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Jerome Zanchi's treatise on the spiritual marriage between Christ and the Church first appeared as part of his commentary on the book of Ephesians (In D. Pauli epistolam ad Ephesios commentarius ). Like many of his works, it was first published posthumously. In 1591 his heirs extracted the treatise on spiritual marriage from the commentary and subsequently published it as De spirituali inter Christum et ecclesiam connugio in Herborn. In 1592 an English translation was published by J. Legat of Cambridge and two years later a French version was completed . The same year, 1594, saw the publication of the entire Ephesians commentary in Neustadt.

Zanchi's children worked earnestly after his death to bring together the whole of their father's theological writings and succeeded in producing the first edition of the Operum theologicorum D. Hieronymi Zanchii in 1605 through the Genevan firm of Gamonet & Aubert. A subsequent edition was published in 1613 jointly at Heidelberg and Geneva. Their editorial work reached its culmination between 1617-1619 in the publication of the three volume Crespin edition. The treatise on spiritual marriage was included in the commentary on Ephesians in book 6, part 1, pages 234-250.

The version of Spiritual Marriage made available here is a transcription of J. Legat's English translation. For the sake of simplicity, I have modernized the verbs. Several changes in punctuation have also been made in order to clarify meaning. I have not, however, intentially deviated from the Legat edition in substance.

Patrick J. O'Banion - Dana Point, CA

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