Pro piorum recreatione: et in hoc opere contenta. Epistola ante indicem. Index contentorum. Ad lectores. Paradysus Heraclidis. Epistola Clementis. Recognitiones Petri apostoli. Complementum epistolae Clementis. Epistola Anacleti.
Paris: Guy Marchant for Jean Petit, 14 July 1504. First edition. Woodcut printer’s device on the title page. Nineteenth-century half calf, gilt spine with red morocco lettering-piece, expertly restored. ff. [4] 119. Light dampstaining to the lower margin throughout. Final blank leaf (r8) not present, as often. A large margin, clean copy, overall in very good condition.
The first printed edition of the Paradysus Heraclidis, edited by Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and published as part of his programme to recover the literature of the primitive Church.
Edited by the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (c. 1455–1536), the present volume is the first printed edition of the Paradysus Heraclidis, issued together with the Recognitiones Petri apostoli, the Epistle of Clement, the Complementum epistolae Clementis, and the Epistle of Anacletus. In his dedicatory epistle, Lefèvre explains that he rescued these neglected texts from ancient libraries for the benefit of contemporary readers, believing them to preserve both genuine Christian doctrine and the history of the primitive Church. At its centre is the Paradysus Heraclidis, a Latin recension of Palladius’ Historia Lausiaca and one of the principal sources for the history of early Egyptian monasticism. Rejecting the Lives of the Fathers traditionally attributed to Jerome as corrupt, Lefèvre presented the Paradysus as a more faithful account of the Desert Fathers, accompanying it with the Recognitiones Petri and the Epistles of Clement and Anacletus, which he believed preserved authentic apostolic teaching but are now recognised as belonging to the Pseudo-Clementine tradition.
One of the leading French Renaissance humanists, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples is best known for his influential editions and commentaries on Aristotle, which established his reputation as a scholar. Alongside his classical studies, he applied the methods of Renaissance philology to patristic and early Christian literature, seeking to recover texts that he regarded as authentic witnesses to the primitive Church. The present edition ranks among the earliest and most significant expressions of that aspect of his scholarship.
References: Adams H-288; Moreau I, 126, no. 37; USTC 142952; Goldschmidt, Medieval Texts and Their First Appearance in Print, pp. 56–57.
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