Bibliotheca Selecta De Ratione Studiorum, ad Disciplinas, & ad salutem Omnium gentium procurandam. Recognita novissime ab eodem, et aucta, & in duoas Tomos distributa...

Venice, Altobellum Salicatium, 1603. Folio. Two parts in one volume. Folio. [32], 530, [2], 594, (ii), (24) pages. With the woodcut device of the Society of Jesus on the titlepage. Contemporary annotation in ink on the titlepage. Contemporary vellum (spine heavily damaged but holding well). Titlepage with a few stains but a good copy of an important work.

Revised edition of this important and rare bibliography that was first published in 1593.

"The Index of Prohibited Books functioned as a barrier against the spread of reformist thought, but its efficacy at containment was only partial in spite of the powerful sanctions which supported the prohibition. The Roman Church therefore organized a counteroffensive aimed at reconquering the territories it had lost and reestablished its cultural and doctrinal ascendancy. Of special interest is the work by the Jesuit Antonio Possevino, Bibliotheca Selecta, which constituted the basic tool in a strategic plan developed with great care and clarity. The title of the work declared unequivocally its ideological opposition to Gesner's Bibliotheca Universalis. The Bibliotheca Selecta purposed to be the prescriptive bibliographic canon which would serve as a tool for imposing ideologically correct works on all who engaged in study or research." (J. Balsamo, Bibliography, History of a Tradition, Berkeley CA, 1990, pp. 46-47). The first part, divided into eleven books and dedicated to Pope Clement VIII, deals mainly with questions of faith and its propagation, with chapters on education, publishing, bookselling, censorship (a critic of Erasmus is given in Book I, chapter XX), heretics (Luther, Melanchton, Calvin, Anabaptists, Puritans, etc.). A special chapter is devoted to the apostolate among Jews, Mohammedans, Chinese, Japanese and American natives. The second part, divided into six books and dedicated to King Sigismund III of Poland, is respectively concerned with law, philosophy, medicine ("Vesalii libri utilitas"), mathematics (including architecture, music, astronomy - Copernicus is mentioned), geography, history (with an entire chapter on America, p. 254), and literature.

At the end is a critic of the works of Cicero.

Antonio Possevino, a native of Mantua, was sent at an early age to Rome, where he became secretary to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and tutor of the latter's nephews Francesco and Scipione. He numbered among his friends Paolo Manuzio, Bartolomeo Ricci and Carlo Sigonio. In 1559 he entered the Society of Jesus and was entrusted with numerous important diplomatic missions to Germany, Hungary, Sweden and Poland. After having published an account of his mission to Russia, Moscovia, seu rebus moscoviticus (Vilnius, 1586), he retired from public life. Begun in 1574 the Bibliotheca selecta, his most ambitious work, was accomplished only after twenty years of research and compilation. (Adams, P-1997; Th. Besterman, A World Bibliography of Bibliographies, (Totowa, NJ, 1971), col. 808; A. Biondi, La 'Bibliotheca Selecta' di Antonio Possevino. Un progetto di egemonia culturale, in "La Ratio Studiorum", (Roma, 1981), pp. 44-75)).