SCOTTISH CATHOLICS IN GERMANY
Hunter, James Peter: L. Annaeus Seneca [...] Amando Fabio [...] atheismo adjudicatus, atheus proclamatus. Nunc vero [...] iure humano & divino defensatus, ab atheismi suspicione expurgatus, caritati & veritati redonatus. Ratisbonae [Regensburg], typis Christophori Fischeri, 1651.
Good copy, in an attractive early German binding with covering from a medieval manuscript, of this collection of learned letters and speeches on the ancient Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (d. 65 CE). Almost all the texts are by the fascinating Scottish-Swedish Catholic James Peter Hunter. Recipients include Alexander Baillie, abbot of the Scottish Benedictine monastery of Regensburg (sigs. H2 recto - H4 verso), and John Audomarus Asloan (sigs. Y3 recto - Z1 verso), abbot of the Scottish Benedictine monastery of Würzburg. The texts address themes including whether Seneca should be classed as an atheist. Some are addressed to Amandus Fabius, possibly the Norbertine monk of Ninove, keeper of a herb garden and priest of Ossegem (Belgium) (d.1662), who is identified on the title-page as Hunter's disputant in this question of Seneca's religion. Fabius includes a note to the reader at sigs. C4 recto - D1 verso.
Hunter was born in Sweden to the Scotsman Peter Thomson Hunter and to Christina Johansdotter. He studied at Uppsala, and later Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris, where his professors included Hugo Grotius and where he apparently converted to Catholicism. He later worked in Vienna, becoming secretary to the Imperial Electoral College.
Description
One volume, 20.3 cms. x 15.6 cms. in binding, quarto, 108 leaves (216 unnumbered pages), signed A-Dd4. Woodcut initials and tailpieces, headpieces of typographical decoration. Light or medium foxing and browning, a lovely copy, bound in parchment (recycled from a late medieval manuscript) over boards, blind double-filletting to margins of covers, edges speckled red (very small nicks and wormholes to sides). Early paper label at top of spine ('L. Annaeus Seneca'), with shelfmark (T 6 VI) written in ink directly onto spine below.
Parchment binding covering: originally folio 134(?) in a large-format liturgical manuscript, with rubric for De Confessoribus. Text written in Gothic textualis, probably from Germany or Central Europe; we note d with hairline extension turning upwards (cf. Derolez, Palaeography (2003), p. 88).
Bibliography
VD17 14:625508M. OCLC shows copies outside mainland Europe at National Library of Scotland and University of Glasgow.
Entry 'HUNTER, JACOB PETRI [SSNE 4933] in The Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern European Biographical Database (SSNE), at https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/ssne/item.php?id=4933 (accessed 11 December 2024).
Joannes Six van Chandelier (A.E. Jacobs, ed.), Gedichten (2 vols., Gorcum, 1991), see editor's note to poem 368 (vol. I, p. 632; accessed 11 December 2024 via https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/six_003gedi01_01/).