[MISSAL]
Ordo divinae missae Armenorum.
Rome, Typis Sacrae Congregationis Propag[andae]. Fidei, 1642.£15,000.00
FIRST EDITION. 4to. pp. (vi) 132. Roman and Armenian letter, double column. T-p with engraved printer’s device. Elegant full-page engraving of the Crucifixion. Typographical tailpieces. Wormtracks to blank gutter. One or two ll. waterstained to upper blank margin, a few ll. browned, very light marginal foxing, the odd spot, a good copy in original vellum, stained, loss at head of spine, upper joint slightly cracking, ms. title and shelfmark. T-p with inkstamp of Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (d. 1737). Early C19 bookplate of Henri de Courtils de Montbertoin. Ms. shelfmarks to vellum and fly, one superseded.
This is the first work to be printed in Armenian by the Catholic Church’s Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fidei, with Armenian and Latin texts in parallel, translated by the orientalist Giovanni Molino.
‘The Roman Church … saw the Eastern Christians as a fruitful field for proselytism … In the C17th the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, established by the Roman Catholic Church in 1622 as part of the Counter-Reformation, undertook a printing programme in Armenian and other languages designed to provide missionaries and new converts alike with texts to support evangelisation and Catholic devotion’ (Vrej Nerses Nersessian, The Parikian Collection of Early Armenian Printing at Eton College Library (Eton: 2016), p. 7).
‘Around 1623 a new phase began in the relations between the Armenian Church and the Roman Church, followed by a new expansion of Catholic publishing, due notably to the founding of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide and its printing house. Also at this time, the Armenian religious authorities appealed to Rome for the creation of a printing house and school for the use of Armenians … The work of the commission set up … and charged with correcting the Armenian version was not crowned with success. It was necessary to wait until 1642 for a new … Ordo divinae missae Armenorum to be printed’ (Jean-Pierre Mahé, Catalogue des ‘Incunables’ Arméniens (Genève: 1986), p. 154). All the Armenian types used by the Sacra Congregatio were those cut by Robert Granjon in 1579 (Mahé, p. 153).
Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (1651-1737) was an Italian cardinal and bibliophile who amassed a vast library of over 15,000 items, which was dispersed at the end of the C18. This book appears on p. 33 of the printed catalogue, Bibliothecae Josephi Renati Imperialis, prepared by his secretary and published in Rome in 1711.
Mahé 166. Nersessian, Catalogue of Early Armenian Books, 14. BM STC C17 It., p. 491.