Scarce early edition of this richly illustrated Catholic martyrology
Richard VersteganTheatrum Crudelitatum Haereticorum Nostri Temporis.Antverpiae: Apud Adrianum Huberti, 1592. Third edition4to (216 x 163 mm). 95, (1) pp. Later vellum, extensive blind tooled covers, gilt lettered and decorated spine. Illustrated with 29 half page copper engravings. Title page with large copper engraving, section-titles with head-pieces and floral decorations, several endpieces, linen bookmark, marbled end papers.¶ BL STC Dutch p. 205; Adams T-445; Belg. Typogr. I, 4729; Brunet V, 773; Graesse VI p. 110; Pettegree, Netherlandish Books, 30627; lden, European Americana, p.462; Allison & Rogers, English Counter-Reformation, 1299; Milward, Religious controversies of the Elizabethan age, 268.A contemporary Catholic account, illustrated with 29 magnificent half-page engravings in text (most designed by Verstegan himself), depicting in macabre detail the cruelty, torture and murder, suffered by Catholic martyrs due to the atrocities of the Protestant persecutors in various European countries. The work starts with an image of iconoclasts and had its climax at the end with the beheading of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.
Three sections, each with own section-title, on England, France and the Low Countries; Preface, Prologue, Epilogue and a list of Martyrs. The engravings probably (partly) by Verstegen and Jean Wierix; the text by Jean Bloch from Brussels. This is the third Latin edition (after 1587 and 1588).
Very scarce early edition of this richly illustrated Catholic martyrology first published in 1587 and then in 1588 by the same Antwerp press.
Verstegan's Theatrum crudelitatum is "the one truly international, and highly popular, contemporary Catholic account of Protestant persecution [...] with twenty-nine vivid, not to mention gruesome illustrations." (Ian McBride, History and Memory in Modern Ireland, p.47)
The Theatrum crudelitatum has been highly praised as "a seminal work in the graphic depiction of martyrdom and shows an important stage in the development of concepts of natural rights." (Paul Arblaster).
The great rarity of all early editions of this celebrated work is well known: only a century after its publication the noted English antiquary Anthony Wood already observes that "'This very scarce and sells for any money" (Athenae Oxonienses, II, 393).
The book may have been conceived as a Catholic version of John Foxe's famous Protestant 'Book of Martyrs' (published in 1563 as Actes and Monuments). Verstegan's remarkable and influential book records, in gruesome detail, the cruelty, torture and murder suffered by Catholic martyrs in various European countries, and includes, in particular, the English, Irish and Scottish prosecutions at the hands of Protestant "heretics" during the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I, ending with an account and depiction of the 1587 execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
The Latin verses accompanying each illustration, as well as the verse Prologue and Epilogue are by Jean Boch (1555 - 1609), an eminent neo-Latin poet from Brussels (often referred to as the Belgic Virgil) and secretary of Antwerp's city council. Many bibliographers suggest that the 1587 first edition was actually printed by the FlemishTypographer Royal, Christopher Plantin, (for Huberti, who acted as publisher), and conjecture that the Theatrum crudelitatum was, perhaps, "an unofficial work of government propaganda" (Paul Arblaster).
"The Theatrum was in five sections: an introduction, and illustrated accounts of the persecution of Catholics during the reign of Henry VIII, during the French Wars of Religion, in the early years of the Dutch Revolt, and under Elizabeth. It was to be a seminal work of hagiology, but it was not only an important devotional work, it was also, if only indirectly, propaganda for the Spanish Armada. The book ends with a depiction of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots on 8 February 1587, and a call to the Catholic princes of Europe to avenge this Calvinist regicide, while the introduction devotes considerable space to demonstrating that Elizabeth had broken her coronation oath and violated reason and justice with her various statutes and proclamations against Catholics. Details of the atrocities against priests and religious committed under Henry VIII, and by Huguenot and Gueux soldiery in the fifteen-sixties and seventies, may have borne an incidental implication that Mary Tudor's forceful suppression of heresy in the fifteen-fifties and the actions of the Guisards and Alva in the late fifteen-sixties and early fifteen-seventies were provoked by the aggression of the heretics. A stated purpose was to show that Calvinists, unlike any other Christian group since the Munster Anabaptists, viewed the forcible overthrow of the established order as a necessary precondition to religious reform, in the creation of a 'godly commonwealth'.
