First French edition of a biography of the Jesuit Gaspar Berse (1515-1553), who preached in Ormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and Goa in India. Berse was born in Goes on the island of Walcheren in Zeeland, the Netherlands. After his studies in Louvain he went to Coimbra in 1546 where he entered the Jesuit order. In 1548 he was sent to the island of Ormuz and in 1551 to Goa where the well-known François Xavier, who would soon depart for Japan, appointed him director of St. Paul's College in Goa and entrusted him with the provincialate of the Indian Mission. He died in Goa on 6 October 1553.
With engraved armorial bookplate of John Drummond of Logy Almond on back of title-page. In very good condition. The cords were never attached to the vellum cover and the endleaves never pasted down, so that the cover is held on by the headbands laced through at the hinges. De Backer & Sommervogel VIII, col. 238, 4; Streit V, 188.