![CHAMPERIUS, Symphorianus (ca. 1471-1537). In magicarum artium destructionem dialogus. Edited by Simon de Ulmo. Lyons: Guillaume Balsarin, 28 August [1498].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/1998/NYP/1998_NYP_08854_0065_000(104747).jpg?w=1)
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CHAMPERIUS, Symphorianus (ca. 1471-1537). In magicarum artium destructionem dialogus. Edited by Simon de Ulmo. Lyons: Guillaume Balsarin, 28 August [1498].
Chancery 4o (197 x 140 mm). Collation: a8 b-c6 [b2 and c2 unsigned, b3 and c3 signed "b2" and "c2"] (a1r title, a1v woodcut [110 x 84 mm.] of a crowned angel representing divine wisdom preaching to a crowd of fools, a2r text, c5v colophon, c6r woodcut device, c6v blank). 20 leaves. 28 lines. Type: 5:94B. Woodcut black-ground 4-line capitals, full-page illustration, and printer's device (Polain Marques 32, BMC B1). (Some light marginal dampstaining and soiling, small marginal hole to c2). Modern half morocco, slipcase. A large copy, with several deckle edges evident. Provenance: marginalia in a 16th-century hand.
FIRST EDITION. The distinguished Lyonese physician and humanist Symphorien Champier, who also published under the pseudonym Morien Piercham, wrote numerous compilations and treatises combining medicine, philosophy, history, religion and the occult, of which he generally disapproved. The present rare and early treatise, in the form of a dialogue between "Andreas" and the author, discusses the uses and sources of witchcraft, which Champier attributes to a feverish or diseased imagination.
Scholderer assigns the work to 1498 on the basis of the device, used in the other ediitons known to have been printed by Balsarin in 1498. The woodcut was borrowed from Balsarin's edition of Jean Drouin's French prose adaptation of Brant's Narrenschiff (1498, reprinted by Balsarin in 1499). BMC mistakenly describes the woodcut capital initial on a8v, which does not match the other initials, as having been supplied in pen-and-ink. GW suggests that rather than the editor, Simon de Ulmo was actually the ecclesiastical censor of the text.
Goff C-421; BMC VIII, 279 (IA. 41789); C 1570 = 1571; GW 6552 (ca. 1500); Oates 3204; Pellechet 3512; Polain (B) 1059; Thorndike V:111-118; Norman 439.
Chancery 4o (197 x 140 mm). Collation: a8 b-c6 [b2 and c2 unsigned, b3 and c3 signed "b2" and "c2"] (a1r title, a1v woodcut [110 x 84 mm.] of a crowned angel representing divine wisdom preaching to a crowd of fools, a2r text, c5v colophon, c6r woodcut device, c6v blank). 20 leaves. 28 lines. Type: 5:94B. Woodcut black-ground 4-line capitals, full-page illustration, and printer's device (Polain Marques 32, BMC B1). (Some light marginal dampstaining and soiling, small marginal hole to c2). Modern half morocco, slipcase. A large copy, with several deckle edges evident. Provenance: marginalia in a 16th-century hand.
FIRST EDITION. The distinguished Lyonese physician and humanist Symphorien Champier, who also published under the pseudonym Morien Piercham, wrote numerous compilations and treatises combining medicine, philosophy, history, religion and the occult, of which he generally disapproved. The present rare and early treatise, in the form of a dialogue between "Andreas" and the author, discusses the uses and sources of witchcraft, which Champier attributes to a feverish or diseased imagination.
Scholderer assigns the work to 1498 on the basis of the device, used in the other ediitons known to have been printed by Balsarin in 1498. The woodcut was borrowed from Balsarin's edition of Jean Drouin's French prose adaptation of Brant's Narrenschiff (1498, reprinted by Balsarin in 1499). BMC mistakenly describes the woodcut capital initial on a8v, which does not match the other initials, as having been supplied in pen-and-ink. GW suggests that rather than the editor, Simon de Ulmo was actually the ecclesiastical censor of the text.
Goff C-421; BMC VIII, 279 (IA. 41789); C 1570 = 1571; GW 6552 (ca. 1500); Oates 3204; Pellechet 3512; Polain (B) 1059; Thorndike V:111-118; Norman 439.