and muscles over the whole of his body, his teeth chattered, he was covered with wrinkles, bald, and hardly able to utter hollow and unmelodious sounds. He was bent on his stick, and all his limbs and joints trembled. ‘Who is that man?’ said the prince to his coachman. ‘He is small and weak, his flesh and his blood are dried up, his muscles stick to his skin, his head is white, his teeth chatter, his body is wasted away; leaning on his stick, he is hardly able to walk, stumbling at every step. Is there something peculiar in his family, or is this the common lot of all created beings?’
“‘Sir,’ replied the coachman, ‘that man is sinking under old age, his senses have become obtuse, suffering has destroyed his strength, and he is despised by his relations. He is without support and useless, and people have abandoned him, like a dead tree in a forest. But this is not peculiar to his family.
p. 173
[paragraph continues]In every creature youth is defeated by old age. Your father, your mother, all your relations, all your friends, will come to the same state; this is the appointed end of all creatures.’
“‘Alas!’ replied the prince, “are creatures so ignorant, so weak and foolish as to be proud of the youth by which they are intoxicated, not seeing the old age which awaits them? As for me, I go away. Coachman, turn my chariot quickly. What have I, the future prey of old age—what have I to do with pleasure?” And the young prince returned to the city without going to the park.
“Another time the prince was driving through the southern gate to his pleasure-garden, when he perceived on the road a man suffering from illness, parched with fever, his body wasted, covered with mud, without a friend, without a home, hardly able to breathe, and frightened at the sight of himself, and the approach of death. Having questioned his coachman, and received from him the answer which he expected, the young prince said, ‘Alas! health is but the sport of a dream, and the fear of suffering must take this frightful form. Where is the wise man who, after having seen what he is, could any longer think of joy and pleasure?’ The prince turned his chariot, and returned to the city.
“A third time he was driving to his pleasure-garden through the western gate, when he saw a dead body on the road, lying on a bier and covered with a cloth. The friends stood about crying, sobbing, tearing their hair, covering their heads with dust, striking their breasts, and uttering wild cries. The prince, again, calling his coachman to witness this painful scene, exclaimed, ‘Oh, woe to youth, which must be destroyed by old age! Woe to health, which must be destroyed by so many diseases! Woe to this life, where a man remains so short a time! If there were no old age, no disease, no death; if these could he made captive forever!’ Then, betraying for the first time his intentions, the young prince said, ‘Let us turn back, I must think how to accomplish deliverance.’
“A last meeting put an end to hesitation. He was driving through the northern gate on the way to his pleasure-gardens, when he saw a mendicant, who appeared outwardly calm, subdued, looking downwards, wearing with an air of dignity his religious vestment, and carrying an alms-bowl.
“‘Who is that man?’ asked the prince.
p. 174
“‘Sir,’ replied the coachman, ‘this man is one of those who are called Bhikshus, or mendicants. He has renounced all pleasures, all desires, and leads a life of austerity. He tries to conquer himself. He has become a devotee. Without passion, without envy, he walks about asking for alms.’
“‘This is good and well said,’ replied the prince. ‘The life of a devotee has always been praised by the wise. It will be my refuge, and the refuge of other creatures; it will lead us to a real life, to happiness and immortality.’
“With these words the young prince turned his chariot, and returned to the city.”
If we now compare the story of Joannes of Damascus, we find that the early life of Josaphat is exactly the same as that of Buddha. His father is a king, and after the birth of his son, an astrologer predicts that he will rise to glory; not, however, in his own kingdom, but in a higher and better one; in fact, that he will embrace the new and persecuted religion of the Christians. Everything is done to prevent this. He is kept in a beautiful palace, surrounded by all that is enjoyable; and great care is taken to, keep him in ignorance of sickness, old age, and death. After a time, however, his father gives him leave to drive out. On one of his drives he sees two men, one maimed, the other blind. He asks what they are, and is told that they are suffering from disease. He then inquires whether all men are liable to disease, and whether it is known beforehand who will suffer from disease and who will be free; and when he hears the truth, he becomes sad, and returns home. Another time, when he drives out, he meets an old man with wrinkled face and shaking legs, bent down, with white hair, his teeth gone, and his voice faltering. He asks again what all this means, and is told that this is what happens
p. 175
to all men; and that no one can escape old age, and that in the end all men must die. Thereupon he returns home to meditate on death, till at last a hermit appears, 1 and opens before his eyes a higher view of life, as contained in the Gospel of Christ.
No one, I believe, can read these two stories without feeling convinced that one was borrowed from the other; and as Fa Hian, three hundred years before John of Damascus, saw the towers which commemorated the three drives of Buddha still standing among the ruins of the royal city of Kapilavastu, it follows that the Greek father borrowed his subject from the Buddhist scriptures. Were it necessary, it would be easy to point out still more minute coincidences between the life of Josaphat and of Buddha, the founder of the Buddhist religion. Both in the end convert their royal fathers, both fight manfully against the assaults of the flesh and the devil, both are regarded as saints before they die. Possibly even a proper name may have been transferred from the sacred canon of the Buddhists to the pages of the Greek writer. The driver who conducts Buddha then he flees by night from his palace where he leaves his wife, his only son, and all his treasures, in order to devote himself to a contemplative life, is called Chandaka, in Burmese, Sanna. 2 The friend and companion of Barlaam is called Zardan. 3 Reinaud
p. 176
in his “Mémoire sur l’Inde,” p. 91 (1849), was the first, it seems, to point out that Youdasf, mentioned by Massoudi as the founder of the Sabæan religion, and Youasaf, mentioned as the founder of Buddhism by the author of the “Kitáb-al-Fihrist,” are both meant for Bodhisattva, a corruption quite intelligible with the system of transcribing that name with Persian letters. Professor Benfey has identified Theudas, the sorcerer in “Barlaam and Joasaph,” with the Devadatta of the Buddhist scriptures. 1
How palpable these coincidences are between the two stories is best shown by the fact that they were pointed out, independently of each other, by scholars in France, Germany, and England. I place France first, because in point of time M. Laboulaye was the first who called attention to it in one of his charming articles in the “Débats.”
The text of the Nevv Testament of Iesus Christ, translated out of the vulgar Latine by the papists of the traiterous seminarie at Rhemes. With arguments of bookes, chapters, and annotations, pretending to discouer the corruptions of diuers translations, and to cleare the controuersies of these dayes. VVhereunto is added the translation out of the original Greeke, commonly vsed in the Church of England, with a confutation of all such arguments, glosses, and annotations, as conteine manifest impietie, of heresie, treason and slander, against the catholike Church of God, and the true teachers thereof, or the translations vsed in the Church of England … By William Fulke, Doctor in Diuinitie
London: Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie 1589 $18,000
Folio * A-Y 2A-2Y 3A-3Y 4A-4V 4X First Edition
This copy is bound in full older calf, a very sound and impressive copy.
