Saumaise, Claude

Walonis Messalini De episcopis et presbyteris contra D[ionysium] Petavium Loiolitam dissertatio prima

      Lugduni Batavorum:: Ex officina Ioannis Maire,, 1641.. Vellum over paste boards. Ex-library with paper labels on spine and pressure-stamps, yet a copy notably clean, bright, and even crisp; perhaps a half-dozen leaves sometime exposed to a small spill(?) lightly marking lower outer corner-tips. All edges speckled red.. 8vo (15.8 cm, 6.25"). 476 pp., [1], [1 (blank)] ff. . Walo Messalinus" is a pseudonym for Claude Saumaise (or Salmasius, 1588-1653), a Huguenot classicist and theologian probably best noted for his attacks on the papacy. In this treatise he argues against the Jesuit patrologist Denis Petau that bishops and presbyters were the same in the early church, and thus that presbyterian polity was more primitive. The text of this = sole edition is printed in roman with a goodly amount of Greek, while the title-page is printed in black and red and ornamented with a woodcut vignette of a man digging beneath the motto "Fac et spera." = "Do and hope."#11; Provenance: Charles Spencer, Third Earl of Sunderland, lot 8432 in the Sunderland Library sale (1882)