Jesuits.-

[Esercizi spirituali], 120 leaves (some blanks), lacking general frontispiece, include ‘avvertimento’ and index of the contents, text within typographical frame throughout, woodcut Jesuit devices after each section and at end, a few small historiated vignettes, light age yellowing, some foxing, contemporary limp vellum, a little wormholing, stained, spine holed and scuffed, 8vo, Bartolomeo Zanetti, Rome, 1609-10.

*** Very rare. Not found in OPAC SBN or OCLC; not in De Backer, “Bibliotheque des escrivains de la C. de J.” Non recorded at auction. A collection of issues on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in Italian, probably published for individual and congregational worship only, by Bartolomeo Zanetti (1602-1621). The introductory section entitled ‘Avvertimento a quello, che da gl’essercitii del modo, ordine, et distribution delle carte seguenti’, and the index describe the structure of the work. The first Italian translationof the Spiritual exercises edited by Giovanni Battista Peruzzi, was published in 1555, however, until the publication of Saint Ignatius’ manuscript, the official text was in Latin. The first anonymous translation was then published in Rome (1609-1619) by Zanetti, in 60 separate issues (see ‘Ignazio di Loyola: gli scritti’ edited by Mario Gioia, Utet, 1977). Another edition was printed in Roma by the heir of Bartolomeo Zannetti in 1625.