ZONARAS, Joannes; HAEDUUS, Joannes Quintinus, ed. [with] GRATIANUS.

A most interesting combination of very good copies, handsomely printed with wide margins, of two major works on the historic ecclesiastical regulations on the conduct and duties of the clergy. Attributed to Joannes Zonaras (fl. 12thC), a Byzantine historian and theologian, ‘Canones Apostolorum’ reproduces, in Greek and Latin, the 85 rules of the early Christian Church, allegedly authorised by the Apostles, as well as those approved by the acknowledged ecclesiastical councils, each followed by a short explanation. First published in Mainz in 1525, in the context of anti-Lutheran debates, they are concerned with the duties and countenance of bishops, presbyters and deacons (e.g., concubinage, demeanour during sacraments, food and drink), the administration of religious life and the sacraments. The editor, the French canonist Johannes Quintinus Haeduus (d.1561), provides in the preface a most interesting description of the original Greek ms in the Royal Library reproduced here for the first time: ‘Magnificent is the very elegant script, written on splendid paper. The royal codex is bound.’ The second work, here in the very scarce second edition (after that of 1556), is a compendium on the same subject drawn from the ‘Decretum’ by the C12 jurist Gratian, only superseded as a canon law authority by Gregory IX’s ‘Decretales’ (1324). Edited by Haeduus, it includes excerpts from 25 ‘distinctiones’, alternating scriptural and patristic passages, and explanations from Part I of the ‘Decretum’. Numerous regulations concern concubinage and the clergy’s professional and personal relationship with young women. It is adds to the ‘Canones Apostolorum’ and those of the following synods also references to Augustine, Jerome, and the writings of several popes.

In the late C16, this sammelband was in the library of Antoine Roy, from Saint-Rémy-sur-Creuse, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, later rector of the nearby small parish of Grand-Pressigny. He was a ‘vocal’ reader in that at times he used printed initials as a frame or as part of his crimson red signature, which appears a dozen times. Most probably in his hand is the long note at rear, concerning ‘Distinctio XXX’, which he also glossed at margins. He added passages absent in the second work concerning the veneration of the images and relics of saints and martyrs, and the heretics who abhor it, from Epiphanius to (implicitly) the more recent Protestants.