Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Heliotropium Conformity of the the Human Will to the Divine by Jeremias Drexel Jeremias Drexel
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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Heliotropium Conformity of the the Human Will to the Divine by Jeremias Drexel Jeremias Drexel. Jeremias Drexel S.J. (also known as Drechsel or Drexelius ) (August 15, 1581–19 April 1638) was a Jesuit writer of devotional literature and a professor of the humanities and rhetoric. He served for 23 years as court preacher in Munich to Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria and his wife Elizabeth of Lorraine. Jeremias Drexel was born in Augsburg and was raised as Lutheran. However, he was converted to Catholicism in his youth and educated by the Jesuits before entering the Jesuit Order. He taught the Jesuit seminarians at Dillingen as professor of rhetoric, and then for 23 years he was a court preacher to Maximilian I, the prince-elector of Bavaria in the Holy Roman Empire. It is said that his voice was strong enough to be heard in every corner of the church and that his sermons were such that an hour would seem like a few minutes. During this period he accompanied Maximilian on his Bohemian campaign. Drexel gave up preaching in 1621 and devoted himself to writing a biography of the Duchess and composing theological works redolent of his baroque preaching fervour. Drexel was fond of pictorial symbols to make his teachings concrete and thus most of his books are elegantly illustrated. Jeremias is the author of some 20 works that were widely read and translated. His writings on the eternal truth, the virtues and the Christian exemplar were popular; hundreds of thousands of copies of his works were printed. By 1642 in Munich alone, 170,700 copies of his works had appeared. His first work, De aeternitate considerationes , concerned various representations of eternity. Another of his works, Heliotropism , discussed man's recognition of the divine will and conformity to it. Jeremias Drechsel. Ascetic writer, b. at Augsburg, 15 August, 1581; entered the Society of Jesus 27 July, 1598; d. at Munich, 19 April, 1638. He was professor of humanities and rhetoric at Augsburg and Dillingen, and for twenty-three years court preacher to the Elector of Bavaria. His writings enjoyed an immense popularity. Chief among them was his "Considerationes de Æternitate" (Munich, 1620), of which there were nine editions; in addition to these Leyser printed 3200 copies in Latin and 4200 in German. It was also translated into English (Cambridge, 1632; Oxford, 1661; London, 1710 and 1844) and into Polish, French, and Italian. His "Zodiacus Christianus" or "The Twelve Signs of Predestination" (Munich, 1622) is another famous book but there seems to have been an edition anterior to this; in 1642 eight editions had already been issued and it was translated in several European languages. "The Guardian Angel's Clock" was first issued at Munich, 1622, and went through seven editions in twenty years; it was also translated extensively. "Nicetas seu Triumphata conscientia" (Munich, 1624) was dedicated to the sodalists of a dozen or more cities which he names on the title page; "Trismegistus" was printed in the same year and place; "Heliotropium" or "Conformity of the Human Will with the Divine Will" came out in 1627; "Death the Messenger of Eternity" also bears the date 1627. His fancy for odd titles shows itself in other books also. Thus there are the "Gymnasium of Patience"; "Orbis Phaëton, hoc est de universis vitiis Linguæ". The only work he wrote in German was entitled "Tugendtspregel oder Klainodtschatz" (Munich, 1636). He has also a "Certamen Poeticum"; Rosæ selectissimarum virtutum"; "Rhetorica Coelestis"; "Gazophyacium Christi". There are in all thirty-four such books. Other works are "Res bellicæ expeditionis Maximiliani" (1620), and some odes and sermons. Sources. De Backer, Bibl. de la c. de J., 1646-55; Sommervogel, Bibl. de la c. de J., III, 181 sqq. About this page. APA citation. Campbell, T. (1909). Jeremias Drechsel. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05156a.htm. MLA citation. Campbell, Thomas. "Jeremias Drechsel." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05156a.htm>. Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York. Hieremias Drexel - Heliotropium seu Conformatio humanae voluntatis cum divina - 1634. Hieremias Drexelius Heliotropium seu Conformatio humanae voluntatis cum divina Cologne, Cornelis van Egmond [= Elzevier], 1634 514+[6] pp, 5 emblematic engravings on copper (showing the sun and sunflower). Lovely little book in a burgundy morocco binding (11.5 x 6 cm; stained and rubbed, missing first endpaper), notes in ink on the endpaper and title page, foxing. Reprint (1st ed 1627) of one of the devotional emblem books by the German Jesuit Jeremias Drexel (1581-1638), illustrating the conformity of the human will with the divine. CONFORMITY TO THE WILL OF GOD. The idea that human goodness involves a harmonious relationship between the human will and the will of God is a commonplace of Christian thought. In its most obvious application it is realized in obedience to the divine will as this is made known through prohibition and command; but there is a sense in which conformity goes beyond obedience, which it supposes, and signifies not only exterior compliance to an order, but also interior attitudes of harmony in willing and thinking. The notions of conformity, abandonment, and resignation are closely related. Abandonment is generally understood to differ from simple conformity in implying the renunciation of one's own judgment and will, and allowing God to lead one blindly, without one's having any desire to know the reasons or ends God has in view. Abandonment, therefore, describes a passive or mystical state, while conformity is usually associated with the idea of an active state. The terms are, however, used differently by different authors, and it is necessary to discover just what a given writer means when he is using them. Resignation differs from conformity and abandonment in referring only to the willing acceptance of unpleasant things. Scripture and the Fathers. There are numerous passages in Scripture in which there is reference to conformity to the will of God. Among the principal ones can be noted Heb 10.5 – 9, with its reference to Ps 39.7; Jn5.30 and 6.38; Acts 9.6, but these passages all seem to refer simply to obedience and hence do not involve conformity in the more technical sense. Most of the Fathers also touched upon the idea of conformity only under the more general notion of obedience to the Commandments. A few expressions are, however, worthy of particular note. Origen ( In Rom. 12.1, Patrologia Graeca , ed J. P. Migne [Paris 1857 – 66] 14:1207) remarked that to discover without error what the will of God is requires the illumination of wisdom and the possession of the gnosis. He implied that this is quite rare and not found in the ordinary Christian. Among the Fathers writing in the tradition of Oriental monastic spirituality, SS. Pachomius, Basil, and John Chrysostom, a relationship is established between conformity to the will of God and Christian perfection. St. Augustine spoke of the importance of willing what God directs ( Conf. 10.26 and In Psalm . 44.17, Patrologia Latina , ed. j. p. migne [Paris 1878 – 90] 36:503 – 504), and in his Enchiridion he discussed the possibility of a good man willing what God does not will. This last passage was incorporated by Peter Lombard into his Sentences (1.48) and thus served as a starting point for much of the later medieval speculation on the problem of man's conformity to the divine will. Medieval Theologians. St. Bernard seems to be the first to have used the term conformitas , in his 83d sermon on the Canticle, but he used the expression simply to describe the love whereby the soul is joined to God in spiritual marriage. St. Albert the Great spoke of conformity as the highest rule of moral action and distinguished three grades of the spiritual life according to three degrees of conformity: the conformity of imperfection, of sufficiency, and of perfection ( Summa theologiae 1.20.80.3). It is with Peter Lombard, however, and his commentators that one finds the first real development of the idea of conformity. The Master of the Sentences spoke of the distinction of the divine will of good pleasure ( voluntas beneplaciti ) and of the signified will ( voluntas signi ) with its various subdivisions (1.45), while elsewhere (1.48) he raised the question, suggested by the remark of St. Augustine in the Enchiridion , of how there can be some disagreement between the will of God and that of a good man, and indicated the distinction, to be developed by the later scholastics, between conformity relative to the thing willed and conformity in the motive or end of willing. This distinction received its clearest treatment in St. Thomas Aquinas, who discussed it in his Commentary on the Sentences as well as in the De veritate (23.7 – 8) and more compendiously in the Summa theologiae (1a2a[a-z], [0-9]9.9 – 10). St. Thomas noted that the goodness of the divine will is the measure and norm of every good will. A created will is good when it wills what God wants it to will. The problem of conformity, then, consists in discovering the obligation to will objects and events that God wills and wants men to will. Here St. Thomas proposed some distinctions. Since the goodness of an object or event depends upon the end, that which is formally good about any object or event is its order to a right end and ultimately its order to the end for which God wills all things, namely His own divine goodness.