A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church; Anterior to the Division of the East and West
Oxford and London: John Henry Parker/F. and J. Rivington, 1845-1881. Collected edition. Forty-two volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter vellum, all edges red, marbled endpapers. Scattered foxing to endpapers but text generally quite clean, occasional mild soiling to bright vellum bindings, one volume with expert repair to corner. Sturdy, neat, and clean. An excellent set. Item #254
"VOX CLAMANTIS IN DESERTO" (A VOICE CALLING IN THE DESERT) Splendid Patristic Library—uniformly bound in forty-two volumes—collecting the writings, sermons, homilies, and letters of the Fathers of the Catholic Church, including fifteen volumes by St. John Chrysostom and eleven volumes by St. Augustine. After John Henry Newman's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845, E. B. Pusey and John Keble remained as the most prominent theologians in the Anglican Communion. They continued to develop the emphasis of The Oxford Movement on the essential unity of the Greek East and the Latin West which existed before the Reformation. The third editor, Charles Marriott—Newman's successor as Vicar of St. Mary’s—was known for his “donnish eccentricity and a capacity for academic work which bore its chief fruit in his large share in the editing and translating of The Library of the Fathers." (Geoffrey Rowell, The Vision Glorious).
The first volume in the series is Pusey's own revision of the translation of Augustine's Confessions (with Pusey's extensive Preface, initialed and dated "Oxford, Feast of S. Bartholomew, 1838"). The other Fathers included are: St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lectures on the Creed, St. Cyprian’s Works (two volumes), St. Gregory the Great’s Morals on the Book of Job (four volumes), St. Athanasius’ Works (three volumes), Tertullian’s Treatises, and St. Ephrem’s Rhythms on the Nativity, Cyprian’s Works, St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Works (in two volumes), St. Irenaeus’ Works, St. Ambrose’s Letters, and St. Justin the Martyr’s Works.
This set was handsomely-bound in uniform white vellum by Rivington's of Oxford, per their ink stamp on many of the blank flyleaves. Each volume includes a general series title page, with an engraved vignette of St. John the Baptist (captioned "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" and dated "Advent, 1836" in the plate) and an individual volume title page. Likely a mixed edition set, as most of the general title pages are dated in either Roman (earlier volumes) or Arabic numerals (later volumes). With Dedication to "William Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Primate of All England." William Howley served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1828 to 1848. Rowell, The Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism. A comprehensive set of a stunning achievement, handsomely bound and in excellent condition.
Price: $6,000.00