CALVIN (Jean). The Institution of the Christian... Lot 90 Bis

CALVIN (Jean). The Institution of the Christian Religion, put into four books and ... CALVIN (Jean). The first of these is a book of the same name, but with a different title, and a different style of writing. Geneva, Jacques Bourgeois, 1562. In-4°. Full contemporary basane binding. Spine with nerves. First cover detached. One of the rarest and most sought-after editions of this seminal book, "the first work in our language that offers a followed plan, an ordered matter, an exact and perfectly appropriate composition" (Nisard). The Christian Institution by John Calvin (1509-1564) is considered one of the first monuments of the French language, at the origin of the Reformed theology and of the French prose of ideas. The first Latin edition was published in Basel in 1536 and was later translated into French by Calvin himself and published in Geneva in 1541. The definitive Latin and French versions, after several reworkings, are from 1559 and 1560 respectively. The present Geneva edition, giving the text in its complete and definitive form, is one of the last to be published during Calvin's lifetime, when he died two years later. Beautifully typed in italics, the edition is adorned with the flaming sword mark on the title and the palm tree child mark on the last leaf. It is in this edition that the alphabetical table established by the exegete and martyr Augustin Marlorat (1506-1562) appears for the first time, forming an appendix printed separately by Nicolas Barbier and Thomas Courteau, of Geneva.