"Both as a devotional work and as propaganda, the Theatrum far surpassed the immediate purpose of the moment and continued to be reprinted into the sixteen hundreds. It was of iconographic importance into the seventeenth century. As polemic, it provided a historical argument against Calvinism which was to be picked up in a number of influential historical works." (Paul Arblaster, Antwerp & the World: Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation, p.41-2)
In addition to Mary Stuart, the English martyrs considered in the book include Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), a social philosopher and Renaissance humanist, author of the famous Utopia, and statesman (a councillor to Henry VIII, and Lord High Chancellor of England), as well as Saint John Fisher, a Catholic bishop, theologian, and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; John Forest, a Franciscan Friar; Margaret Clitherow, etc.
The Theatrum crudelitatum also includes several Irishmen, namely Patrick Hely, bishop of Mayo, and his companion Con O'Rourke, killed in 1578. Verstegan "gave an account of the deaths of Hely and O'Rourke, and added a more recent, and horrific, case, that of the archbishop of Cashel, Dermot Hurley. Captured by the Dublin government in 1583, Hurley was first tortured in April 1584 by having his legs boiled in oil, then allowed to recover for two months before being condemned to death under martial law and hung by an improvised noose of rough twigs." (Ian McBride, History and Memory in Modern Ireland, p.47)
At least one case discussed in the book is of the American (New World) interest (thus ensuring the book's inclusion in Alden's European Americana): Verstegan gives an illustrated account of Jacques de Sourie, a notoriously ferocious French Huguenot pirate from Normandy, nicknamed "The Exterminating Angel" (L'Ange Exterminateur) and remembered for attacking and burning the town of Havana (Cuba) in 1555. The Theatrum describes Sourie's 1570 attack on a group of 40 Jesuit missionaries, led by Fr. Ignatius Azevedo, on their way from Portugal to Brazil. Near Canary Islands their ship Santiago was attacked by Sourie's boats; Sourie had his men search the ship for anyone wearing a black cassock. Some were killed outright, and others had their arms hacked off before they were thrown into the sea to drown.
The author and illustrator, Richard Verstegan (aka Richard Verstegen, Richard Rowlands) [1548-1636] was a Catholic Anglo-Dutch antiquarian, goldsmith and book publisher. The first half of his life was spent in England, but his religion prevented him from obtaining a degree from Oxford University, where he is thought to have studied English history and the Anglo-Saxon language.
Verstegan became a very prolific and influential author and publisher in his adopted city. One of his early works was the expanded and definitive version of Theatrum Crudelitatum which was published in Latin in 1587. At least some of the engravings were produced by the author, his artistic training having been acquired through a goldsmith apprenticeship. It proved to be a popular book and translated editions were released soon after for the various European markets. Although his publishing house concentrated on the production of Catholic devotional literature, Verstegan himself was known to have worked as an intelligence agent for Roman, English and Jesuit Catholics, and he penned political and satirical articles for a newspaper (making him one of the earliest known journalists), all the while operating as a book and people smuggler during the Reformation.
"Verstegan was at the heart of the English Catholic exile community, working as a publisher, intelligence agent, and author for the English Catholic mission and for Philip II of Spain. In the previous decades, his work - including wall maps outlining the historical development of heresies and the Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis ("Theatre of the Heretics' Cruelties of our Times") - reflected the tensions of the Counter-Reformation. The Theatrum crudelitatum, a response to Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs', recounted martyrdoms at the hands of French, Dutch, and English Calvinists, and popularized the plight of English Catholics, while supporting Philip II's militant Catholic agenda. First printed in 1587, it was reissued in 1588 to coincide with Philip's launching of the Spanish Armada against England, and again in 1604 during Anglo-Spanish peace negotiations." (Katherine Van Liere, et al (eds.), Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, p.174)
"The classic of the Atrocity genre was Richard Verstegan's Theatrum Crudelitatum (Antwerp, 1587), reprinted 1588, 1592 and 1604 [...]. Verstegan was an English Catholic refugee who had formerly gone under the English-sounding patronymic Rowlands, ... but reverted to his ancestral Dutch surname in exile. He was an active propagandist for the English Mission and a prolific author in English, Latin, French and Dutch. [...] In 1587 he was awarded a royal pension to be paid from the military treasury in Flanders. Between 1592 and 1603, he was occupied as an editor, publisher, newswriter, intelligencer, translator, and book smuggler, with some role in almost every aspect of the book and information trades.
"The unifying theme of the Theatrum was a model for the historical interpretation of the religious and political disturbances of the British Isles, France and the Netherlands in the period 1535-1587. The identification of Calvinist theology with cruel and illegitimate government may not have been a topos invented by Verstegan, but he, perhaps more than anybody, made the linkage standard in polemic and historiography. The atrocities of the Calvinist rebels in France and the Low Countries and the tyranny of the 'Protestant Machiavellians' in England and Ireland all fitted the pattern. The climax of the Theatrum, which began with an image of iconoclasts, was the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots, the judicial murder of a sovereign queen being the highpoint of the Calvinist attack on legitimate authority." (Paul Arblaster, From Ghent to Aix: How They Brought the News in the Habsburg Netherlands, p.58)
Provenance: Two contemporary handwritten ex libri on title page.
