DISQUISITIONUM MAGICARUM LIBRI SEX, QUIBUS CONTINETUR ACCURATA CURIOSARUM ARTIUM…

[16], 1070pp., engraved title with 11 vignettes from Exodus, woodcut initials, marginal repairing to ff. 5I4, bookplate to pastedown, early vellum over boards, manuscript title to spine, ribbon ties perished, yapped edges, text edges blackened, 4to, Köln, Peter Henning, 1633

 The Greatest Counter-Reformation Compendium of Magic and Witchcraft.

Jesuit theologian Martin Del Rio was one of the chief advocates of the witch trials, credited with importing the beliefs of the Malleus Maleficarum into the Low Countries. As a Catholic, Del Rio was concerned by the issues witchcraft raised about the nature of the magic that lay at the heart of religious identity.

Del Rio studied or taught at Jesuit colleges across Catholic Europe, including at the College of Clermont in Paris where he was taught by the Spanish demonologist Juan Maldonado. Maldonado’s passionate writings against witches deeply influenced Del Rio.

Based on Del Rio’s knowledge of the classics and familiarity with Church history, Disquisitionum magicarum libri six summed up a vast knowledge about demons and witches. Del Rio’s work sets out in considerable detail the range of contemporary practices of magical healing and diving as a compendious assault on popular superstitions. He questions the validity of entire sciences such as natural magic, astrology, mathematics and alchemy, as well as whether characters, sigils, words and charms have any intrinsic power. Yet he also maintained that the Church had an arsenal of sacred objects, blessings and pious practices which were effective against witchcraft. As a Catholic, Del Rio was forced to define central features of his faith and the nature of the divine. It was difficult to know where to draw the line. To Del Rio’s annoyance, sceptics seized on the work’s more moderate comments.

However the work was very successful, being cited as authoritative by demonologists well into the eighteenth century.

This edition was printed a year after one of the largest witch hunts in Scotland and the height of the witch hunt craze in England.

Provenance: King Lawrence Parker

[USTC:2100266; Witch Craze, Roper, 2004; The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, 2013