The Rheims version and the Bishops’ Bible version in parallel columns, with Fulke’s commentary at the end of each chapter. The Rheims version is translated from the Vulgate chiefly by Gregory Martin; the Bishops’ Bible translation was overseen by Matthew Parker.In England the Protestant William Fulke ironically popularized the Rheims New Testament through his collation of the Rheims text and annotations in parallel columns alongside the 1572 Protestant Bishops’ Bible. Fulke’s work (as here) was first published in 1589; and as a consequence the Rheims text and notes became easily available without fear of criminal sanctions.
Not only did Douay-Rheims influence Catholics, but also it had a substantive influence on the later creation of the King James Bible. The Authorized Version is distinguished from previous English Protestant versions by a greater tendency to employ Latinate vocabulary, and the translators were able to find many such terms (for example: emulation Romans 11:14) in the Rheims New Testament. Consequently, a number of the latinisms of the Douay–Rheims, through their use in the King James Bible, have entered standard literary English. Douay-Rheims would go on through several re-printings on both sides of the continent.
The translators of the Rheims New Testament appended a list of neologisms in their work, including many latinate terms that have since become assimilated into standard English. Examples include “acquisition”, “adulterate”, “advent”, “allegory”, “verity”, “calumniate”, “character”, “cooperate”, “prescience”, “resuscitate”, “victim”, and “evangelise”.
While such English may have been generated through independent creation, nevertheless the totality demonstrates a lasting influence on the development of English vocabulary. In addition the editors chose to transliterate rather than translate a number of technical Greek or Hebrew terms, such as “azymes” for unleavened bread, and “pasch” for Passover. Few of these have been assimilated into standard English. One that has is “holocaust” for burnt offering.
The First English Catholic New Testament in English,printed in England.
“The ‘editio princeps’ of the Roman Catholic version of the New Testament in English. Translated from the Vulgate by Gregory Martin, under the supervision of William Allen and Richard Bristow. According to the “Douai Diaries”, Martin began the translation in October1578 and completed it in March 1582.
“The translation adheres very closely to the Latin, though it shows traces of careful comparison with the Greek. But its groundwork was practically supplied by the existing English versions, from which Martin did not hesitate to borrow freely. In particular there are very many striking resemblances between Martin’s renderings and those in Coverdale’s diglot of 1538. Martin’s own style is often disfigured by Latinisms.
“This Rheims New Testament exerted a very considerable influence on the King James version of 1611, transmitting to it not only an extensive vocabulary, but also numerous distinctive phrases and turns of expression. (See J.G. Carleton’s exhaustive analysis, The Part of Rheims in the Making of the English Bible. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.)
“Since the English Protestants used their vernacular translations not only as the foundation of their own faith but as siege artillery in the assault on Rome, a Catholic translation became more and more necessary in order that the faithful could answer, text for text, against the ‘intolerable ignorance and importunity of the heretics of this time.’ The chief translator was Gregory Martin… Technical words were transliterated rather than translated. Thus many new words came to birth… Not only was [Martin] steeped in the Vulgate, he was, every day, involved in the immortal liturgical Latin of his church. The resulting Latinisms added a majesty to his English prose, and many a dignified or felicitous phrase was silently lifted by the editors of the King James Version and thus passed into the language” (Great Books and Book Collectors, 108).
The names, numbers, and chapters of the Douay–Rheims Bible and the Challoner revision follow that of the Vulgate and therefore differ from those of the King James Version and its modern successors, making direct comparison of versions tricky in some places. For instance, the books called Ezra and Nehemiah in the King James Version are called 1 and 2 Esdras in the Douay–Rheims Bible. The books called 1 and 2 Esdras in the KJV are called 3 and 4 Esdras in the Douay, and were classed as apocrypha.
R.P. Leonardi Lessi E Societate Jesu, Sacrae Theologiae In Academia Louvaniensi Quondam Professoris, De Jure et Justitia Compendium. A quodam Patre eiusdem Societatis compilatum
Duaci, [i.e. Douai]. Apud Joannem Serrurier, Typographum juratum, 1640. $2,500
Octavo 7 X 4 1/2 inches a8, A-Z8,Aa7 (complete) about the fifth edition,the Approbation is dated23 jan 1634 This very nice copy is bound in near contemporary black morocco, gilt, later paper lettering-pieces. Rubbed, with some marking to boards. A.E.G. From the library of Ramsgate Monastery, with bookplate and library pouch to the front board. Lenaert Leys (1554-1623), Flemish Jesuit and professor of theology at Louvain, consultant to Antwerp merchants on legal matters. An early edition of this useful Douai-printed compendium of Leys groundbreaking legal work De Justitia et Jure (Louvain, 1605), which dealt with numerous commercial and business mattersand the ethical banking practices. Lessius is best known for this treatise De justitia and iure (De justice and law) in 1605 which was reprinted twenty times during the seventeenth century .
It was the first time a theologian seriously studying the moral problems raised by the economy and finance . Lessius went to Antwerp, then a city in full economic expansion, to study first hand how banks and modern trade worked. He acquired the competence in this area – a rare thing among the clerics of the time – gave considerable weight to his proposed solutions to the problems raised. Today historians of economics admire the subtlety of his analyzes of issues related to lending at interest . Among other things he gave information to calculate exactly what a fair price, giving up in this area which was proposed by his mentor, St. Thomas Aquinas ..
BT Gordon, Economic Analysis Before Adam Smith: Hesiod to Lessius, Macmillan, 1975.; Bernard Dempsey, Interest and usury, Dobson, 1943.
109. ;VD16.; ZV 957; Adams. A- 208.
