5. [Celibacy (The) of the Clergy], manuscript treatise in Latin, 118pp., browned, bookplate of Anthony Howe Denney on front pastedown, original vellum, yellowed and soiled, a few small tears at edges, sm. 4to, [Germany, mid sixteenth century].
est. £300 – £500
A treatise on the celibacy and chastity of the clergy surveying the pronouncements of Church authorities from early times to the middle of the suxteenth century. The work appears to have been written about 1530/40. There is a reference to Lutherans (f. 57r) and to the Diet of Augsburg 1530 (f. 57 v), also the heresies in Spain and England (f. 56 v) Aeneas Sylvius is quoted (ff. 54 v & 55 r), and a letter of Pope Alexander III to the Archbishop of Canterbury (f.45 r).