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 believes at the turn of the 17th century (Davidson).
This particular copy consists of two works bound together, and it is interesting to note how a compendium on the supernatural, originally published for the benefit of theologians, is bound with an earlier satire that “criticises the choleric quarrelsome scam of theologians” (Goudriaan). This second work is Satyra Menippea, the augmented second edition of the Sardi Venales (1612) written by Petrus Cunaeus (1586-1638).
Cunaeus was the pen name of the Dutch humanist Peter van der Kun, professor at Leiden University. In his satire, he imagines an ideal republic of scholars in which theologians are put on trial for teaching “simple men an abstruse theology and an incomprehensible doctrine of inevitable fate and determinism” (Goudriaan). This work caused a great stir, and lectures came to a halt. Regardless, the professor provoked the theologians even more by adding a translation of an anti-Christian satire written by the Roman emperor Julian.
Provenance: Bookplate of a library in Aachen, Germany, “Bibl. Domus Aquisgranensis” on front pastedown, filled out in manuscript.
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..
