Compendium doctrinae Christianae idiomate Barmano sive Bomano

First edition of one of the earliest substantial works printed entirely in Burmese characters, a pioneering monument of European Burmese typography and a fundamental witness to the beginnings of Christian vernacular literature in Burma   8vo (197x136 mm). 42, [2 blank] pp. Title-page in Burmese and Latin, the text printed entirely in Burmese characters, enclosed within decorative typographical borders, with ornamental vignettes and woodcut decorations. Nineteenth-century half vellum over boards, gilt-decorated spine with morocco lettering-piece (front free endpaper wanting, occasional minor rubbing). A very good copy. Extremely rare first edition, produced in Rome by the polyglot press of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, and among the earliest surviving examples of extended Burmese-language printing with European movable metal type. The work is associated with Giovanni Maria Percoto, an Italian Barnabite missionary whose pioneering linguistic activity in eighteenth-century Burma played an important role in the development of European knowledge of the Burmese language. The title-page does not explicitly name Percoto, but modern historical scholarship identifies him with the translation, and his authorship is accepted in recent academic studies of Burmese biblical translation. The earliest sustained Catholic missionary efforts in Burma were closely connected with the Barnabites, or Clerics Regular of St Paul, who established missions within the Burmese kingdoms during the eighteenth century. Their religious activities demanded intensive engagement with local languages and the existing intellectual and religious culture. Missionaries were obliged to develop a vocabulary capable of expressing Christian concepts in Burmese, a language whose established literary and philosophical terminology was profoundly influenced by Therav?da Buddhism and the P?li tradition. Percoto became an especially important figure in this undertaking. In addition to pastoral work, he devoted considerable attention to Burmese grammar, lexicography and translation. The linguistic material compiled by the Barnabite missionaries ultimately reached Rome, where the Congregation de Propaganda Fide possessed the resources necessary to manufacture specialised printing types and issue texts in unfamiliar writing systems. The Compendium doctrinae Christianae was published in 1776, the same year as Giovanni Cristoforo Amaduzzi's Alphabetum Barmanum seu Bomanum regni Avae finitimarumque regionum, likewise issued by the Roman press. These two publications represent complementary manifestations of the same intellectual and technological programme. Whereas the Alphabetum introduced the Burmese writing system to European readers, the Compendium employed Burmese characters to transmit an extended body of Christian teaching directly in the vernacular. The Compendium is remarkable for its typographical presentation. Apart from the Latin component of the title-page, the book is entirely printed in Burmese script. Each page is framed by an ornamental border, creating an unusually elaborate visual setting for a relatively modest missionary text. The decorative programme combines the technical achievement of Burmese character printing with the established aesthetic conventions of the Roman ecclesiastical press. Printing Burmese by European letterpress presented substantial practical difficulties. The script comprises rounded letterforms, dependent vowel signs, medial consonantal elements and other graphic combinations which could not be reproduced through straightforward substitution of Latin characters. The production of such a book therefore required specially designed type and a compositorial system capable of expressing the characteristic structures of written Burmese. The significance of the text is not confined to typography. As an early Burmese-language catechism, it documents the process by which European missionaries sought equivalents for Christian theological.…