Signatures: A-M4.
Collated and complete.
Very good antiquarian condition. Throughout bit soiled and stained, but the engravings strong and clean. Bound in a fine modern, decorated vellum binding. Very good copy.
Three sections, each with own section-title, on England, France and the Low Countries; Preface, Prologue, Epilogue and a list of Martyrs. The engravings probably (partly) by Verstegen and Jean Wierix; the text by Jean Bloch from Brussels. This is the third Latin edition (after 1587 and 1588).
Very scarce early edition of this richly illustrated Catholic martyrology first published in 1587 and then in 1588 by the same Antwerp press.
Verstegan's Theatrum crudelitatum is "the one truly international, and highly popular, contemporary Catholic account of Protestant persecution [...] with twenty-nine vivid, not to mention gruesome illustrations." (Ian McBride, History and Memory in Modern Ireland, p.47)
The Theatrum crudelitatum has been highly praised as "a seminal work in the graphic depiction of martyrdom and shows an important stage in the development of concepts of natural rights." (Paul Arblaster).
The great rarity of all early editions of this celebrated work is well known: only a century after its publication the noted English antiquary Anthony Wood already observes that "'This very scarce and sells for any money" (Athenae Oxonienses, II, 393).
The book may have been conceived as a Catholic version of John Foxe's famous Protestant 'Book of Martyrs' (published in 1563 as Actes and Monuments). Verstegan's remarkable and influential book records, in gruesome detail, the cruelty, torture and murder suffered by Catholic martyrs in various European countries, and includes, in particular, the English, Irish and Scottish prosecutions at the hands of Protestant "heretics" during the reigns of Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I, ending with an account and depiction of the 1587 execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
The Latin verses accompanying each illustration, as well as the verse Prologue and Epilogue are by Jean Boch (1555 - 1609), an eminent neo-Latin poet from Brussels (often referred to as the Belgic Virgil) and secretary of Antwerp's city council. Many bibliographers suggest that the 1587 first edition was actually printed by the FlemishTypographer Royal, Christopher Plantin, (for Huberti, who acted as publisher), and conjecture that the Theatrum crudelitatum was, perhaps, "an unofficial work of government propaganda" (Paul Arblaster).
"The Theatrum was in five sections: an introduction, and illustrated accounts of the persecution of Catholics during the reign of Henry VIII, during the French Wars of Religion, in the early years of the Dutch Revolt, and under Elizabeth. It was to be a seminal work of hagiology, but it was not only an important devotional work, it was also, if only indirectly, propaganda for the Spanish Armada. The book ends with a depiction of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots on 8 February 1587, and a call to the Catholic princes of Europe to avenge this Calvinist regicide, while the introduction devotes considerable space to demonstrating that Elizabeth had broken her coronation oath and violated reason and justice with her various statutes and proclamations against Catholics. Details of the atrocities against priests and religious committed under Henry VIII, and by Huguenot and Gueux soldiery in the fifteen-sixties and seventies, may have borne an incidental implication that Mary Tudor's forceful suppression of heresy in the fifteen-fifties and the actions of the Guisards and Alva in the late fifteen-sixties and early fifteen-seventies were provoked by the aggression of the heretics. A stated purpose was to show that Calvinists, unlike any other Christian group since the Munster Anabaptists, viewed the forcible overthrow of the established order as a necessary precondition to religious reform, in the creation of a 'godly commonwealth'.
"Both as a devotional work and as propaganda, the Theatrum far surpassed the immediate purpose of the moment and continued to be reprinted into the sixteen hundreds. It was of iconographic importance into the seventeenth century. As polemic, it provided a historical argument against Calvinism which was to be picked up in a number of influential historical works." (Paul Arblaster, Antwerp & the World: Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation, p.41-2)
In addition to Mary Stuart, the English martyrs considered in the book include Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535), a social philosopher and Renaissance humanist, author of the famous Utopia, and statesman (a councillor to Henry VIII, and Lord High Chancellor of England), as well as Saint John Fisher, a Catholic bishop, theologian, and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; John Forest, a Franciscan Friar; Margaret Clitherow, etc.
