Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, Volume I The Infancy Narratives

Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, composed by Jerome Nadal (1507-80), St. Ignatius Loyola s closest collaborator in the early days of the Society of Jesus, was first published in Antwerp in 1595 (a second edition followed the same year, and a third edition in 1607). This book combined engravings portraying episodes from the Gospels executed by the premier Flemish engravers of the day with Nadal s explanatory notes and meditations on these episodes as depicted in the engravings, in order to help young Jesuit seminarians to meditate on the Gospels that they heard read at Sunday Mass. The impact of this book on the sacred art of the period after the Council of Trent was enormous not only in Europe, but also in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

Nadal s text (1607 edition) is presented in an accessible contemporary translation prepared by Frederick A. Homann, S.J., who also provides the reader with helpful notes and references. The translation is preceded by a thorough introduction to Nadal, his book, and its images by Walter S. Melion. Melion s introductory essay in Vol. 1: The Infancy Narratives is entitled The Art of Vision in Jerome Nadal s Adnotationes et Meditationes in Evangelia.

Volume 1 includes a CD-ROM with high-resolution scans of all 153 engravings from the 1607 edition.

This collection will be of special interest to art historians, as well as other scholars working in the areas of Jesuit and early modern Catholic studies.

Frederick A. Homann, S.J., is professor emeritus of mathematics at Saint Joseph s University. He is the translator of Ladislaus Lukacs, S.J., and Giuseppe Consentino, Church, Culture & Curriculum: Theology and Mathematics in the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum (Saint Joseph s University Press, 1999), to which he also contributed an introductory essay.

Walter S. Melion is professor and chair, Department of the History of Art, The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Shaping the Netherlandish Canon; Karel van Mander s Schilder-Boeck (University of Chicago Press, 1991).