CALVIN, Jean

by Jean Calvin

£15,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

Very good, handsomely bound copy of this immensely influential work by Jean Calvin (1509-1564), a French theologian who contributed to the introduction of the Reformation to France and Switzerland. First published in Latin in 1536, the Institutio presented a systematic analysis of Protestant doctrines with the purpose of dissociating the new religious ideas from attacks against established political authority launched by the Anabaptists and condemned by Francis I, to whom the work is dedicated. In this third, expanded Latin edition the twenty-one chapters discuss fundamental theological questions like the knowledge and understanding of God s divine nature, the doctrines of justification by faith alone and of predestination which differentiated Calvin s thought from Luther s. His influential theories inspired, among others, the religious and political ideas of the French Huguenots and the Scottish, English, and Irish Presbyterians. The elegant and uncommon early C16 binding, the detail of which remains very crisp, celebrates the political and religious pre-eminence of the Holy Roman Empire over the Ottomans. It portrays Emperor Charles V, Ferdinand, King of Bohemia, and Andreas de Auria (Andrea Doria) this being his sole recorded occurrence on German bindings according to the Einbanddatenbank (EBDB r004398). Andrea Doria (1466-1560), a most successful admiral of the Republic of Genoa, was in the service of Charles V from 1528 to the 1550s, fighting the Ottomans and helping him

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.