Magica de spectris et apparitionibus spiritum de vaticiniis, divinationibus…

Second Edition, [xxiv], 636, [33] [1]pp., copper engraved title, woodcut historiated initial, head-and tail-pieces, contemporary English blind-ruled calf, handsomely rebacked, speckled edges, 12mo, Leiden, Franciscus Hackius, 1656.

Second edition of Henning Grosse’s Magica, a compendium of demonic tales taken from the most significant sources on witchcraft and spiritual phenomena, bound with a satirical work against theologians and superstition.

This compilation on various occult themes was published for the first time in 1597. It contains more than 900 tales of demonic phenomena, including spirits and ghostly apparitions, but the author, Henning Grosse (1533-1621), was not an expert demonologist. He was a book dealer who supposedly found an anonymous manuscript in an anonymous library from which he derived this work.

Grosse lists his sources in a Catalogus auctorum (p. [21]), and they range from Homer to Petrarch, from Protestant reformers, including Luther and Melancthon, to the more prominent Malleus Maleficarum. This extensive account is dedicated to Henry Julius (1564-1613), Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, under whose rule the persecution of witches reached a historic peak.

“In the dedication Grosse tells us that his object is to lay bare the frauds and deceptions of Satan” (Lea), favouring the tales in which the devil and his demons pretend to be angels in order to entice credulous people, so that readers can learn to expose them. This resulting work can be described as an encyclopaedic treatment of the most common beliefs at the turn of the 17th century (Davidson).

References: Davidson, Jane P. (2012).

Early Modern Supernatural: The Dark Side of European Culture, 1400-1700, Lea, Henry Charles (2017). Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft, Volume 2,  Goudriaan, F. van Lieburg, ed. (2011), Revisiting the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619)

[USTC 1833859; 1028496.]