One Exlibris Bookplate – Thomas Milles (1671–1740) Church of Ireland Bishop of Waterford and Lismore.
One Exlibris Bookplate inside front cover.

Language: Latin

FOLIO Size: 13.5” X 9”  (34cm x 23cm)

Very Rare Book. Important Theological Work. Owned by Thomas Milles (1671–1740) Church of Ireland Bishop of Waterford and Lismore.

William Hessels van Est (1542–1613), or Guilielmus Estius, from a Catholic family in Gorinchem or Gorcum (Holland), had obtained the degree of master of arts at the Louvain Pedagogy of the Falcon in 1561, whereafter he started studying theology at the Pope’s College in Louvain. Michael Baius, the president of the Pope’s College, was among his most important teachers, together with John Hessels (both Baius and Hessels were representatives of the outspoken Augustinian faction of the faculty), Josse Ravesteyn, or ‘Tiletanus’, (continuing the old Augustino-thomistic line of Ruard Tapper), in addition to Cornelius Jansenius of Ghent. As a student of theology, Estius had also contributed to the edition of Augustine’s works, in particular to the ninth volume. At the establishment of the Louvain King’s College by Philip II in 1579, founded in order to provide the country with a new generation of good priests, Estius was appointed as a professor of theology. On 18 April 1579 he received a prebend in St. Peter’s church in Louvain. On 22 November 1580, he was promoted to doctor of theology.

In 1582 Estius moved to the University of Douai, where Philip II had appointed him president of the Royal Seminary as well as professor at the theological faculty. In the latter capacity, he ?irst occupied the chair of con-troversial theology, was subsequently charged to comment on the Sentences of Peter Lombard – he even worked through two cycles of a complete commentary – and eventually proceeded to the chair of Sacred Scriptures. Estius would occupy this chair until the end of his life, devoting most of his time and energy to the study of the Epistles of the Apostles, an activity that would gain him renown as a Bible commentator. His esteem for the Scriptures also emerges from the fact that as a president of the Royal Seminary he daily discussed the short passage from the Bible that had been read during the meal in the seminary refectory.

Estius revealed himself to be an markedly Augustinian-minded theolo-gian. When the Louvain Faculty of Theology censored 31 propositions taken from Lessius’ Theses theologicae as semi-Pelagian in 1587, the Archbishop of Cambrai consulted the sister-faculty of Douai with the purpose of having them likewise pronounce their judgment. On 20 February 1588 the Douai faculty issued an even more developed and outspoken censure than Louvain, of which Estius was the principal author. It was on this occasion that Stapleton, who disagreed with his colleagues on the Lessius’ censure, was excluded from the activities of his faculty. A breve issued by Pope Sixtus V on 15 April 1588, charging the Louvain theologians not to continue their quarrel with the Jesuits, was not published in Douai, where the Lessius controversy was soon followed by another, which concerned the teachings of the Jesuit Jean Decker and their alleged Molinistic slant. In 1595 Estius became provost of the chapter of St. Peter in Douai and as such chancellor of the university.

Estius died in 1613 in Douai at the age of 72. His most important works were edited posthumously. He is said to have himself commenced the edition of his commentary on the Epistles of Paul, with the help of his disciple and friend Bartholomew Peeters, to whom on his deathbed he entrusted responsibility for the work’s completion. Estius had also intended to introduce the commentary with about twenty prolegomena but was unable to finish them. Estius’ commentary on the Epistles of Paul (to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians) eventually appeared in 1614 and a second part, including a commentary on the remaining Epistles of Paul, supplemented by one on the Catholic or Apostolic Letters, in 1616. Both volumes were published by Balthazar Bellère, or Bellerus, in Douai, under the supervision of Bartholomew Peeters, who even completed the commentary from 1 John 5:6 onwards, which had been left unfinished by the master himself, and thus included a commentary on 2 and 3 John from his own pen. The edition in question was reissued several times in Paris in the course of the seventeenth century. In 1631, the scholar Jacob Merlo Horstius had a revised edition published by Peter Henning in Cologne, which was corrected and supplemented on the basis of hand-written notes by Estius himself. Additionally, Merlo substituted the text of the Castigatio Lovaniensis, used by Estius, with the more recent Sixto-Clementine version of the Vulgate. The commentaries bear testimony to Estius’ principal interest in establishing the most trustworthy reading of the (Latin) text by means of a thorough comparison with the Greek text and the reading of the Church fathers (both Greek and Latin), and, if necessary, the version included in diverse Latin manuscripts while at the same time integrating the achievements of humanist (in this instance, erasmian) text-critical scholarship. Estius’ aim was to establish the literal sense of the Scriptures, the sense intended by the inspired writers, which was considered an appropriate basis for the construction of a coherent theology. Estius also estimated highly the value of the living Tradition of the Church, as a means to establish a genuine Scripture-based theology. In this regard, Estius evidently also invoked the Church fathers, with Augustine taking pride of place, but not to the exclusion, however, of scholastic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas – which meant his methodology differed thoroughly from that of Baius – and the important Bible commentators of the late Middle Ages and early modern era. Estius’ extremely erudite Commentaries on the Epistles of the Apostles, in the version edited by Merlo Horstius, would bring him lasting fame as an exegete and theologian. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries they went through several reprints in diverse printing towns in Europe, but noticeably in the French-speaking Jansenist centres of Douai, Paris and Rouen. They were reissued in Louvain by J.-P.-G. Michel in 1778 and form the basis of the nineteenth-century Mainz editions by Franz Sausen (1841–45) and Johannes Holzammer (1858–59). A last edition of Estius’ commentary on the Epistles was published in Paris as late as 1892.