Cornelius a Lapide, The Great Commentary of

Father Cornelius a Lapide (Cornelis Cornelissen van den Steen), a Flemish Jesuit, was born in 1567, and died in Rome in 1637.  Soon after being ordained to the priesthood on December 24, 1595, he became a professor of Sacred Scripture at Louvain.  It was twenty years later that he was called to Rome, where he continued to teach Sacred Scripture.  As a zealous priest and devout religious he left to the world a complete commentary on all the books of the Bible with the exception of the Psalms and the book of Job, with the result that he has become one of the most renowned Catholic Scripture commentators of modern times, winning the admiration of certain Protestants even while they disagreed with his doctrine.

        Among those non-Catholic admirers was an Anglican clergyman, Rev. Thomas W. Moseman, who in the late nineteenth century translated several books of Father Cornelius a Lapide’s commentary on the New Testament, including the Four Gospels.  In the 1990s Preserving Christian Publications began work on the publication of a new edition, and in early 2001 we hired a translator to provide an English translation from the Latin of parts of the text that the Anglican clergyman had left out.  We are now offering the four-volume Commentary on the Gospels for a reduced price of only $150 for the remainder of 2012.