FULL TITLE: Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, où il est amplement traicté des sorciers et de la sorcellerie
First Edition
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Written by Pierre de Rosteguy de Lancre (1553–1631)
Published in Paris by Nicolas Buon or Jean Berjon, 1612
A scarce first edition of Pierre de Lancre’s influential and notorious account of witchcraft and the witch trials conducted in the Basque region of Labourd. Caillet describes it as “one of the most sought-after works on witchcraft trials.” While Lancre claimed he put 600 to death during this time, later estimates reveal 60-80 people were executed. Lancre's work belongs to the broader history of European witch persecutions, through which, across several centuries, “thousands of people, most of them lower-class women, suffered torture and death” (The Newberry, Religious Change and Print, 1450–1700).
DESCRIPTION:
De Lancre, Pierre. Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, où il est amplement traicté des sorciers et de la sorcellerie. Paris: Nicolas Buon or Jean Berjon, 1612. First edition, issue undetermined. In-4°. [36], 571, [25] pp. Bound in wrinkled limp vellum with yapp edges and missing ties, with manuscript waste used in the binding at the rear cover; with a later supplied folding photocopy of an eighteenth-century engraving, margin notes, historiated woodcut initials, head and tail-pieces, and with a table of contents at the end of the book.
This is a 1612 first edition, but it’s unclear which issue, whether the Nicholas Buon or Jean Berjon, that were issued at the same time with identical content, except for the title page. The title page in this copy is a replacement and bears the Buon name; however, it is not clear whether this is an accurate replacement. No other discernible differences appear between the 1st edition issues beyond the title page (Caillet II, 408).
Written following de Lancre’s participation in the 1609 witchcraft commission in Labourd, the work contains extensive discussions of the witches’ Sabbath, demonic pacts and marks, lycanthropy, possession, sorcery, and the investigation and prosecution of those accused of witchcraft. Lancre is one of the most famous witch trial judges due to the explicit nature of his highly sensationalized writing, which have been described as "academic pornography."
This copy includes the frequently absent final passage on pp. 568–69, in which de Lancre concludes that accused sorcerers should be condemned to death if they “have merely attended the Sabbath several times, even if not convicted of any specific act of maleficium”:
“auront esté simplement au Sabbat plusieurs fois, bien qu’ils ne soient convaincus d’aucun maléfice.”
The 1612 first edition was published without an engraved plate. This copy has been supplied with a folding photocopy of Jean Crépy’s Description de l’Assemblée des Sorciers Qu’on Appelle Sabbat, originally published in Laurent Bordelon’s L’Histoire des imaginations extravagantes de Monsieur Oufle (Paris: Nicolas Gosselin and Charles Le Clerc, 1710). Crepy's engraving is a later reworking of the Sabbath plate introduced in the second edition of de Lancre’s work in 1613.
PROVENANCE & TRACES OF USE:
The book shows significant use across centuries, with alterations and at least two sets of annotations from different time periods, including handwritten repairs to missing text, a pressed plant leaf, and other inserts preserved between the leaves.
Among the inserts is an 1888 letter. Written in pen on its verso is the full title of the Latin poem Pancratium Sortilegorum, which begins at ăăii in the book. The actual letter invites former students to contribute to a subscription for the presentation of the bronze statue Le Pêcheur à la coquille to the author and former classmate Jean-Louis de La Fontaine, in recognition of his acclaimed novel Les Dames de Lameth.
A loose leaf, comprising pp. 267–68 from an unidentified early French edition of Tacitus’s Annals, is laid in between pp. 198 and 199. The recto of the insert concludes Book XIV and is decorated with an ornamental Green Man tailpiece.
CONDITION:
Fair condition. The original title page is absent and has been replaced with a photocopy printed on laid paper. A folding photocopy of the 1710 Crépy engraving has also been supplied. Angular loss at the head affects the first 24 pages of preliminary matter and the first 52 pages of the principal text. These losses have received amateur repairs using strips of more recent paper bearing handwritten transcriptions of the missing text. Replacement leaves containing the complete text have also been inserted following the affected original leaves from ăii through ăăă. A loose signature from pages 465-470 includes two replacement pages similar in paper to the previous replacements; they are at 467 and 469, followed by original p. 472 misnumbered as 470. Damp staining affects a substantial portion of the leaves, with additional foxing and scattered stains. Some worming, not affecting the text. Older annotations and other traces of use throughout. Beyond the supplied title page and inserted replacements, the copy is complete.
BOOK MEASUREMENTS:
In-4°. 23.3 cm × 17.5 cm.
TOTAL LENGTH:
[36], 571, [25] pp.
REFERENCES:
Caillet II, p. 408, no. 6664; Dorbon, no. 2467; Brunet III, 810.
