Rohan-Chabot’s copy
BAILLET, Adrien
Les Vies des Saints, composées sur ce que nous est resté de plus authentique & de plus assuré de leur histoire ; disposées selon l’ordre des calendriers & des martyrologes. Nouvelle édition.
Paris, Jacques Chardon, 1739.
10 vol, 4to (252 x 193 mm) one engraved portrait as frontispiece, 8 unn.l., 489, CLVII for the first volume I ; 2 unn.l. , XXXX, 454 pp., 1 unn.l., 407 pp. for the volume II ; 2 unn.l., 815, XXII pp. for the volume III ; 2 unn.l., XXVII, 931 pp. for the volume IV ; 2 unn.l., 492, 222 pp., 1 unn.l. for the volume V ; 2 unn.l., XVIII, 331 pp., 1 unn.l., 34, 447 pp. for the volume VI ; 2 unn.l., XXXVI, 681 pp. for the volume VII ; 2 unn.l., XX, 754 pp. for the volume VIII ; 2 unn.l., XXXII, 304, 298 pp. for the volume IX ; 2 unn.l., 400, 280, 78 pp., 1 unn.l. for the volume X. Polished calf, Rohan-Chabot coat of arms on the corners, spine with raised bands, red edges (contemporary binding).
1 500 

In stock

New posthumous edition of the magnum opus of Adrien Baillet (1649-1706).

A great scholar who was successively regent of a college, country vicar, and then librarian of the famous collector and bibliophile Chrétien François de Lamoignon,whose collection he compiled in a catalogue raisonné. He was an insatiable reader and researcher, Baillet is notably known as the first biographer of René Descartes.

His work on the Vies des Saints was excluded by the Church. The censors felt that Baillet was too close to the ideas of the reformers by dismissing the miracles that he did not believe to be true.

Spine faded and slighly rubbed.

Provenance: Rohan-Chabot collection (arms).