Primazia Monarqvica Do Pay Commum dos Monges N. P. S. Bento. Oferecida a N. R. P. Fr. Vicente Rangel, segunda vez Reeleito com acclamaçaõ commuã da Congregaçaõ. Pello Muito R. P. Fr. Bern. de Braga, Prouincial, e Lente de Theologia, que Foy na Prouincia do Brasil.
Em Ruam [Rouen]: Iuam Berthelin, Liureiro [Jean Berthelin for Laurens Maurry], M. DC. LXII [1662]. First edition. Later full mottled calf, spine gilt and dated “1662,” with red title label, marbled endpapers. [2] 3–7 [1] 117 [1] p. Title and other leaves bearing the blind stamp of the Portuguese scholar José Joaquim da Silva Pereira Caldas (1818–1903), professor at Braga. Binding rubbed and worn with small wormholes at the joints and partial surface loss to the rear cover; wormhole to the upper outer margin neatly reinforced with old tape. Paper toned with occasional staining. Overall in very good condition.
Scarce Bahia-composed Benedictine sermon defending the universal primacy of St. Benedict.
A Restoration-era Benedictine defense of institutional sovereignty, combining sermon, polemic, and monastic historiography within seventeenth-century Luso-Brazilian Catholicism.
Portuguese theological polemic composed in Bahia and printed at Rouen, with the dedicatory epistle dated “Bahia, 20 de Abril 1661.” Written by the Benedictine Provincial of Brazil, the work responds to a contemporary dispute over precedence among religious founders and the question of universal monastic primacy. It opens with an address to Fr. Vicente Rangel followed by a Lenten sermon preached in Bahia on Matthew 19:28 (“Vos qui secuti estis me…”). Braga distinguishes between chronological priority and supremacy of authority, acknowledging earlier founders while asserting for St. Benedict a superior, universal primacy within the monastic tradition.
Though issued from a French press, the work is closely rooted in the ecclesiastical life of colonial Brazil, with explicit references to Braga’s preaching in Bahia and to internal tensions within the Order during his provincial tenure.
Bernardo de Braga (1604–1662), also known as Frei Bernardo da Purificação, was a Portuguese Benedictine from Braga educated at Coimbra who served in Salvador (Bahia) as abbot and later as Provincial of the Brazilian Congregation. Active during the period of post-Dutch consolidation and internal jurisdictional disputes, he stands as a representative figure of the Portuguese–Brazilian Benedictine network that shaped the Order’s presence in colonial Brazil.
Extremely scarce: we trace only a single institutional copy (JCB) and only one recorded auction appearance in RBH (the Harmsworth copy, 1949). Not in Sabin. Borba de Moraes, pp. 118–19.
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Price: €3,000.00