Josse Clichtove was born in Flanders in 1472, and studied in Louvain and Paris. After receiving his doctorate in theology, he was appointed professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1519 he accompanied Louis Guillard, the Bishop of Tournai to that place and later to Chartres. Clichtove took an active part in the Council of Sens in 1528 where he gathered together the various arguments brought forward against the Protestants: Compendium veritatum ad fidem pertinentium contra erroneas Lutheranorum assertiones ex dictis et actis in concilio provinciali Senonensi apud Parisios celebrato, published in Paris, 1529. While he had in his early years been a defender of religious reform, he subsequently devoted himself almost exclusively to combating the doctrines of Luther. He published many works on theology and philosophy, arithmetic and geometry. His Elucidatorium ecclesiasticum... was published in 1516 and a further five editions were published subsequently with the last in 1558. The book is about church liturgy: hymns, canticles, antiphons and responses, and contains contemporary annotations. Clichtove died in 1543 at Chartres (France). He is described as the '...first prominent author in France to oppose Luther.' (Oxford p. 369)
The book carries the bookplates of two previous owners before it passed into the collection of the State Library. The upper plate indicates ownership by a Franciscan monastery in the Tyrol. This bookplate bears an image of St Francis of Assissi receiving the stigmata (the five wounds Jesus Christ received on the Cross) on Mt Verna. Francis founded his order of friars in 1209 bound by rules of strict poverty. These were later modified to allow the building of monasteries. While we cannot be sure of the exact location of the monastery where this volume of Clichtove was housed, it was possibly the large monastery in Innsbruck, Austria, now housing the Tyrolean Museum of Popular Art and Trades. The book was subsequently acquired by the scholar Joannis Szasz LLD. This bookplate bears a design of a sheaf and stems of grain.
The volume itself is a good example of 16th century printing with an ornate title page and colophon. It retains its original binding of leather over wooden boards with clasps.
Permission to use this item for any purpose, including publishing, is not required from the State Library under these conditions of use.
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