Witchcraft. BODIN. De la demonomanie des Sorciers.

Rare second edition. First published in 1580, The Demon-Mania of Witches, dedicated to the spells of witches and sorcerers and the suppression of the evil alliance between humans and demons, was a huge success. The famous French jurist believed in pacts with demons, the summoning of the dead, and sexual intercourse with demons. He advocated torture and subsequent elimination by burning. The work concludes with a refutation of the opinions of Jean Wier, a physician who considered witches to be sick. This widely studied book thus aimed to demonstrate both the existence of sorcerers and the legitimacy of their condemnation. However, Bodin's superstitious belief in witchcraft was not approved by the Church, and all his works were placed on the Index in 1628.

Thorndike: “… asserts that witches are transported through the air, that demons assume human form, and that men are transformed into animals. He believes in lycanthropy or werwolves and in the marks of sorcerers. In their professed cures they employ unnatural remedies and poisons like the brain of a cat or head of a raven. Really the only maladies which they can cure are those which they have inflicted, and in this case they must pass the ailment on to someone else…”

Pearl: “On the Demon-Mania of Witches’ (De la démonomanie des sorciers) appeared in 1580 and rapidly became a major publishing success. It underwent at least twenty-three editions and was translated from its original French into German, Italian and Latin. It was surely the most published work of the era on the subject of demons and witches. Because of its wide distribution, it has been considered by generations of historians to have been an extremely influential book, responsible in itself for large-scale prosecutions of witches in the four or five decades following its appearance.”

4to. 220x150 mm. Limp vellum binding. Leaves [XII], 256. Old handwritten note on the title page, crossed out, numerous passages underlined in black ink. Traces of wear and defects on the binding.