£895.00
Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne. Défense de la Déclaration de l’Assemblée du Clergé de France de 1682, touchant la puissance ecclésiastique. Traduite en François, avec des notes. Amsterdam: Aux dépens de la Compagnie, 1745. Three volumes, complete.
An attractive complete three-volume edition of one of Bossuet’s principal works on the relationship between the French Church, the monarchy and papal authority.
The work defends the celebrated Declaration of the Clergy of France of 1682, whose text is reproduced at the beginning of the first volume. The Declaration articulated the principles subsequently associated with Gallicanism, asserting important limits upon papal authority in temporal affairs and defending the traditional liberties of the French Church.
Bossuet originally composed his defence in Latin. It remained unpublished during his lifetime and appeared posthumously in 1730; the present 1745 edition presents the work in French with notes.
Bound uniformly in later red half morocco over red cloth boards, spines with raised bands and gilt lettering “DEFENSE DU CLERGE / VOL. 1–3 / BOSSUET / 1745.” Some rubbing and wear to joints and extremities, with occasional marks and fading to cloth. Internally generally clean and well preserved, with occasional light spotting, staining and former institutional markings visible on several leaves. Complete in three volumes.
Author: Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704)
Title: Défense de la Déclaration de l’Assemblée du Clergé de France de 1682, touchant la puissance ecclésiastique
Year: 1745
Edition: Early French translation of Bossuet’s posthumously published defence
Place: Amsterdam
Publisher: Aux dépens de la Compagnie
Volumes: Three volumes, complete
Language: French
In 1682, an assembly of the French clergy issued four propositions that went directly to one of the great political and religious questions of early modern Europe:
Who held ultimate authority — the Pope, the Church, or the King?
At the centre of the controversy stood Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, theologian, celebrated preacher and one of the dominant intellectual figures of Louis XIV’s France.
The Declaration defended what became known as the Gallican Liberties. It rejected the idea that the Pope possessed authority over kings in temporal matters, placed limits upon papal power and asserted the continuing authority of the established traditions and councils of the Church.
The implications went far beyond theology. This was an argument about the relationship between religion and the state, and particularly about whether a monarch such as Louis XIV could govern independently of intervention from Rome.
Bossuet subsequently produced an extensive defence of the Declaration. Although the work was not published during his lifetime, it became an important statement of Gallican ecclesiology.
This handsome three-volume 1745 edition therefore preserves one of the defining intellectual arguments of the ancien régime: the attempt to reconcile Catholic faith with an independent French Church and a powerful sovereign monarchy.
Bossuet was one of the great prose writers, theologians and political thinkers of seventeenth-century France, and the Défense addresses a question lying at the heart of European history: the division of authority between Church and State.
The subject connects directly with Louis XIV, papal authority, Gallicanism and the political theology of absolute monarchy, giving the work significance well beyond specialist ecclesiastical history.
This example has the additional appeal of being a complete three-volume set, attractively and uniformly bound in red half morocco with gilt spines. The visual presentation is particularly strong: displayed together, the three volumes make a handsome eighteenth-century set.
