BODIN (Jean) Lot n° 20

De Magorum Demonomania libri IV. Basel, Thomas Guarin, 1581. In-4, 16 ff.n.ch. and 488 pp.: soft calfskin with red overlay, traces of laces, black-blue edges, modern black grief box (contemporary binding). First edition in Latin, translated by Franciscus Junius: it appeared one year after the original French edition. Famous - and furious - book in which Bodin expresses the desire to gather the sorcerers by the hundreds to be able to grill them himself "in one heap". De la démonomanie des sorciers is "the best work we have on witchcraft" (Dorbon): history of magic, invocation of demons and other evil rites, lycanthropy, inquisition and torture of sorcerers, nothing escaped the attention of Jean Bodin, jurisconsult and demonographer from Anjou who succumbed to the plague in 1596. On pages 413-488 there is a virulent refutation of the opinions of Jean Wier: this Rhineland physician, a disciple of Corneille d'Agrippa, who was attached to Duke William of Cleves, claimed that sorcerers were beings manipulated by Satan and denounced the sentences that the judges inflicted on them. (Dorbon, Bibliotheca esoterica, no. 387. - Caillet, no. 1274. - Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, 1844, pp. 90-91. - Yve-Plessis, nº 843, for the first edition). A striking vellum copy of the time, whose glowing red hue recalls the flames of Hell and gives it the appearance of an evil grimoire. Handwritten ex-libris on the title: Lud. Casimir Cramer Ienae 1768 and J. P. Krebs 1800. Pale wetness in the upper corner of the Cc notebook, slight freckles.