Hierarchiae Ecclesiasticae Assertio

1538

Shoults Gc 1538 P

[Cologne]: Melchior Nouesianus

Dutch theologian, Albertus Pighius (1490-1542) was a staunch supporter and defender of the Catholic Church and the papacy. He was employed by several popes – most notably his former teacher, Pope Adrian VI (1522-23). Pighius’s Hierarchiae, or ‘Affirmation of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy’, was a ‘rejoinder to Henry VIII’ and a statement on papal infallibility. Interestingly, the blind tooling on the cover of this bound copy of Hierarchiae has five repeating stamped portraits of some of the protagonists of the Reformation. They include reformers Jan Hus, Martin Luther, and Philip Melanchthon; and opponents, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who summoned Luther to the Diet of Worms and subsequently outlawed him.