The Theatrum crudelitatum also includes several Irishmen, namely Patrick Hely, bishop of Mayo, and his companion Con O'Rourke, killed in 1578. Verstegan "gave an account of the deaths of Hely and O'Rourke, and added a more recent, and horrific, case, that of the archbishop of Cashel, Dermot Hurley. Captured by the Dublin government in 1583, Hurley was first tortured in April 1584 by having his legs boiled in oil, then allowed to recover for two months before being condemned to death under martial law and hung by an improvised noose of rough twigs." (Ian McBride, History and Memory in Modern Ireland, p.47)
At least one case discussed in the book is of the American (New World) interest (thus ensuring the book's inclusion in Alden's European Americana): Verstegan gives an illustrated account of Jacques de Sourie, a notoriously ferocious French Huguenot pirate from Normandy, nicknamed "The Exterminating Angel" (L'Ange Exterminateur) and remembered for attacking and burning the town of Havana (Cuba) in 1555. The Theatrum describes Sourie's 1570 attack on a group of 40 Jesuit missionaries, led by Fr. Ignatius Azevedo, on their way from Portugal to Brazil. Near Canary Islands their ship Santiago was attacked by Sourie's boats; Sourie had his men search the ship for anyone wearing a black cassock. Some were killed outright, and others had their arms hacked off before they were thrown into the sea to drown.
The author and illustrator, Richard Verstegan (aka Richard Verstegen, Richard Rowlands) [1548-1636] was a Catholic Anglo-Dutch antiquarian, goldsmith and book publisher. The first half of his life was spent in England, but his religion prevented him from obtaining a degree from Oxford University, where he is thought to have studied English history and the Anglo-Saxon language.
Verstegan became a very prolific and influential author and publisher in his adopted city. One of his early works was the expanded and definitive version of Theatrum Crudelitatum which was published in Latin in 1587. At least some of the engravings were produced by the author, his artistic training having been acquired through a goldsmith apprenticeship. It proved to be a popular book and translated editions were released soon after for the various European markets. Although his publishing house concentrated on the production of Catholic devotional literature, Verstegan himself was known to have worked as an intelligence agent for Roman, English and Jesuit Catholics, and he penned political and satirical articles for a newspaper (making him one of the earliest known journalists), all the while operating as a book and people smuggler during the Reformation.
"Verstegan was at the heart of the English Catholic exile community, working as a publisher, intelligence agent, and author for the English Catholic mission and for Philip II of Spain. In the previous decades, his work - including wall maps outlining the historical development of heresies and the Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis ("Theatre of the Heretics' Cruelties of our Times") - reflected the tensions of the Counter-Reformation. The Theatrum crudelitatum, a response to Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs', recounted martyrdoms at the hands of French, Dutch, and English Calvinists, and popularized the plight of English Catholics, while supporting Philip II's militant Catholic agenda. First printed in 1587, it was reissued in 1588 to coincide with Philip's launching of the Spanish Armada against England, and again in 1604 during Anglo-Spanish peace negotiations." (Katherine Van Liere, et al (eds.), Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, p.174)
"The classic of the Atrocity genre was Richard Verstegan's Theatrum Crudelitatum (Antwerp, 1587), reprinted 1588, 1592 and 1604 [...]. Verstegan was an English Catholic refugee who had formerly gone under the English-sounding patronymic Rowlands, ... but reverted to his ancestral Dutch surname in exile. He was an active propagandist for the English Mission and a prolific author in English, Latin, French and Dutch. [...] In 1587 he was awarded a royal pension to be paid from the military treasury in Flanders. Between 1592 and 1603, he was occupied as an editor, publisher, newswriter, intelligencer, translator, and book smuggler, with some role in almost every aspect of the book and information trades.
"The unifying theme of the Theatrum was a model for the historical interpretation of the religious and political disturbances of the British Isles, France and the Netherlands in the period 1535-1587. The identification of Calvinist theology with cruel and illegitimate government may not have been a topos invented by Verstegan, but he, perhaps more than anybody, made the linkage standard in polemic and historiography. The atrocities of the Calvinist rebels in France and the Low Countries and the tyranny of the 'Protestant Machiavellians' in England and Ireland all fitted the pattern. The climax of the Theatrum, which began with an image of iconoclasts, was the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots, the judicial murder of a sovereign queen being the highpoint of the Calvinist attack on legitimate authority." (Paul Arblaster, From Ghent to Aix: How They Brought the News in the Habsburg Netherlands, p.58)
Provenance: Two contemporary handwritten ex libri on title page.
Signatures: A-M4.
Collated and complete.
Very good antiquarian condition. Throughout bit soiled and stained, but the engravings strong and clean. Bound in a fine modern, decorated vellum binding. Very good copy.
€ 2.500 Item: 26431 SOLD RELATED SUBJECTSEarly PrintingHistory, Law & PhilosophyReligion & DevotionChurch History & MissionsMartyrologyLow Countries16th Century