2) 833G Richard, 1618-1693 Archdekin,
THEOLOGIA QUADRIPARTITA :POLEMICA, Praecipuas Fidei Controversias, ad brevem, ac facilem Metrodum redactas, PRACTICA, Resolutiones Theologicas, ac omnia prope SACERDOTIS munia accommodatas, SACRA, Apparatum alphabeticum, cum Praxi et Conceptibus Contionum pro singulis anni Dominicis; CATECHETICA, Summam Doctrinae Christianae, selectissimis exemplis, et brevi explicatione illustratam complectens__
Pragæ : Typis Universitatis Carolo- Ferdinandae in Collegio Societ. Jesu ad S. Clementem,1678 $2,800
First and only edition. Bound in the original Vellum binding, two brass clasps, manuscript title on spine. _
The ‘ Controversias Fidei’ had a wonderful success. A few copies of the work which found their way to the university of Prague were received with such enthusiasm that some transcripts of the whole were made for the use of the students; and in 1678 the book was reprinted, without the knowledge of the author, at the University
Press.__ARCHDEKIN, or ARSDEKIN, RICHARD an Irish Jesuit, who has adopted both forms of his name on his own title-pages, and is also known as Mac Gioi.la Cuddy, was the son of Nicholas Archdekin and his wife Ann Sherlock, and was born at Kilkenny 16 March 1618. He went through a course of classical studies, and for two years applied himself to philosophy before he entered the Jesuit order; and he studied theology for four years at Louvain. Entering the Society of Jesus at Mechlin 28 Sept. 1642, he was in due time enrolled among the professed fathers of the order. He was teaching humanities in 1650; he studied under the Jesuits at Antwerp and Lille; and arrived at the Professed House at Antwerp 26 March 1653. For six years he taught humanities, and he was professor of philosophy, moral theology, and Holy Scripture for a long period, chiefly at Louvain and Ant werp. His death occurred in the latter city 31 Aug. 1693._Father Archdekin, who was proficient in the Latin, Irish, English, and Flemish languages, composed the following works:— 1. ‘A Treatise of Miracles, together with New Miracles, and Benefits obtained by the sacred reliques of S. Francis Xaverius exposed in the Church of the Society of Jesus at Mechlin,’ Louvain, 1667, 8vo, in English and Irish. This very scarce book is supposed to be the first ever printed in the two languages in conjunction. 2. ‘Precipure Controversiie Fidei ad facilem methodum redactae; ac Resolutiones Theologicoe ad omnia Sacerdotis munia, pnesertim in Missionibus, accommodatse,’ Louvain, 1671, 8vo. At the end of this volume, which is a summary of theology, is usually found: 3. ‘ Vitie et Miraculorum Sancti Patricii Hiberniie Apostoli Epitome, cum brevi notitia Hibernioe et Prophetia S. Malachise’ (Louvain, 1671,8vo), a life of St. Patrick, with a short notice of Ireland, and the prophecy of St. Malachi respecting the succession of the popes. The ‘ Controversias Fidei’ had a wonderful success. A few copies of the work which found their way to the university of Prague were received with such enthusiasm that some transcripts of the whole were made for the use of the students; and in 1678 the book was reprinted, without the knowledge of the author, at the University Press. The third edition, which was printed at Antwerp with the author’s corrections and additions, was followed by a fourth and fifth at Cologne and Ingolstadt; and the sixth, again at Antwerp, by a seventh again at Cologne. These particulars are gathered from the prefaces to the eighth edition, which appeared at Antwerp in 1686r and where the title, the bulk, and the arrangement of the work are so altered that it would hardly be recognised as the same. The ‘ Controversioe Fidei’ of 1671 is a small octavo of 500pages. In the edition of 1686 the title is ‘Theologia Tripartita Universal and the three volumes quarto, of which it consists, comprise in all about 1,100 pages closely printed in double columns, containing about five times the matter of the ‘Controversial’ The work includes a life of Oliver Plunket, the catholic archbishop of Armagh, who was executed at London in 1681r and a life of Peter Talbot, the catholic archbishop of Dublin, who died in imprisonment at Dublin in 1680. In addition to these Archdekin’s work contains a number of anecdotes connected with the history of Ireland, introduced as examples in support of his theological doctrines. Archdekin’s work displays much order, knowledge, and precision, but some of his decisions in cases of conscience have been controverted by higher authority in the catholic church. In 1700 it was prohibited until correction should be made by the Congregation of the Index. The first edition published with the necessary corrections appears to have been also the last. It appeared at Antwerp in 1718, and was the thirteenth of the whole.
[Foley’s Records, vii. 15; Oliver’s Collectanea S. J., 231; O’Reilly’s Irish Writers, 198 ; Ware’s Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris, 203; Thomas Watts, in Biog. Diet. Soc. D. U. K.; Ribadeneira, Bibl. Scriptorum Soc. Jesu,,ed. Southwell, 718; Backer, Bibliotheque des Ecrivains de la Compagnie do Jesus (1869), 267; Foppens.Bibl. Belgica, 1066.] T. C._Sweeney? see DeBacker Sommervogel vol I col 515-521
Venetiis : ex typographia Gasparis Girardi 1732 $2,900
Octavo Bound in original calf. Editio Veneta Tomasso Ceva came from a rich and famous Italian family; he was the brother of Giovanni Ceva. In 1663 he entered the Society of Jesus and at an early age became professor of mathematics at Brera College in Milan.__Ceva’s first scientific work, De natura gravium (1669), deals with physical subjects—such as gravity, the attraction of masses for each other, free fall, and the pendulum—in a philosophical and even theological way. (For example, several pages are devoted to the concept of the spatium imaginarum.) Ceva wrote the treatise in two months of steady work; in his “Conclusion,” he asks his readers for emendations.__Ceva’s only truly mathematical work is the Opuscula mathematica (1699; parts were published separately in the same year as De ratione aequilibri, De sectione geometrico-hormonia et arithmetica, and De cycloide; de lineis phantasticis; de flexibilibus). The book is discussed in Acta eruditorum (1707); its particular importance is that it is the summation of all of Ceva’s mathematical work. It is concerned with gravity, arithmetic, geometric-harmonic means, the cycloid, division of angles, and higher-order conic sections and curves. It also contains a report on an instrument designed to divide a right angle into a specified number of equal parts; this same instrument was described in 1704 by L’Hospital—who makes no mention, however, of Ceva.__Higher-order curves are also the primary subject of an extensive correspondence between Ceva and Guido Grandi. Ceva proposed the problem; Grandi reported that such curves had well-defined properties. Grandi replied to Ceva’s questions not only in letters, but also in a work on the logarithmic curve published in 1701 with an appended letter by Ceva.__Ceva’s contribution to mathematics was modest; he is perhaps better remembered as a poet. Although some of his verse is mathematical and philosophical, he is best known for his religious poem Jesus Puer, which went through many printings and was translated into several languages. The German poet Lessing called Ceva a great mathematician as well as a great poet, while Schubart, writing in 1781, considered him the greatest Jesuit poet-genius. Ceva’s mathematical and scientific works are De natura gravium libri duo Thomae Cevae (Milan, 1669); Instrumentum pro sectione cujuscunque anguli rectilinei in partes quotcunque aequales (Milan, 1695; repr. in Acta eruditorum [16951, p. 290); and Opuscula mathematica Thomae Cevae e Soc. Jesu (Milan, 1699), discussed in Acta eruditorum (1707), pp. 149–153.___ !!Sylvae. Carmina Thomae Cevae (Milan, 1699, 1704, 1733); _Ceva’s correspondence with Grandi is in the Braidense Library (eight letters) and the Domus Galilaeana, Pisa (485 letters).__An important secondary source is Guido Grandi, Geometrica demonstratio theorematum Hugenianorum circa logisticam, seu logarithmicam lineam, addita epistola geometrica ad P. Thomam Cevam (Florence, 1701).__Herbert Oettel De Backer-Sommervogel Vol II col 1019 no.15
4) 516G Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti
La religiosa in solitudine : opera in cui si porge alle monache il modo d’impiegarsi con frutto negli esercizij spirituali di s. Ignazio e può anche seruire a chiunque brama di riformare con vn tal mezo il proprio stato
Bologna : nella stamperia del Longhi(IS), Longhi: 1696 $2300
Duodecimo 5 1/4 X 3 inches A-Z12, Aa12. -(lacking the blank Aa12) First? Edition Bound in contemporary vellum. Pinamonti was born in 1632 in Pistoia. In 1647 he joined the Society of Jesus , completing his studies in Rhetoric and Philosophy , completing the school year of Theology . From1664 , along with Paul Segneri , began the activity in the missions, devoting himself especially to the confessions.
