Handsome early 17th-century Oxford binding, Paris, 1609

(Catholic Church.) [Pithou (François), ed.] Codex Canonum Vetus Ecclesiae Romanae. Paris: Petrus Chevalier, 1609 first edition thus, woodcut printer’s device to title, decorated initials and ornaments, occasional light toning, the odd very minor marginal spot or mark, pp. [48], 703, [1], additional title to a4 recto with imprint ‘Moguntiae M.D.XXV’, 8vo, contemporary English (Oxford) calf, lacking ties, triple blind ruled, blind roll of tendrils and geometrical designs signed RW to covers, raised bands, compartments double blind ruled, head and foot of spine with hatching in blind, traces of old paper label with ms. title, a.e.r., upper joint just split at head, lower joint just loosening (but firm), minor vertical crack from head of spine, couple of tiny worm holes at foot, minor ancient repair to upper outer corner of lower board. Brunet IV, 679 (mentioned). Not in BL STC Fr. K. Heidecker et al., ‘The Divorce of Lothar II’ (2010).

The very handsome, fresh, strictly contemporary binding was produced in Oxford c.1610. It is decorated with roll XXVI, i.e. Oldham FP.g.(6), signed RW, which stand for Robert Way, although this roll (and its variant) was not always used by him (Pearson, p.72).

An excellent, clean copy of the first revised edition, with additional texts, of this important theological work – a compendium of all the canons of the ancient Catholic Church. It was edited by the French canon lawyer François Pithou (1543-1621) from old manuscripts including the ‘Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana’, a book of regulations given to Charlemagne by Pope Adrian in 774 – henceforward the ‘authorized’ collection of council and papal decisions (Heidecker, p.18). This ‘corpus’ was first edited in Mainz in 1525, in opposition to the tenets of the Lutheran Reformation; this edition bears indeed an additional titlepage with the Mainz imprint, as well as the original dedicatory epistles.

The work comprises the canons authorized by the Apostles, those approved by the official ecclesiastical councils of late antiquity, from Nicaea to Chalcedon, with a list of the recorded attendees, and those approved by Popes, with short biographies drawn from Platina. Organized by subject, the chapters discuss, among others, the appointment of bishops, Easter time, the exclusion of bigamous clerics or clerics guilty of crimes, the primacy of the Pope, the baptism of heretics, eunuchs, Cathars, murder, Arians, apostates and usury. The work also includes an anti-Lutheran treatise on the primacy of the Roman Church, produced for the Mainz edition; a treatise on canons by the Carthaginian deacon Fulgentius Ferrandus, with Crisconius’s concordance and index, both published in Paris in 1598; and an epistle on the Roman canons by the bishop Stephanus Dionysius. The main work was reprinted in 1687, with different accompanying texts.

Columbia, St Louis, UMD and St Bonaventure copies recorded in the US; none at the BL.