Défense de la declaration de l'Assemblée du clergé de France de 1682. Touchant la puissance ecclesiastique.

BOSSUET, Jacques-Bénigne. Défense de la declaration de l'Assemblée du clergé de France de 1682. Touchant la puissance ecclesiastique.

Amsterdam, Aux dépens de la Compagnie, 1745.

[Followed by]: Defensio Declarationis Conventûs Cleri Gallicani An. 1682. De Ecclesiasticâ Potestate, Amsterlodami, Sumptibus Societatis, 1745.

In-4 (265 x 212 mm), 5 volumes: T1 - [3] ff, XXXVI-364 pp, [2] ff; T2 - [3] ff, 491 pp, [2] ff; T3 - [3] ff, 418 pp, [3] ff [Followed by]: T1 - [3] ff, LVI-531 pp, [1] f; T2 - [2] ff, 138 pp, [2] ff. Full shagreened basane, triple gilt fillet framing the boards, spine ribbed with vertical gilt fillets, decorated with gilt fleurons at the corners and in the centre with double gilt fillet and roulette framing, red title and tomaison, double gilt fillet on the edges, marbled gilt edges, inner roulette (contemporary binding).

First French edition, the original having appeared in Latin in Luxembourg in 1730 under the title Defensio declarationis.

The edition of 1745 is the first complete translation of the work, in the form wanted by Bossuet, since a first attempt at translation starting from the Latin edition, incomplete, was given by Buffard in 1735. Our author indeed quickly recast his work in 3 volumes in a preliminary dissertation under the title of Gallia orthodoxa.

Bossuet was the author of the declaration on the liberties of the Gallican Church in 1682 and the Declaration of the Four Articles of 1682. The latter set out the doctrine of the Gallican Church right up to the end of the Ancien Régime - a fact that was to have a major influence on the future religious reforms of the Constituents in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790.

Upper head-cap missing from volume 2 of the French version, a few small marks on the head-caps of other volumes, a few pages slightly browned, but nevertheless a very good copy with a clean interior.

Quérard, La France littéraire, I, 427.