Father Pinamonti was known for his humble and peaceful manner.
De Backer-Sommervogel vol.VI col 776, no 9 ( not mentioning this Edition! but 1695?)
5) 490G Georg Stengel or Stengelio 1584-1651
Labyrinthi ab Aegyptiis structi fraudes, cum mundi a diabolo seducti periculis collatae. Pars prior.
Ingolstadt, Gregor Henlin, 1630 $3,400
Octavo Acording to Debacker-Sommervogel there was never a second part published. )(8, A-Z8, Aa-Ss8, Tt2 Second? Edition Bound in full contemporary vellum.
Georg Stengel was born in 1584 in Augsburg he entered the Society of Jesus in 1601 and spent his whole life close to Ingolstadt. , he was a novice at Landsberg and taught at Munich, in 1618 he was Rector at the college at Dillingen and in 1640 he retrned to Ingolstadt. Stengel believed that all the punishments of God point to the need for an implacable persecution of witches on the Franconian model. (between 1600 and 1605 in Lower Franconia hundreds of ‘witches’ were burnt 250 in Fulda, 139 in Freigericht and more than 100 in Hanau) Stengel, while a professor at Ingolstadt, (in his great work, “De judiciis divinis”) urges, as reasons why a merciful God permits illness, his wish to glorify himself through the miracles wrought by his Church, and his desire to test the faith of men by letting them choose between the holy aid of the Church and the illicit resort to medicine, declares that there is a difference between simple possession and that brought by bewitchment, and that the latter is the more difficult to treat. DeBacker-Sommervogelvol. VII col. 1552 no. 46 Not listing a 1630 edition but a 1628 and a 1651
Joco-seriorum naturæ et artis, sive, Magiæ naturalis centuriæ tres, das ist, Drey-Hundert nütz- und lustige Sätze allerhand merckwürdiger Stücke, von Schimpff und Ernst, genommen auss der Kunst und Natur, oder natürlichen Magia Athanasii Kicheri Diatribe .
Franckfurt am Mayn : In Verlegung Johann Arnold Cholin,1672 $5,500
Quarto 8 X 5 inches [6] unsigned leaves, A-Z4, Aa-Tt4. First Edition This copy is bound in full contemporary sheep. Rare first (?) German trsl. of this esoteric work by the German Jesuit and scientist G. Schott (1608-1666) describing scientific and magical tricks to show that science can be fun and enjoyable. There are twenty two engraved plates. (some folding) depicting how these incentions work for example how to build a fireplace, how to walk on water or how to catch fish with your hands. Bound after the Schott work is a treais by Athanasius Kircher, titled “Diatribe, Oder Beweisschrifft”. Ms. ownership entry “Joannes Michaël Jenigen, jurisprudentia et (…) professor”.
DeBacker-Sommervogel vol.VII col.911 no.13 ; Faber du Faur,; no. 1011; [Caillet 10003 and cf. Caillet 10002] ;. VD-17 14:637268W
7) 642G Athanasius Kircher 1602-1680
R.P. Athanasii Kircheri e societate jesu Itinerarium Exstaticum, quo mundi opificium, id est: Coelestis expansi, fiderumque tam errantium, quam sixorum natura, vires, proprietates, singulorumque compositio & structura, ab infimo Telluris globo, usque ad ultima Mundi confinia, per ficti ratus integumentum explorata, nova hypothesi exponitur ad veritatem_[Bound with ]_R.P. Athanasii Kircheri E Societate Jesu Iter Exstaticum II. Qui & Mundi subterranei prodromus dicitur.
Duodecimo 5 x 3 inches π, A-Z12; Aa-Bb12, Cc7; A-D12, E5 This copy is bound in full contemporary calf, slightly wormed and bumped, with an elaborately blind-tooled spine and inlaid title. Overall, a very good copy with clean leaves of a rare edition of an important work. This is a very rare edition of Kircher’s Iter Exstaticum. OCLC records no copies of this edition and only the Stanford copy could be located world-wide. Sommervogel’s entry for this edition states that this work is a total of 468 pages, but the copy they examined probably lacked the second part, with continuous pagination to 604 as well as the seperately paginated “Dialogus III” (106 pgs.) both present in this copy. _The first part of this two part work tells of an imaginary astronomical journey made by our author. “The Itinerarium Exstaticum is one of Kircher’s most curious works. He wrote the treatise in the form of a narrative in which a certain Theodidactus —Kircher himself— is caught up in a dream-vision or an ecstatic journey and is guided through the heavens by a spirit named Cosmiel. The genre was not uncommon: the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero and Kepler’s Somnium, published posthumously in 1634, both recount dream-journeys to the moon. In the first dialogue Kircher recounts the journey to the moon, which he finds scarred with mountains and craters, contrary to the Aristotelian view. He flies on to Venus, which he discovers is made of the four elements, and so on to each of the other planets and through the region of the fixed stars. The sun itself has blemishes, Kircher proclaims. He himself had seen sunspots through a telescope several years earlier [which are depicted in one of the engravings.]” (Merrill) Kircher also mentions the rings around Jupiter, the pluralirty of inhabited worlds, and in one plate depicts six possible planetary systems._The second part of Kircher’s imaginary journey takes him to the underground world, and serves as an outline of the theories developed five years later in his Mundus Subterraneus. This work presents a unified theory of the dynamics of the earth, its rivers, oceans, mountains and volcanoes._“Having journeyed through the heavens with the angel Cosmiel, Theodidactus descends with a second guide, Hydriel, and examines the waters and their natures. Cosmiel then returns and shows him the land, its geography, its characteristics, and wonders. The dialogue also treats animals and plants and their generation and corruption. In the third dialogue they explore the wonders of the submarine world, and in the fourth the subterranean world.” (Merrill) DeBacker-Sommervogel vol.IV col.1056
781G
The text of the Nevv Testament of Iesus Christ, translated out of the vulgar Latine by the papists of the traiterous seminarie at Rhemes. With arguments of bookes, chapters, and annotations, pretending to discouer the corruptions of diuers translations, and to cleare the controuersies of these dayes. VVhereunto is added the translation out of the original Greeke, commonly vsed in the Church of England, with a confutation of all such arguments, glosses, and annotations, as conteine manifest impietie, of heresie, treason and slander, against the catholike Church of God, and the true teachers thereof, or the translations vsed in the Church of England … By William Fulke, Doctor in Diuinitie
London: Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie 1589 $18,000
Folio * A-Y 2A-2Y 3A-3Y 4A-4V 4X First Edition
This copy is bound in full older calf, a very sound and impressive copy.
The Rheims version and the Bishops’ Bible version in parallel columns, with Fulke’s commentary at the end of each chapter. The Rheims version is translated from the Vulgate chiefly by Gregory Martin; the Bishops’ Bible translation was overseen by Matthew Parker.In England the Protestant William Fulke ironically popularized the Rheims New Testament through his collation of the Rheims text and annotations in parallel columns alongside the 1572 Protestant Bishops’ Bible. Fulke’s work (as here) was first published in 1589; and as a consequence the Rheims text and notes became easily available without fear of criminal sanctions.
