THE PRECIOUS JESUITIC COMMENTARIES ON ENTIRE BIBLE

Menochio, Giovanni Stefano. Commentarii totius Sacrae Scripturae ex optimis quibusque auctoribus collecti ... Tomus primus [-secundus]. Editio novissima diligenter post ultimam Parisiensem recognita, duobus tomis comprehensa, quorum alteri accessit supplementum . Venice: apud Jo. Baptistam Recurti, 1722.

2 folio volumes, contemporary full stiff vellum, five raised bands with gilt title at spine, pp. XXIV, 740 and 304, [4], 472.

Fine Venetian edition Menochio's Commentaries on the entire Bible.

The clearness, brevity, and critical acumen of Menochio have won him the praise of friend and foe.The father of modern criticism, Simon, though not at all in sympathy with the orthodoxy of the Jesuit, says «C'est un des plus judicieux scoliates que nous a yons tant sur le Vieux que sur le Nouveau Testament» (Hist. Crit. du N. T., xliv). The method of this great commentator was that of the great Catholic exegetes of today: a method which sought to find the literal meaning of the Holy Writ in the Bible and the Fathers. Menochio studied the text in its original, and brought to bear upon that study a vast store of knowledge of Jewish antiquities.

Giovanni Stefano Menochio (1575-1655) entered the Society of Jesus in 1594. After the usual years of training and teaching the classics, he became professor of sacred scripture and then of moral theology at Milan; thereafter began his long life of superiorship. He was successively superior of Cremona, Milan, and Genoa, rector of the Roman College, provincial of the provinces of Milan and Rome, assistant of Italy, and admonitor to the Fathers-General Caraffa and Piccolomini. The exegetical work of Menochio is still deservedly famous. His first essay along this line was a politico-Biblical study, Hieropoliticon, sive Institutiones Politicae e Sacris Scripturis depromptae (Lyon, 1625). The next year there appeared an economic study of the Bible: Institutiones Oeconomicae ex Sacris Litteris depromptae (Lyon, 1627). The author translated into Italian these lessons on the care of one's own household; this translation was a posthumous publication: Economia Christiana (Venice, 1656). The work by which Menochio is remembered is his Brevis Explicatio Sensus Literalis Sacrae Scripturae optimus quibusque Auctoribus per Epitomen Collecta (Cologne, 1830).

References: Sommervogel, Bibliotheque de la Compagnie de Jesus, V, IX. IT\ICCU\PUVE\003626. OCLC, 21424168.

A very good copy, in a fascinating original binding.