De Sacra Veterum Christianorum Romana Peregrinatione Disquisitio Eminentissimo ac Reverendissimo D. S. R. E. Cardinali Francisco Xaverio De Zelada.
4to (24 x 17.4 cm). [8], 77 pp. Cardinal’s hat in title-page emblem printed red, text opens with six-line woodcut initial of Piazza del Popolo, Rome, manuscript annotation on title page supplies name of author, endpapers block printed in red and yellow, red edges. Bound in contemporary sprinkled calf, gilt flowers stamped on spine, remnants of bookplate inside upper cover. Boards lightly scuffed, pages fresh. Excellent. Rare augmented first edition of this history of early Christian pilgrimage to Rome by the Jesuit scholar Pietro Lazzeri (1710-80). Lazzari’s painstaking study catalogues the motives for Roman pilgrimages undertaken both by famous individuals and as part of popular movements, from the apostolic rush to the imperial capital in the first century through Urban II’s sale of indulgences in Rome to finance the 1095 crusade to Jerusalem. The De Sacra Veterum Christianorum Romana Peregrinatione Disquisitio is a witness to the rigorous, analytical scholarship on early church history practiced by Roman Jesuits in the eighteenth century. Over five brisk chapters divided into 50 numbered paragraphs, Lazzari (sometimes called Lazzeri) cites archeological, historical, philological, literary, archival, and more recent secondary sources like Mabillon to uncover precisely what drew Christian visitors to Rome before the year 1200: apostolic missions, the coronation of kings, barbarian migration, clerical councils, trade in saintly relics, papal sanctioned remission of sins, and simply Rome’s celebrated monuments. Lazzeri’s text would seem to revisit his public lecture on early pilgrimage given to the Collegio Romano at 9:00 p.m. on August 27, 1750, almost a quarter century earlier. (A broadside advertising the event exists; cf. Sommervogel, p. 1612, no. 10). Although the author of many works on early church history (e.g., the consecration of the Pantheon as a Christian church; the Albigensian heresy, etc.), Lazzeri is known today primarily for his memos of 1755-57 advocating a repeal of the 1616 blanket inclusion of texts promoting heliocentrism on the Index of Prohibited Books. The present volume is prominently dedicated to Cardinal Francesco Javier Zelada (d. 1801), who, perhaps oddly given Lazzari’s affiliation, was instrumental in the 1773 suppression of the Jesuit Order. Zelada served as Vatican Librarian from 1779. De Sacra Veterum Christianorum Romana Peregrinatione Disquisitio was issued in two distinct versions in 1774: a 23-page volume that concludes with third-century pilgrimages, and the the fuller 77-page treatise presented here. Beyond their length, the editions differ in title-page phrasing and preliminary matter: the longer version includes an imprimatur on the fourth preliminary leaf, whereas the shorter version (based on the copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze) features a table of contents headed “Theses”.
* C. Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, Bruxelles-Paris-Louvain 1890-1960, vol. IV, coll. 1616, no. 26; IX; L. Spruit “Pietro Lazzeri,” Dizionario Biografico degi Italiani, vol. 64 (2005).
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