Tableau De L’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons. Ou Il Est Amplement Traieté de la Sorcellerie & Sorciers.

LANCRE, PIERRE DE

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FIRST EDITION, [28], 568, 2 engraved folding plates inserted, woodcut printers device, head and tailpieces, inhabited initials, marginal annotations in an old hand, marbled endpapers, full mottled calf, spine gilt, a.e.r., 4to, Paris, Jean Berjon, 1612

First Edition of the first, and most influential, of de Lancre?s work on demonology.

In 1609 King Henry IV of France appointed him head of a commission to investigate the activities of witches in the Labourt, the Basque region of France. According to de Lancre, most of these people engaged in active satanic associations and practices. During the course of a visit that lasted just four months, de Lancre, by his own account led investigations against forty-six suspected witches, among them twelve priests, and thirty-five informants. At least two dozen suspects were executed. This judicial operation had significant repercussions on both sides of the border with Spain. Accused witches fleeing south triggered the final witch-hunt undertaken by the Spanish Inquisition, ending in a major auto-da-fé in 1610. De Lancre?s frequent comments on the antisocial and antinationalist behaviours of the Basque people make it clear that the witch prosecutions had not only religious but political motives as well. These prosecutions clearly formed part of the French move toward the absolutist state. The rampage was finally stopped by de Lancre?s own colleagues, the judges of the Parlement of Bordeaux.

In Spain, the episode soon led the Inquisition to stop executing witches altogether. In France, similar scepticism provoked de Lancre to publish ?Tableau De L?Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons?. A report on his extraordinary stay in the Basque country, de Lancre based the ?Tableau? on the original trial records. Since these records were destroyed in the eighteenth century, de Lancre?s report is the only surviving account of the proceedings of the trials. ?Tableau? is divided into six books, which deal with the more important problems which confronted him during his investigation. First he establishes the inconstant nature of demons, their number, and their special appeal to women. Books II and III enlarge the sabbath; de Lancre then returns to themes already suggested at the beginning: the ability of demons to change their shape, either in fact or through illusion. Book V enumerates the cures a man might adopt to counteract the wiles of the Devil. De Lancre concludes his work with an important discourse on priests and witchcraft, a learned rebuttal of the Canon Episcopi which leads him to stress the need to exact the severest punishment for crimes of witchcraft.

Pierre de Lancre, is perhaps the greatest expert on the witch?s sabbath, constructing one of the most vivid descriptions based on the trials and testimonies in the Basque. Few demonologists blended learned and popular beliefs as effectively as he did. He described children being presented with toads in velvet suits, to be guarded while their parents amused themselves with the unspeakable pleasures of the sabbath feast. De Lancre believed that the witches? sabbath was ongoing but only visible to the witches themselves. His ?Tableu? had celebrated authority in action against witches.

Two eighteenth-century plates have been inserted into this work. The first work is by Jean Crespy, for Laurent Bordelon?s ?L'Histoire des Imaginations Extravagantes de Monsieur Oufle? (1735). This satirical work tells the story of a Mr. Oufle who reads so much about ghosts, witches, devils that he begins to have all sorts of strange visions. Mr. Oufle is shown here bottom left observing the bizarre sabbath scene accompanied by a jester. The devil worshipers are banqueting on babies and performing somersaults before the devil who is seated at centre. The work captures all the stereotypes of a witches sabbat including crones riding broomsticks, cauldron magic, dancing and dining with demons.

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• Titre: Tableau De L?Inconstance des Mauvais Anges et Demons. Ou Il Est Amplement Traieté de la Sorcellerie & Sorciers.
• État de l'article: Assez bon