Not only did Douay-Rheims influence Catholics, but also it had a substantive influence on the later creation of the King James Bible. The Authorized Version is distinguished from previous English Protestant versions by a greater tendency to employ Latinate vocabulary, and the translators were able to find many such terms (for example: emulation Romans 11:14) in the Rheims New Testament. Consequently, a number of the latinisms of the Douay–Rheims, through their use in the King James Bible, have entered standard literary English. Douay-Rheims would go on through several re-printings on both sides of the continent.
The translators of the Rheims New Testament appended a list of neologisms in their work, including many latinate terms that have since become assimilated into standard English. Examples include “acquisition”, “adulterate”, “advent”, “allegory”, “verity”, “calumniate”, “character”, “cooperate”, “prescience”, “resuscitate”, “victim”, and “evangelise”.
While such English may have been generated through independent creation, nevertheless the totality demonstrates a lasting influence on the development of English vocabulary. In addition the editors chose to transliterate rather than translate a number of technical Greek or Hebrew terms, such as “azymes” for unleavened bread, and “pasch” for Passover. Few of these have been assimilated into standard English. One that has is “holocaust” for burnt offering.
The First English Catholic New Testament in English,printed in England.
“The ‘editio princeps’ of the Roman Catholic version of the New Testament in English. Translated from the Vulgate by Gregory Martin, under the supervision of William Allen and Richard Bristow. According to the “Douai Diaries”, Martin began the translation in October1578 and completed it in March 1582.
“The translation adheres very closely to the Latin, though it shows traces of careful comparison with the Greek. But its groundwork was practically supplied by the existing English versions, from which Martin did not hesitate to borrow freely. In particular there are very many striking resemblances between Martin’s renderings and those in Coverdale’s diglot of 1538. Martin’s own style is often disfigured by Latinisms.
“This Rheims New Testament exerted a very considerable influence on the King James version of 1611, transmitting to it not only an extensive vocabulary, but also numerous distinctive phrases and turns of expression. (See J.G. Carleton’s exhaustive analysis, The Part of Rheims in the Making of the English Bible. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.)
“Since the English Protestants used their vernacular translations not only as the foundation of their own faith but as siege artillery in the assault on Rome, a Catholic translation became more and more necessary in order that the faithful could answer, text for text, against the ‘intolerable ignorance and importunity of the heretics of this time.’ The chief translator was Gregory Martin… Technical words were transliterated rather than translated. Thus many new words came to birth… Not only was [Martin] steeped in the Vulgate, he was, every day, involved in the immortal liturgical Latin of his church. The resulting Latinisms added a majesty to his English prose, and many a dignified or felicitous phrase was silently lifted by the editors of the King James Version and thus passed into the language” (Great Books and Book Collectors, 108).
The names, numbers, and chapters of the Douay–Rheims Bible and the Challoner revision follow that of the Vulgate and therefore differ from those of the King James Version and its modern successors, making direct comparison of versions tricky in some places. For instance, the books called Ezra and Nehemiah in the King James Version are called 1 and 2 Esdras in the Douay–Rheims Bible. The books called 1 and 2 Esdras in the KJV are called 3 and 4 Esdras in the Douay, and were classed as apocrypha.
Some how I managed to take three classes from Huston Smith (The World’s Religions (originally titled The Religions of Man) has sold over two million copies) I misdeed this story, I was perhaps distracted by His notion of “”empirical metaphysics” which he writes about in his book Cleansing the Doors of Perception which was more the direction I was exploring at that time (organically). Now some thirty years later, The ‘ inorganic’ spread of mystical states/texts interest me and I was informed of this Great Story of textual transmission by my colleague Paul Dowling of Liber Antiquus. http://www.liberantiquus.com
The Greek legend of “Barlaam and Ioasaph” which is sometimes attributed to the 7th century John of Damascus, but actually it was transcribed by the Georgian monk Euthymius in the 11th century. The first Christianized adaptation was the Georgian epic Balavariani dating back to the 10th century. A Georgian monk, Euthymios of Athos, translated the story into Greek, some time before he was killed while visiting Constantinople in 1028. There the Greek adaptation was translated into Latin in 1048 and soon became well-known in Western Europe as Barlaam and Josaphat.
The story of Barlaam and Josaphat or Joasaph is a Christianized and later version of the story of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha.
901G Billy, Jacques de,; 1535-1581. translator Traditionally (but incorrectly)–attributed to St. John of Damascus
S. Ioannis Damasceni Historia, De Vitis Et Rebvs Gestis SS. Barlaam Eremitæ, & Iosaphat Indiæ regis, Iacobo Billio Prunæo, S. Michaelis in eremo Coenobiarcha interprete.
Coloniæ, In Officina Birckmannica, sumptibus Arnoldi Mylij. ANNO M.D.XCIII. Duodecimo A-S12 T6 ( -T6). $950
This copy is bound in contemporary vellum, an ownership stamp has been ripped out of the title page (see image )
VD 16 J 533; AdamsB 206.
One of the best known examples of the hagiographic novel, this is the tale of an Indian prince who becomes aware of the world’s miseries and is converted to Christianity by the monk Barlaam. Barlaam and Josaphat (Ioasaph) were believed to have re-converted India after her lapse from conversion to Christianity, and they were numbered among the Christian saints. Centuries ago likenesses were noticed between the life of Josaphat and the life of the Buddha; the resemblances are in incidents, doctrine, and philosophy, and Barlaam’s rules of abstinence resemble the Buddhist monk’s. But not till the mid-nineteenth century was it recognised that, in Josaphat, the Buddha had been venerated as a Christian saint for about a thousand years.
The origin of the story of Barlaam and Ioasaph—which in itself has little peculiar to Buddhism—appears to be a Manichaean tract produced in Central Asia
It was welcomed by the Arabs and by the Georgians. The Greek romance of Barlaam appears separately first in the 11th century. Most of the Greek manuscripts attribute the story to John the Monk, and it is only some later scribes who identify this John with John Damascene (ca. 676–749). There is strong evidence in Latin and Georgian as well as Greek that it was the Georgian Euthymius (who died in 1028) who caused the story to be translated from Georgian into Greek, the whole being reshaped and supplemented.
The Greek romance soon spread throughout Christendom, and was translated into Latin, Old Slavonic, Armenian, and Arabic. An English version (from Latin) was used by Shakespeare in his caskets scene in The Merchant of Venice.
