Faust Socyn, Jan Crell, Hugo Grotius, *Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum* (volume containing a polemic on reparations), Amsterdam, ca. 1668

Title: Explanation by Fausti Socini of Various Passages from Holy Scripture; A Response by Johannes Crellius of France to the book by Hugo Grotius, titled *De Satisfactione Christi adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem* […]; [appended:] Hugo Grotius, *Defensio fidei catholicae de satisfactione Christi adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem*. *Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum quos Unitarios vocant*, Vol. V.

Authors: SOCINUS, Faustus [Faust Socyn] (1539–1604); CRELLIUS, Johannes [Jan Crell] (1590–1633) [an Arian minister associated with the Rakow Academy]; GROTIUS Hugo [Hugo Grotius] (1583–1645)

Publisher: Irenopoli [i.e., Amsterdam], published by Irenica Philalethii [= Frans Kuyper]

Year of publication: post annum Domini 1656 [i.e., ca. 1668]. Edited by: Andrzej Wiszowaty (1608–1678).

Size: 33 cm

Volume: 416, [8] pp.; [13], 234, [2] pp.; 34 pp. (three works bound together, approx. 700 pp.). Complete copy.

Binding: original period leather binding, with minor scuffs

A magnificent volume from the series “Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum quos Unitarios vocant” —a collective edition of the writings of the Polish Brethren (Arian, Socinian), prepared in exile in Amsterdam by Andrzej Wiszowaty, the grandson of Faustus Socinus, together with the publisher Frans Kuyper. The volume includes three treatises bound together, all related to one of the key theological disputes of the 17th century—the nature of Christ’s “atonement”: Faust Socinus’s “Explicatio Variorum S. Scripturae Locorum,” “Responsio” by Jan Crell, defending Socinus’s position against an attack by Hugo Grotius, and—as an appendix—Grotius’s own treatise “Defensio fidei catholicae de satisfactione Christi.”

Following a Sejm resolution in 1658 ordering the Polish Brethren to leave the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on pain of death, the edition was given a fictitious place of publication, “Irenopolis” (“City of Peace”) and a publication date backdated to 1656, although it was actually printed around 1668. Today, the *Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum* is considered one of the key sources of European thought on tolerance and religious rationalism, and its influence on the philosophy of John Locke has been noted by historians of ideas.

On the inside cover is an original bookplate from the Library of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA) dating from 1915. The block is intact; the paper is handmade with watermarks; there is some natural foxing in places and old water stains in the margins, but these do not impair legibility.