ASTOLFI, Giovanni Felice.

by Giovanni Felice Astolfi

£2,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

A very rare, fascinating work on worldwide popular cults of the Virgin Mary one of the earliest systematic works on the subject an Americanum and Japonicum unrecorded in major bibliographies. Felice Astolfi (f. 1603), of whom little is known, was the author of an important historical work ( Dell officina storica ) and of several on miracles, a very popular subject in Counter-Reformation print. Historia universale explores miracles and the popular cult of the Virgin Mary in the Old and New World, and in the Orient, through hundreds of fascinating anecdotes painstakingly drawn from Jesuit letters, and geographical and travel accounts like Botero s. The variable collation of the preliminaries reflects the troubled history of its printing in the Autumn of 1623; the present is an early issue, with a blank where later issues display an additional dedication or a shorter gathering. Although [it] built on a long medieval tradition of devotional literature, the miracle stories took on new significance in the context of the early modern religious debates about the immanence of God. Astolfi addressed one of the major theological concepts debated in the early modern period: what is the proper role and function of miracles? (D Andrea, Miracles ). His narrative is especially concerned with the intercessory power of Marian images and their cult, and the immanence of God in physical objects. It begins with a life of Mary followed by a list of the relics (her body and clothing), with details

• Binding: Hardcover

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