Cream calf binding with red title plate, gilt banding and title on the spine. Two pages have been added at some time.

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A lovely book, please view photographs. Full Vellum. Condition: Very Good. Plates/Decorations; Edwin John Prittie (illustrator). Second Enlarged Edition.

Joseph Mullooly, (19 March 1812 – 25 June 1880) was an Irish Dominican Roman Catholic priest and archaeologist from Lehery, Lanesborough, County Longford, Ireland. He is noted for excavating the temple of Mithras, (a Zoroastrian and Vedic deity widely venerated in the Roman Empire dating from the reign of Nero) beneath the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome.

In 1849, Mullooly became lector in Sacred Theology at the College of Saint Thomas in Rome, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.

Mullooly wrote Saint Clement, Pope and Martyr, and His Basilica in Rome about the excavation project at San Clemente. “Mullooly’s courage and desire to preserve ancient artefacts can be noted in his defence of the Basilica of San Clemente from destruction. When Garibaldi’s revolutionary forces took over Rome in 1848, Mullooly defended his church even after the Pope fled the Vatican”.

To emphasise San Clemente as a Dominican house of studies and as an Irish national college, and under the protection of Queen Victoria, he branded it ‘Collegium Hiberniae Dominicanae de Urbe’.

Princess Alice of Great Britain and Ireland and later Grand Duchess of Hesse mentions in a letter dated 9 April 1873 to her mother, Queen Victoria, that Joseph Mullooly had shown her around San Clemente during her visit to Rome in April 1873: “We visited San Clemente two days ago, and Father Mulooly [sic] took us through the three churches – one under the other”

Clement of Rome (died c. 100 AD), also known as Pope Clement I, was the Bishop of Rome in the late first century AD. He is considered to be the first of the Apostolic Fathers of the Church, and a leading member of the Church in Rome in the late 1st century.

Little is known about Clement’s life. Tertullian claimed that Clement was ordained by Saint Peter. Early church lists place him as the second or third bishop of Rome. Eusebius, in his book Church History, mentioned Clement as the third bishop of Rome and as the “co-laborer” of Paul. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus described Clement as the successor to Anacletus, who was the third bishop of Rome, and as a personal acquaintance of the Apostles. According to the Annuario Pontificio, Clement was the fourth bishop of Rome, holding office at the very end of the 1st century. It is likely that Clement died in exile, and was possibly martyred. According to apocryphal stories dating back to the 4th century by authors such as Rufinus, Clement was imprisoned by Roman Emperor Trajan, and was executed by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea. The Liber Pontificalis states that Clement died in Greece in the third year of Trajan’s reign, or 100 AD.

The only known genuine extant writing of Clement is his letter to the church at Corinth (1 Clement) in response to a dispute in which certain presbyters of the Corinthian church had been deposed. He asserted the authority of the presbyters as rulers of the church because they had been appointed by the Apostles. His letter, which is one of the oldest extant Christian documents outside the New Testament, was read in the church at Corinth, along with other epistles, some of which later became part of the Christian canon. This letter is considered to be the earliest affirmation of the principle of apostolic succession. A second epistle, 2 Clement, was once controversially attributed to Clement, although recent scholarship suggests it to be a homily by another author. In the pseudo-Clementine Writings, Clement is the intermediary through whom the apostles teach the church.

Clement is recognized as a saint in many Christian churches and a patron saint of mariners. He is commemorated on 23 November in the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, and the Lutheran Church. In Eastern Orthodox Christianity his feast is kept on 25 November.