JOSAPHAT, a corruption of Bodhisatwa. Barlaam and Josaphat,
{Ioasaph (Georgian Iodasaph, Arabic Yūdhasaf or Būdhasaf) is derived from the Sanskrit Bodhisattva. The Sanskrit word was changed to Bodisav in Persian texts in the 6th or 7th century, then to Budhasaf or Yudasaf in an 8th-century Arabic document (possibly Arabic initial “b” ﺑ changed to “y” ﻳ by duplication of a dot in handwriting). This became Iodasaph in Georgia in the 10th century, and that name was adapted as Ioasaph in Greece in the 11th century, and then as Iosaphat or Josaphat in Latin}
has been so completely received into the bosom of the Latin Church, that the names of ‘ the holy saints Barlaam and Josaphat of India, on the borders of Persia,’ have been canonized, and have their proper day, November 27th, as may be read in the Martyrologium of Cardinal Baronius, authorized by Pope Sextus v. for general use in the Catholic world, at page 177 of the 1873 edition, endorsed by His Holiness Pius IX. The Greek Church assigns a different day to the holy Iosaph, sou of Abener, king of India, and omits Barlaam. Josaphat or Iosaph is Bodhisat, or the condition of Sakya before he became a Buddha, and the religious romance of St. John of Damascus is simply a Greek version of the life of Gautama. Professor Max Muller pointed out the fact that Gautama, under the name of St. Josaphat, is now officially recognised and honoured and worshipped throughout the whole of Roman Catholic Christendom as a Christian saint! And just as Barlaam and Josaphat is an offshoot of Buddhist literature, so the wide series of tales represented by the Pancha Tantra, Kalila and Damna, Fables of Bidpai, Æsop’s Fables and La Fontaine’s, are mainly traceable not only to an Indian, but to a Buddhist source. Sindbad the Sailor, and other tales of the Arabian Nights, have their birth in Buddhist Jutakas; Boccaccio, Chaucer, Gower, and Spencer have been indebted to this treasurehouse of Buddhist folk-lore; even the three caskets and the pound of flesh in the Merchant of Venice are ideas found in this wonderful old story-book. —Contemporary Review, 1870.
ON THE MIGRATION OF FABLES.
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, ON FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1870.
From Chips from a German Workshop, by F. Max Müller, Vol. IV, pp. 139–198. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons [1881].
At the court of Khalif Almansur, where Abdallah ibn Almokaffa translated the fables of Calla and Dimna from Persian into Arabic, there lived a Christian of the name of Sergius, who for many years held the high office of treasurer to the Khalif. He had a son to whom he gave the best education that could then be given, his chief tutor being one Cosmas, an Italian monk, who had been taken prisoner by the Saracens, and sold as a slave at Bagdad. After the death of Sergius, his son succeeded him for some time as chief councillor (πρωτοσύμβουλος) to the Khalif Almansur. Such, however, had been the influence of the Italian monk on his pupil’s mind, that he suddenly resolved to retire from the world, and to devote himself to study, meditation, and pious works. From the monastery of St. Saba, near Jerusalem, this former minister of the Khalif issued the most learned works on theology, particularly his “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.” He soon became the highest authority on matters of dogma in the Eastern Church, and he still holds his place among the saints both of the Eastern and Western Churches. His name was Joannes, and from being born at Damascus, the former capital of the Khalifs, he is best known in history as Joannes Damascenus, or St. John of Damascus. He must
p. 168
have known Arabic, and probably Persian; but his mastery of Greek earned him, later in life, the name of Chrysorrhoas, or Gold-flowing. He became famous as the defender of the sacred images, and as the determined opponent of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, about 726. It is difficult in his life to distinguish between legend and history, but that he had held high office at the court of the Khalif Almansur, that he boldly opposed the iconoclastic policy of the Emperor Leo, and that he wrote the most learned theological works of his time, cannot be easily questioned.
Among the works ascribed to him is a story called “Barlaam and Joasaph.” 1 There has been a fierce controversy as to whether he was the author of it or not. Though for our own immediate purposes it would be of little consequence whether the book was written by Joannes Damascenus or by some less distinguished ecclesiastic, I must confess that the arguments hitherto adduced against his authorship seem to me very weak.
The Jesuits did not like the book, because it was
p. 169
a religious novel. They pointed to a passage in which the Holy Ghost is represented as proceeding from the Father “and the Son,” as incompatible with the creed of an Eastern ecclesiastic. That very passage, however, has now been proved to be spurious; and it should be borne in mind, besides, that the controversy on the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, or from the Father through the Son, dates a century later than Joannes. The fact, again, that the author does not mention Mohammedanism, 1 proves nothing against the authorship of Joannes, because, as he places Barlaam and Joasaph in the early centuries of Christianity, he would have ruined his story by any allusion to Mohammed’s religion, then only a hundred years old. Besides, he had written a separate work, in which the relative merits of Christianity and Mohammedanism are discussed. The prominence given to the question of the worship of images shows that the story could not have been written much before the time of Joannes Damascenus, and there is nothing in the style of our author that could be pointed out as incompatible with the style of the great theologian. On the contrary, the author of “Barlaam and Joasaph” quotes the same authors whom Joannes Damascenus quotes most frequently—eg., Basilius and Gregorius Nazianzenus. And no one but Joannes could have taken long passages from his own works without saying where he borrowed them. 2
p. 170
The story of “Barlaam and Joasaph”—or, as he is more commonly called, Josaphat—may be told in a few words: “A king in India, an enemy and persecutor of the Christians, has an only son. The astrologers have predicted that he would embrace the new doctrine. His father, therefore, tries by all means in his power to keep him ignorant of the miseries of the world, and to create in him a taste for pleasure and enjoyment. A Christian hermit, however, gains access to the prince, and instructs him in the doctrines of the Christian religion. The young prince is not only baptized, but resolves to give up all his earthly riches; and after having converted his own father and many of his subjects, he follows his teacher into the desert.”
The real object of the book is to give a simple exposition of the principal doctrines of the Christian religion. It also contains a first attempt at comparative theology, for in the course of the story there is a disputation on the merits of the principal religions of the world—the Chaldæan, the Egyptian, the Greek, the Jewish, and the Christian. But one of the chief attractions of this manual of Christian theology consisted in a number of fables and parables with which it is enlivened. Most of them have been traced to an Indian source. I shall mention one only which has found its way into almost every literature of the world: 1—
“A man was pursued by a unicorn, and while he tried to flee from it, he fell into a pit. In falling he stretched out both his
p. 171
arms, and laid hold of a small tree that was growing on one side of the pit. Having gained a firm footing, and holding to the tree, he fancied he was safe, when he saw two mice, a black and a white one, busy gnawing the root of the tree to which he was clinging. Looking down into the pit, he perceived a horrid dragon with his mouth wide open, ready to devour him, and when examining the place on which his feet rested, the heads of four serpents glared at him. Then he looked up, and observed drops of honey falling down from the tree to which he clung. Suddenly the unicorn, the dragon, the mice, and the serpents were all forgotten, and his mind was intent only on catching the drops of sweet honey trickling down from the tree.”
