Demoniality or Incubi and Succubi

First Edition, First Impression, xvi, 225, [4], 230-243, [2], 246, 247, [5], wood engraved initials, head and tail pieces, original printed parchment wrapper preserved, text block uncut, half red morocco over red cloth, t.e.g., marbled endpapers, bookplate of Harris Elliott Kirk and Hugh Hamilton Wilson, 8vo, Paris, Isidore Liseux, 1879.

Rare with the original parchment wraps, this was one of several works written by Father Sinistrari of Ameno during the seventeenth century. Father Ludovico Sinistrari (1622-1701) was a Franciscan priest who taught philosophy and theology to students in Pavia, and spent some time as an advisor to the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition in Rome. He was considered an expert on exorcism, demonology, sins relating to sexuality, and all combinations thereof, including investigations of those individuals accused of sexual relations with demons. Allegations along these lines became staples of later Inquisition investigations of those accused of witchcraft.

This work focuses on demons, their composition, their mannerisms, and aims to prove the existence of sentient demons that feed on their prey through sexual intercourse. A strange but influential work, Sinistrari even remarks that, in some ways, the demons are perhaps superior to man. The original manuscript of De Daemonialitate et Incubis et Succubis was discovered by chance by French bibliophile and publisher Isidore Liseux in London in 1872, while searching for old books at a store. He published a French translation of the manuscript in 1875, and this English translation in 1879. The work was not widely known until the 1920’s when Montague Summers published his translation through the Fortune Press.

Provenance: 

Harris Elliott Kirk

Hugh Hamilton Wilson