Historia poetica ad faciliorem poetarum et veterum auctorum intelligentiam; a R. Patre P. Gautruche soc. Jesu Gallice conscripta. Post septimam editionem latine reddita ab Uno eiusdem Societatis. In gratiam Poetices Candidatorum.

12mo. (VIII),180 (recte 179);(20 index),(1 blank) p. Vellum 13 cm (Details: Woodcut printer’s mark of the Jesuit Order on the title) (Condition: Vellum slightly soiled and spotted. Back very slightly damaged. Old shelf number with ink on the front board. Front flyleaf removed. Wormholes in the inner margin of the endpapers at the end, and of the last 3 leaves, with some loss of letters in the index. Modern stamp & old name on the front pastedown) (Note: The contribution of the Jesuit order to the cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe was more significant than it was to the West. The small town of Trnava in Slovakia, or Tyrnau, or in Hungarian Nagyszombat, and especially its Jesuit University, founded there in 1635, was one of the catholic strongholds in Central Europe in the time of the Counter-Reformation. Its main purpose was the stemming of Protestantism, or Lutheranism in what was then called the kingdom of Upper Hungary, which was a part of the Habsburg empire. Here the order of the Jesuits trained its teachers and missionaries who spread catholicism and Habsburg culture succesfully eastward. Their most important weapons in spreading the autocratic ideology of that era were diplomacy and education. 884 members of the Jesuit order were active in Upper Hungary ca. 1750. They were leading 30 gymnasia, 6 academies and 2 universities, that of Trnava and of Kosice. For more than 150 years the Jesuit University of Trnava carried on its activity throughout Royal Hungary. Its University Press published more than 5000 titles. After the Order had been dissolved in 1777 the University was transfered to Buda. § This collection of prose narrations of mythological stories, necessary for a perfect understanding of the Greek and Latin poets and other ancient authors, was compiled to facilitate the study of young students. The collection was originally published in French as ‘L’Histoire poétique pour l’intelligence des poètes et des auteurs anciens’ by the French Jesuit Pierre Gautruche, 1602-1681. It was translated into Latin after the 8th French edition, and consists of 3 books, the first treats the Gods, the second the semi-gods, the third is on religious ceremonies. (p. A4 recto) The French and the Latin version saw at the end of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century many reissues. It was also translated into English) (Provenance: On the front pastedown a green stamp of ‘Univ. Doz. Dr. Mag. F.F. Schwarz, Professor. A 8810 Graz, Panoramagasse 2A’ with a handwritten date of acquisition ‘1973’. Franz Ferdinand Schwarz was from 1982 till 1996 professor of classical philology at the University of Graz, where he was born in 1934. He died in his hometown in 2001 after a long illness. (See his wikipedia lemma ‘Franz Ferdinand Schwarz’) In old ink on the front pastedown: ‘Ex libris Francisci Caroli Wernerth, anno ….’ Year illegible) (Collation: A-H12, I6, K2)(In the pagination has been omitted no. 113)) (Photographs on request)