An explanation is hardly required. The unicorn is Death, always chasing man; the pit is the world; the small tree is man’s life, constantly gnawed by the black and the white mouse—i.e., by night and day; the four serpents are the four elements which compose the human body; the dragon below is meant for the jaws of hell. Surrounded by all these horrors, man is yet able to forget them all, and to think only of the pleasures of life, which, like a few drops of honey, fall into his mouth from the tree of life. 1
But what is still more curious is, that the author of “Barlaam and Josaphat” has evidently taken his very hero, the Indian Prince Josaphat, from an Indian source. In the “Lalita Vistara”—the life, though no doubt the legendary life, of Buddha—the father of Buddha is a king. When his son is born, the Brahman Asita predicts that he will rise to great glory, and become either a powerful king, or, renouncing the throne and embracing the life of a hermit
p. 172
become a Buddha. 1 The great object of his father is to prevent this. He therefore keeps the young prince, when he grows up, in his garden and palaces, surrounded by all pleasures which might turn his mind from contemplation to enjoyment. More especially he is to know nothing of illness, old age, and death, which might open his eyes to the misery and unreality of life. After a time, however, the prince receives permission to drive out; and then follow the four drives, 2 so famous in Buddhist history. The places where these drives took place were commemorated by towers still standing in the time of Fa Hian’s visit to India, early in the fifth century after Christ, and even in the time of Hiouen Thsang, in the seventh century. I shall read you a short account of the three drives: 3—
“One day when the prince with a large retinue was driving through the eastern gate of the city, on the way to one of his parks, he met on the road an old man, broken and decrepit. One could see the veins and muscles over the whole of his body, his teeth chattered, he was covered with wrinkles, bald, and hardly able to utter hollow and unmelodious sounds. He was bent on his stick, and all his limbs and joints trembled. ‘Who is that man?’ said the prince to his coachman. ‘He is small and weak, his flesh and his blood are dried up, his muscles stick to his skin, his head is white, his teeth chatter, his body is wasted away; leaning on his stick, he is hardly able to walk, stumbling at every step. Is there something peculiar in his family, or is this the common lot of all created beings?’
“‘Sir,’ replied the coachman, ‘that man is sinking under old age, his senses have become obtuse, suffering has destroyed his strength, and he is despised by his relations. He is without support and useless, and people have abandoned him, like a dead tree in a forest. But this is not peculiar to his family.
p. 173
[paragraph continues]In every creature youth is defeated by old age. Your father, your mother, all your relations, all your friends, will come to the same state; this is the appointed end of all creatures.’
“‘Alas!’ replied the prince, “are creatures so ignorant, so weak and foolish as to be proud of the youth by which they are intoxicated, not seeing the old age which awaits them? As for me, I go away. Coachman, turn my chariot quickly. What have I, the future prey of old age—what have I to do with pleasure?” And the young prince returned to the city without going to the park.
“Another time the prince was driving through the southern gate to his pleasure-garden, when he perceived on the road a man suffering from illness, parched with fever, his body wasted, covered with mud, without a friend, without a home, hardly able to breathe, and frightened at the sight of himself, and the approach of death. Having questioned his coachman, and received from him the answer which he expected, the young prince said, ‘Alas! health is but the sport of a dream, and the fear of suffering must take this frightful form. Where is the wise man who, after having seen what he is, could any longer think of joy and pleasure?’ The prince turned his chariot, and returned to the city.
“A third time he was driving to his pleasure-garden through the western gate, when he saw a dead body on the road, lying on a bier and covered with a cloth. The friends stood about crying, sobbing, tearing their hair, covering their heads with dust, striking their breasts, and uttering wild cries. The prince, again, calling his coachman to witness this painful scene, exclaimed, ‘Oh, woe to youth, which must be destroyed by old age! Woe to health, which must be destroyed by so many diseases! Woe to this life, where a man remains so short a time! If there were no old age, no disease, no death; if these could he made captive forever!’ Then, betraying for the first time his intentions, the young prince said, ‘Let us turn back, I must think how to accomplish deliverance.’
“A last meeting put an end to hesitation. He was driving through the northern gate on the way to his pleasure-gardens, when he saw a mendicant, who appeared outwardly calm, subdued, looking downwards, wearing with an air of dignity his religious vestment, and carrying an alms-bowl.
“‘Who is that man?’ asked the prince.
p. 174
“‘Sir,’ replied the coachman, ‘this man is one of those who are called Bhikshus, or mendicants. He has renounced all pleasures, all desires, and leads a life of austerity. He tries to conquer himself. He has become a devotee. Without passion, without envy, he walks about asking for alms.’
“‘This is good and well said,’ replied the prince. ‘The life of a devotee has always been praised by the wise. It will be my refuge, and the refuge of other creatures; it will lead us to a real life, to happiness and immortality.’
“With these words the young prince turned his chariot, and returned to the city.”
If we now compare the story of Joannes of Damascus, we find that the early life of Josaphat is exactly the same as that of Buddha. His father is a king, and after the birth of his son, an astrologer predicts that he will rise to glory; not, however, in his own kingdom, but in a higher and better one; in fact, that he will embrace the new and persecuted religion of the Christians. Everything is done to prevent this. He is kept in a beautiful palace, surrounded by all that is enjoyable; and great care is taken to, keep him in ignorance of sickness, old age, and death. After a time, however, his father gives him leave to drive out. On one of his drives he sees two men, one maimed, the other blind. He asks what they are, and is told that they are suffering from disease. He then inquires whether all men are liable to disease, and whether it is known beforehand who will suffer from disease and who will be free; and when he hears the truth, he becomes sad, and returns home. Another time, when he drives out, he meets an old man with wrinkled face and shaking legs, bent down, with white hair, his teeth gone, and his voice faltering. He asks again what all this means, and is told that this is what happens
p. 175
to all men; and that no one can escape old age, and that in the end all men must die. Thereupon he returns home to meditate on death, till at last a hermit appears, 1 and opens before his eyes a higher view of life, as contained in the Gospel of Christ.
No one, I believe, can read these two stories without feeling convinced that one was borrowed from the other; and as Fa Hian, three hundred years before John of Damascus, saw the towers which commemorated the three drives of Buddha still standing among the ruins of the royal city of Kapilavastu, it follows that the Greek father borrowed his subject from the Buddhist scriptures. Were it necessary, it would be easy to point out still more minute coincidences between the life of Josaphat and of Buddha, the founder of the Buddhist religion. Both in the end convert their royal fathers, both fight manfully against the assaults of the flesh and the devil, both are regarded as saints before they die. Possibly even a proper name may have been transferred from the sacred canon of the Buddhists to the pages of the Greek writer. The driver who conducts Buddha then he flees by night from his palace where he leaves his wife, his only son, and all his treasures, in order to devote himself to a contemplative life, is called Chandaka, in Burmese, Sanna. 2 The friend and companion of Barlaam is called Zardan. 3 Reinaud
p. 176
in his “Mémoire sur l’Inde,” p. 91 (1849), was the first, it seems, to point out that Youdasf, mentioned by Massoudi as the founder of the Sabæan religion, and Youasaf, mentioned as the founder of Buddhism by the author of the “Kitáb-al-Fihrist,” are both meant for Bodhisattva, a corruption quite intelligible with the system of transcribing that name with Persian letters. Professor Benfey has identified Theudas, the sorcerer in “Barlaam and Joasaph,” with the Devadatta of the Buddhist scriptures. 1
How palpable these coincidences are between the two stories is best shown by the fact that they were pointed out, independently of each other, by scholars in France, Germany, and England. I place France first, because in point of time M. Laboulaye was the first who called attention to it in one of his charming articles in the “Débats.”
