Apostolici: Or, the History of the Lives, Acts, Death, and Martyrdoms of those Who are Contemporary with, or immediately Succeeded the Apostles. As also the most Eminent of the Primitive Fathers For the First Three Hundred Years To which is added, A Chronology of the Three First Ages of the Church. By William Cave, D.D. The Fourth Edition Corrected.
London, Printed by W.D. for J. Waltmoe at the Temple-Cloister, J. Nicholson in Little-Britain, B.Tooke in Fleet Street, D. Midwinter, and B. Cowse in St. Paul's Church-yard. M DCC XVI.
Details:
Folio (362mm X 243mm) sized volume
Contemporary calf with central panel border roll pattern and corner pieces
Red & black title-page
Red speckled edges
Six raised bands
Gilt embellishment to outward facing extremities of boards
24 copperplates inc frontis
Vignette title-pages
Ornate initial letters
5 text illustrations
pp: [xxiv], xxii, 738
Weight: 2924g
Section title-pages with 1716, 1716, 1715 dates
About:
William Cave (30 December 1637 – 4 August 1713) was an English divine and patristic scholar. The merits of Cave as a writer consist in the thoroughness of his research, the clearness of his style, and, above all, the admirably lucid method of his arrangement. The two works on which his reputation principally rests are the Apostolici; or, The History of the Lives, Acts, Death and Martyrdoms of those who were contemporary with, or immediately succeeded the Apostles (1677), and Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Historia Literaria (1688). Dowling says that the works of Cave "rank undoubtedly among those which have affected the progress of Church-history. His smaller works greatly tended to extend an acquaintance with Christian Antiquity; his Lives of the Apostles and Primitive Fathers, which may be regarded as an Ecclesiastical history of the first four centuries, is to this very day [i.e. 1838] the most learned work of the kind which has been written in our own language; and his Historia Literaria is still the best and most convenient complete work on the literary history of the Church."[ Though he is sometimes criticised for not being critical with his sources, that failing means that many of his works, particularly Antiquitates Apostolicae and Apostolici contain a wealth of legendary material, culled from a wide variety of sources, much of which is not readily available elsewhere.
Condition:
Binding shows wear to spine-ends and fore-corner tips where they are also a little bumped; loss of leather to upper two compartments of spine and outer hinges are cracked. Rear board is secure, but front board is quite wobbly being held by four of the six chords. There is no spine label, and rear board shows some water staining. Internally all is bright and very crisp including the plates, although there is feint to mild water-staining throughout block to inner margin sections, mostly towards upper sections, then slowly progresses in degree towards rear-most leaves. Water staining however is far more pronounced to end-papers and fly-leaves, and there are no inscriptions or annotations. Overall, a pleasing copy.
Please consult photographs fully as these are part of the description