Kitab al-Tuhfah al-Sirriyah al-Khassah li-Kahanat Kursi al-I'tiraf [The Secret Masterpiece for Confessional Priests and instructions for mastering this profession].
8vo (112 x 167 mm). 54 ff. Arabic manuscript on polished laid paper. Black naskh script with titles and important words and phrases picked out in red. Contemporary brown morocco ruled and stamped in blind.
€ 18,000.00
A manuscript on the Catholic confessional, written in Arabic by the Lebanese Maronite bishop Gabriel Germanos Farhat (1670-1732). The manuscript acts as a handbook for Maronite priests, most of whom lived and worked in monastic communities in Lebanon and Palestine. The original work was written in 1730; this copy was completed only two years later and potentially within the author's lifetime (Gabriel Germanos having died in 1732, the year of the manuscript's completion).
Divided into two parts: the larger first section of the manuscript is a guide for priests tasked with taking confessions, overviewing the spiritual and community role of the priest, and detailing the trickier situations one might encounter. For example, how might a priest handle extreme circumstances around the very ill and infirm, the mute, or the special demands in times of plague? (In the latter, a partial confession and a flogging may sometimes do.) What about women in the throes of childbirth, and could a person confess on the behalf of their spouse? Having addressed these topics, the second section supplies a quick guide for confessors (and further reference for their priests) with a laundry list of common sins which may need to be brought up at confession.
Copied in the final year of the author's life at a Maronite monastery dedicated to Saint Moura in Ehden. By 1861 the manuscript was in the hands of another Maronite bishop, whose ownership inscription may be found on the first leaf.
From the Maronite monastery of Saint Moura, Ehden (1732), and next in the possession of a Maronite bishop at a church in the city of Zahle (1861).
Light wear to leather covers, minor soiling to initial leaves; altogether well-preserved.