Some how or another, it has turned out that S. Igantius’ Spiritual Exercises has played a cornerstone in my intellectual /Spiritual development. In a way It is the first ‘mystical’ text I read (or for that matter had easy access to).
Alas The S.E. sent me down many resplendent and divergent paths: Henry Suso, John Of Climax, Ricard Roll, John of The Cross, Miester Eckhard, Tauler.
After my first time thorough the Spiritual Exercises I read Hesse’s Siddartha. As a self proclaimed ‘Mystic Mulcher’
I ended up picking and choosing what seemed to fit with a naïf, but informed western form ready to be filled in. In college I studied non Literate forms of mysticism which Landed in a place where Mircea Eliadeand Agehananda Bharati Directed me to find all I could about native american ‘Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy’. In a fortuitous ‘eternal return’ I was reading Jesuit ‘contact ethnographies’, of east cost spiritual practices. Enter another theme, communication/translation and visual communication. It seemed to me at the time (and still does), that the function of ritual and process, is a cultural specific and in a sense aleatory path toward a shared experience of being of and within a group. The Society of Jesus, embraced this in their north and south American missions (as well as their missions in Asia). The material survival of these missions are enormous in both physical and cultural impact. I would like to think of a French Seventeenth century Jesuit in what is now Quebec with this copy of Les exercices spirituels under his ‘Black Robe’ The images in this French edition depict a type of quest that the Iroquois would have access to. The “conquest of the souls” was an integral part of the constitution of Nouvelle-France. In 1656 Sainte-Marie-de-Ganentaa (or St. Mary’s of Ganantaa) was the first of these missions to be established, located among the Onondagas under Father Simon Le Moyne (1604-1665).
On August 5, 1654, Father LeMoyne arrived in the Onondaga village with the French Jesuits. During his short stay, LeMoyne drank from a spring which the Onondagas believed to be tainted due to an evil spirit. Unlike the Onondagas who considered the salt springs evil, the French instead, saw them as a money-making enterprise.
Father Le Moyne noted in his diary that “We tested the water of a spring, which the Indians are afraid to drink, saying that it is inhabited by a demon, who makes it foul. I found the fountain of salt water, from which we evaporated a little salt as natural as that from the sea, some of which we shall carry to Quebec.”
Within thirteen years, the Jesuits had missions among all five Iroquois nations, in part imposed by French attacks against their villages in present-day New York state {I attended Syracuse University a hot bed of Onodagas}. As relations between the French Jesuits and The Iroquois became closer the culture contact stresses took their bloody toll the missions were all abandoned by 1708. The Iroquois of central New York did not respond to the Jesuits as their northern neighbors In order to train young Indians to the Catholic faith, a Seminary is opened near Quebec, at Notre-Dame-des-Anges in 1636. The first students were five young Hurons, who were followed by a dozen of young Montagnais and Algonquins in 1638-1639. This was quite similar to the “Puritan experiment” at Harvard, but the results were quite different …maybe…
The Jesuits in America used methods which were comparatively respectful of the traditional way of life of the Indians, especially compared to the approach of the Puritans in New England. They required a conformity to their code of dress and behaviour.
” English civilization scorned and neglected him; French civilization embraced and cherished him.”
[Francis Parkman]
Jesuit missionaries learned Indian languages, and accepted Indian ways, to the point of conforming to them, especially when living among them. According to Jérôme Lalemant, a missionary must first have “penetrated their thoughts… adapted himself to their manner of living and, when necessary, been a Barbarian with them.” To gain the Indians’ confidence, the Jesuits drew parallels between Catholicism and Indian practices, making connections to the mystical dimension and symbolism of Catholicism (pictures, bells, incense, candlelight), giving out religious medals as amulets, and promoting the benefits of the cult of relics!
Images from 350G
Les exercices spirituels de S. Ignace de Loyola … Traduits du latin en françois, par un Père de la mesme Compagnie. 1673 First Edition in French.
So the Relics, the Images, the Translation, all come together in this book.
350G Loyola, Ignatius. 1491-1556
Les exercices spirituels de S. Ignace de Loyola Traduits du latin en françois, par un Père de la mesme Compagnie.
Anvers : M. Cnobbaert, 1673 $4,700
Octavo, . First edition of this translation (second in french)
A-R8 S2 54 full-page plates
This copy is bound in contemporary full sheep, with some scratches. There is no cracking at the hinges. It is a very large copy with very good margins and is clean and crisp. A very nice copy. Translated by Antoine Vatier (S J Le P ) ; or P. Jennesseaux S.J. There is a portrait of Loyola by M. Cnobbaert see above. This is an Illustrated edition of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, “the most famous modern textbook on ascetic discipline, the nature of sin, and Christian perfection by grace” (PMM) Illustrated with fifty four full page engravings, all in very strong and deep impressions. bound after the printed book is 24 pages of notes in a french seventh century hand! Probably notes by Sister Marie Philipine ( see the images below)
The Port. of St. Ignatius on leaf A1, t.p. on leaf A2. Port. of St. Ignatius by Michel Cnobbaert; cf. Backer-Sommervogel. The translator is Antoine Vatier; cf. Backer-Sommervogel t. 5, col. 69 and Backer-Sommervogel t. 8, col. 490. The “Privilege du Roy” is dated 18 October, 1672, although the work was issued in 1673. Backer-Sommervogel, t. 5, col. 69.
781G
A-S12 T6 ( -T6). $950
Professor Max Muller pointed out the fact that Gautama, under the name of St. Josaphat, is now officially recognised and honoured and worshipped throughout the whole of Roman Catholic Christendom as a Christian saint! And just as Barlaam and Josaphat is an offshoot of Buddhist literature, so the wide series of tales represented by the Pancha Tantra, Kalila and Damna, Fables of Bidpai, Æsop’s Fables and La Fontaine’s, are mainly traceable not only to an Indian, but to a Buddhist source. Sindbad the Sailor, and other tales of the Arabian Nights, have their birth in Buddhist Jutakas; Boccaccio, Chaucer, Gower, and Spencer have been indebted to this treasurehouse of Buddhist folk-lore; even the three caskets and the pound of flesh in the Merchant of Venice are ideas found in this wonderful old story-book. —Contemporary Review, 1870.
Italian monk on his pupil’s mind, that he suddenly resolved to retire from the world, and to devote himself to study, meditation, and pious works. From the monastery of St. Saba, near Jerusalem, this former minister of the Khalif issued the most learned works on theology, particularly his “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.” He soon became the highest authority on matters of dogma in the Eastern Church, and he still holds his place among the saints both of the Eastern and Western Churches. His name was Joannes, and from being born at Damascus, the former capital of the Khalifs, he is best known in history as Joannes Damascenus, or St. John of Damascus. He must
1) 620G Lenaert Leys (Lessius) 1554-1623
Recent Comments