LIPSIUS, Justus. De cruce libri tres. Ad sacram profanamque historiam utiles. Unà cum notis. Secunda edition corrector.

LIPSIUS, Justus. De cruce libri tres. Ad sacram profanamque historiam utiles. Unà cum notis. Secunda edition corrector.By Far the Most Wicked Book Lipsius Ever Wrote LIPSIUS, Justus. De cruce libri tres. Ad sacram profanamque historiam utiles. Un cum notis. Secunda edition corrector. Antwerp: Ex Officina Plantiniana, Widow of Christophe Plantin and Johannes Moretus. 1595. [bound with:] LIPSIUS, Justus. Adversus dialogistam liber de una religione. In quo tria capita libri quarti politicorum explicantur. Frankfurt: Johann Wechel and Peter Fischer. 1591. [and:]

‘By Far the Most Wicked Book Lipsius Ever Wrote’

LIPSIUS, Justus. De cruce libri tres. Ad sacram profanamque historiam utiles. Unà cum notis. Secunda edition corrector. Antwerp: ‘Ex Officina Plantiniana’, Widow of Christophe Plantin and Johannes Moretus. 1595.

[bound with:]

LIPSIUS, Justus. Adversus dialogistam liber de una religione. In quo tria capita libri quarti politicorum explicantur. Frankfurt: Johann Wechel and Peter Fischer. 1591.

[and:]

COORNHERT, Dirck Volckertszoon. Defensio processus de non occidendis haereticis, contra tria capita libri IIII Politicorum I. Lipsi. Eiusque libri adversus dialogistam confutatio. Hanau: Wilhelm Antonius. 1593.

Three works in one vol., 8vo. Contemporary vellum, borders ruled in blind, title lettered in ink to spine, final work untrimmed at foot; I: pp. 137, [7], with engraved printer’s devices to title, one full-page engraved illustration, 20 engraved illustrations and one woodcut illustration within text; II: pp. 77, [3], with woodcut printer’s device to title; III: pp. 99, [1]; all works with woodcut initials and tailpieces; wanting ties, binding slightly stained and cockled, a few tiny wormholes to back cover, lacking free front endpaper, other endpapers wormed, traces of adhesive to front pastedown; light dust-soling throughout, the occasional spot, occasional tiny wormhole (not affecting text), the last 4 ff. with wormtrack at head touching headlines and the odd letter of text (without loss of sense); overall a very good copy; seventeenth-century Latin motto ‘Veritas premitur, sed non opprimitur’ in ink and erased inscription to first title, eighteenth-century inscription ‘C’est bien le plus méchant Livre, quil ait jamais fait Lipse, voy: Bay[le] Dict[ionnaire] hist[orique] et Crit[ique] pag. 1722 in m. E.’ in ink to second title; early underlining to a few pages.

Second editions of Lipsius’ illustrated treatise on crucifixion and his defence of his own Politicorum, bound with Coornhert’s refutation of the Politicorum’s arguments in favour of religious persecution.

First published by the Plantin Press in 1594, Justus Lipsius’s (1547–1606) De Cruce offers a detailed study of crucifixion in the ancient world, especially Rome, examining forms of the cross, instruments of punishment, and methods of execution. The work contains twenty-two engravings (including one full-page plate), generally attributed to the Flemish draughtman Peeter van der Borcht (c. 1530–1608), a frequent collaborator of the Plantin Press. In this treatise Lipsius develops a terminology for the cross, distinguishing the crux simplex (a single upright stake used for tying or impalement) from the crux compacta, a structure composed of two beams. The latter is further subdivided into the crux decussata (X-shaped), crux commissa (T-shaped), and crux immissa (†-shaped).

First published in Leiden in 1590, Adversus dialogistam liber de una religione (Book about the One Religion, against the Debater) is Lipsius’ defence of his own Politicorum libri sex (1589) against a ‘debater’, the Dutch polymath Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert (1522–1590), a staunch critic of religious uniformity and one of the leading opponents of capital punishment for heresy in the Low Countries. The third book in this volume is Coornhert’s Defensio processus de non occidendis haereticis (Trial of the Killing of Heretics and Constraint of Conscience), the very work to which Lipsius responded with his Liber. First printed in Dutch at Gouda in 1590, and in Latin the following year, the Defensio directly attacks Lipsius’ justification of repression in the Politicorum, where he had argued that it was ‘better that one member be cast away, than that the whole body runne to ruyne’ (Lipisus, Sixe Bookes of Politickes (1594), p. 64).

What had begun as a private exchange of letters between Lipsius and Coornhert developed into one of the central intellectual disputes of the period, touching on the role of religion in the state and the legitimacy of punishing religious dissent. Although Coornhert’s Defensio was suppressed by the Leiden magistrates within a year of publication, the controversy appears to have damaged Lipsius’ reputation and was ‘one of the main reasons behind his permanent departure from Leiden in 1591’ (Constantinidou, p. 150). An eighteenth-century marginal note on the title page of our copy of the Adversus Dialogistam cites Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique, describing it as ‘by far the most wicked book Lipsius ever wrote’.

I: STCV 12928296; USTC 406972; Adams L-778. II: USTC 668593; VD16 L 1985. III: USTC 632159; VD16 C 4993; Adams C-2597. See Constantinidou, Responses to Religious Division, c. 1580–1620: Public and Private, Divine and Temporal (2017).

SKU: 2124476