Sinistrari — De la Démonialité — 1875 First Edition, No. 144/598 — Alfred Clériceau Copy in Japoniste Binding

SINISTRARI D’AMENO, Louis-Marie [Lodovico Maria]. De la Démonialité et des Animaux Incubes et Succubes, où l’on prouve qu’il existe sur terre des créatures raisonnables autres que l’homme, ayant comme lui un corps et une âme, naissant et mourant comme lui, rachetées par N.-S. Jésus-Christ et capables de salut ou de damnation. Published from the original Latin manuscript, with French translation by Isidore Liseux. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1875.

First edition. One of only 598 numbered copies, this being No. 144.

8vo. xvi, 224 pp. Latin text and French translation printed on facing pages. Original parchment-paper wrappers preserved within a striking later nineteenth-century decorative binding: black and gold patterned boards, black leather spine label lettered in gilt, and remarkable Japanese pictorial endpapers incorporating hand-coloured figures and birds.

With the large pictorial “Ex Amicis A. Clericeau” bookplate engraved by Stern, Paris, establishing provenance from the library of the French bibliophile Alfred Clériceau.

Sinistrari’s De la Démonialité is one of the strangest productions of seventeenth-century Catholic demonological literature. Written by the Franciscan theologian and canonist Ludovico Maria Sinistrari d’Ameno (1622–1701), the treatise attempts to address, within the formal structures of theology and canon law, the supposed existence and nature of incubi and succubi.

Its argument is considerably more unusual than a conventional discussion of demons. Sinistrari considers whether some beings traditionally identified as incubi and succubi might not be demons at all, but rather a distinct order of rational, corporeal creatures: beings possessing bodies and souls, capable of birth and death and, within his theological scheme, potentially of salvation or damnation.

From this premise he develops an extraordinary combination of scholastic theology, sexual casuistry, demonology, Classical mythology and supernatural folklore. The work discusses the physical nature of incubi and succubi, relations between humans and supernatural beings, supposed extraordinary births, fauns and sylvans, and the juridical distinction between “demoniality” and other sexual offences.

The cool, analytical manner in which Sinistrari approaches these subjects is precisely what gives the book its peculiar fascination.

The Liseux Edition

The work remained unpublished as a separate text until the nineteenth century, when Parisian publisher and bibliophile Isidore Liseux obtained a manuscript attributed to Sinistrari and issued the present edition in 1875. Liseux printed the Latin text together with his French translation on facing pages and limited the edition to 598 numbered copies. The edition rapidly became sought after among collectors of demonology, occult literature and bibliographical curiosities, and Liseux issued a second edition the following year. This copy is a 1st Edition, No. 144.

Alfred Clériceau Provenance

The front of the volume bears the elaborate pictorial bookplate EX AMICIS / A. CLERICEAU, signed in the plate Stern, Paris. Alfred Clériceau was a French bibliophile whose books are encountered in finely bound and carefully selected collections. The unusually large and theatrical Ex Amicis plate is entirely in keeping with the character of the present volume. The Clériceau provenance is particularly attractive here because this is far from an ordinary rebound copy: the choice of binding and endpapers suggests a collector treating the volume as an object in its own right.

The Japoniste Binding

The most immediately striking feature of this copy is its elaborate black-and-gold Japoniste binding. The original parchment-paper wrappers have been retained and bound into the volume, but the book was subsequently given decorative boards with elaborate gilt ornament and exceptionally unusual Japanese pictorial endpapers.

The endpapers depict Japanese figures in a domestic setting surrounded by a dramatic flight of birds released from a cage. Their almost supernatural imagery is particularly apt in a book concerned with incubi, succubi and strange corporeal beings.

The binding is unsigned, and no attribution to a particular binder or workshop is presently made. It appears to be a late nineteenth-century French decorative binding produced in the period when Japonisme exercised a powerful influence over Parisian decorative arts and book design. The preservation of the original wrappers is important: the elaborate later presentation has not required the sacrifice of the book’s original covering.

Condition

A very good and highly individual copy. The decorative binding remains handsome and structurally sound, with rubbing and wear to the extremities and some surface wear consistent with age. The black leather spine label remains present and gilt-lettered. The remarkable Japanese pictorial endpapers are well preserved, with expected minor handling and age wear. Original parchment-paper wrappers bound in. Internally generally well preserved, with expected light age-toning and occasional minor spotting. Red-and-black title page and numbered limitation leaf present. No. 144 of 598 copies. 

References

WorldCat 6624999