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BOUHOURS, Dominique La Vie de S. François Xavier de la Compagnie de Jesus Apostre des Indes et du Japon. Liège Henry Streel 1683

8vo., (8) ff., 633 (1) pp., (3) ff. Bound in contemporary calf, spine with raised bands preserving partial former title label. Binding brittle and boards loose. Former ex libris and stamps of Order of Discalced Carmelites on front pastedown and endleaf. Title page a bit short in bottom margin, but integral. Some toning/discoloration in extreme outer margin, and some amateurish exclamations in blank margin; but generally fresh copy, very good.

Very rare early edition (3rd) edition of this Life of Saint Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, following two Paris editions of the year before, by the French Jesuit controversialist François Bouhours (1632-1702). A rare imprint from Liège, the publication was elicited in part by the upsurge of Gallicanism in France, the theological and political movement which attempted to distance the French Catholic Church from the political domination of Rome. This movement, which resulted in a formal declaration of principles by the French clergy in 1682 posed a direct threat to Jesuit influence in France and French-speaking countries like Belgium, and the present hagiography, like Bouhours’ earlier Life of Saint Ignatius (1679), were almost certainly designed to offer a counter-model in which lives of heroic action resulting in nothing less than canonization remained militantly faithful to Rome and the traditional ecclesiastical hierarchy. The publisher William Henry Streel was an English Catholic active in Liège, and produced numerous Jesuit works, as well as an unusual English language book by Francis Line.
Bouhours is familiar with such earlier Jesuit treatments of Xavier’s Life as those of Torsellini, Orlandini, Bartoli, Maffei, Solier, Du Jarric, and Mendez Pinto. He also makes extensive use of Xavier’s own writings and claims to have access to an evidently unpublished manuscript concerning the Saint’s genealogy. The work contains over 200 pages relating to Xavier’s soujourn in Japan (pp. 284 ff.) as well as his travels in China and India.
There is no American copy of the Liège imprint, and it is rare in Europe. OCLC lists two in the Netherlands (Groningen and Amsterdam) and Munich. The Paris edition is held by 8 American institutions. Under Charles II, the work was translated into English by Dryden IN 1688.

* George Doncieux, Père Bouhours, # 11; Alt-Japan 239 (earliest edition listed); De Backler Sommervogel VII.1886.

$US2850

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