Calvin's Commentary on Seneca's De Clementia, with Introduction, Translation, and Notes by Ford Lewis Battles (Professor of Church History and Historical Theology, The Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) and Andre Malan Hugo (Professor of Classics, University of Cape Town). With three facsimiles. Published for the Renaissance Society of America by E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1969 - first edition. ISBN: none - pre-ISBN. The definitive scholarly edition of Calvin's first published book, his 1532 commentary on Seneca's De Clementia, presenting the Latin text with a facing English translation and full notes. The substantial introduction treats the history of the text, the spiritual climate of the age and why Calvin chose Seneca, Calvin's labors on the text and his conjectural emendations, Calvin as literary critic and rhetorician, and Calvin as philologist - closing with a lexicon of the Commentary and indices. A cornerstone volume for Calvin studies and Renaissance humanism. Provenance: from the personal library of the historian William Brown Patterson - scholar of the English Reformation and author of King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge) and William Perkins and the Making of a Protestant England (Oxford) - with his bookplate on the front pastedown; one of several books from his library offered here.

Condition: GOOD. Teal cloth hardcover with gilt lettering to the front board and spine and the gilt Brill Pallas device; cloth bright and clean, binding tight and square. Text clean and unmarked throughout - no underlining, highlighting, or margin writing. No dust jacket. Honest defects: pronounced foxing and rust-colored spotting along the top edge of the text block, heaviest toward the head of the spine, with scattered specks along the fore-edge; two small dark spots to the rear board near the spine edge; the Patterson bookplate on the front pastedown.

Ships promptly and boxed via USPS Media Mail. Please see photos - they form part of the description.