Les Confessions De Saint Augustin.

Saint Augustine – Les Confessions de S. Augustin – Arnauld d’Andilly – Paris, 1656 – Contemporary Gilt Calf

Saint Augustine. Les Confessions de S. Augustin. Translated into French by Robert Arnauld d’Andilly. Sixième édition. Paris: Pierre Le Petit, Imprimeur & Libraire ordinaire du Roy, 1656.

An attractive seventeenth-century Paris edition of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, in the influential French translation of Robert Arnauld d’Andilly.

Bound in contemporary full calf with five raised bands and an unusually handsome gilt spine, decorated throughout with floral and foliate tooling and retaining its gilt-lettered title. The engraved frontispiece depicts Augustine at the moment of his conversion beneath the words “Tolle, Lege” (“Take up and read”); the composition is signed “Ph. Champaigne Inv.”, identifying Philippe de Champaigne as its designer.

The text comprises 599 numbered pages, followed by the unpaginated Table des Chapitres, which concludes with Fin de la Table. Engraved frontispiece, title page, preliminary material, and terminal table are present.

Condition: Good overall, with an interior notably well preserved for a book of this age. The contemporary calf is heavily rubbed and abraded, with wear to the corners and edges and loss at the head of the spine. Despite the exterior wear, substantial original gilt decoration remains bright and attractive, the boards are firmly attached, and the binding is nice and tight. Internally, the paper is generally clean and crisp with modest age toning, occasional minor spotting and soiling, and little foxing. No significant worming or dampstaining observed. Old manuscript numerical notation appears in the upper margin of the frontispiece and title page.

A pleasing, substantially original copy of one of the foundational works of Western spiritual and autobiographical literature, retaining both its decorative seventeenth-century binding and engraved frontispiece.