Dialogve De La Lycanthropie Ov Transformation d’Hommes En Lovps.
Louvain, J. Maes & P. Zangre 1596.
8vo. (148 x 95 mm.). 72 leaves. Woodcut Maes device on the title.
Contemporary vellum over pressed paper boards (soiled), flat spine (darkened), with an old manuscript shelfmark, evidence of four ties, edges sprinkled red.
“D’UNE INSIGNE RARETÉ” (Dorbon-Ainé).
Only Edition: THE FIRST VERNACULAR TEXT ON WEREWOLVES IN GENERAL, including the author’s first-person accounts of attacks in southwestern France. For reports of detached arms and legs in haystacks, cannibalism, servants turned into beasts, corporeal transformations caused by enchantments, cemetery raids and the work of diabolical magicians he relies on a vast range of sources — from Basin, Binsfeld, Spina and Titelman to Paracelsus, Olaus Magnus, Rhodoginus and Ronsard to the biblical, classical and patristic. Folklore, scholarly argument, superstition, blind faith and fear jostle one another in this dialogue among three interlocutors, one clearly Prieur himself, who denies that men can be transformed into wolves but allows for enough exceptions to keep you indoors at night. In original condition (two leaves with minor ink spots).
¶Summers, The Werewolf in Lore and Legend 94-8; Coumont, Demonology and Witchcraft P78.1; Dorbon-Ainé, Bibliotheca esoterica 3784; Yve-Plessis, Essai d’une bibliographie française…de la sorcellerie 974; Thorndike, A History of Magic VI: 547; Wellcome I: 5249; not in Durling, Laehr’s massive Die Literatur der Psychiatrie or Schüling’s excellent Bibliographie der psychologischen Literatur des 16. Jahrhunderts.
Price: $9,500.00