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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
Weyer, Johann (1515-1588) Opera Omnia.
Amsterdam: Petrum vanden Berge, 1660.
First collected edition, quarto, title page printed in red and black with engraved vignette, fine engraved portrait of the author by Pieter Holsteyn on *4 verso, with seven text woodcuts depicting plants, medical equipment, and other subjects in the text, an engraved portrait of Weyer's patient Barbara at the age of ten on page 760; bound in full contemporary speckled calf, gilt-tooled spine with interlocking initials in each compartment (other than the label); nicely preserved, occasional faint water staining, 7 5/8 x 5 3/4 in.
Weyer, a Dutch demonologist, physician, and follower of Agrippa, was one of the earliest respected scholars to publicly decry the persecution of people accused of practicing witchcraft. He criticized the Malleus Maleficarum, preferring to describe people categorized as witches as melancholic or mentally ill. By his reasoning, practicing witchcraft is literally impossible. Norman describes his work, De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis, as "the first major European work to take an empirical, scientific approach to the study of mental illness."
