Daemoniaci, hoc est: de obsessis a spiritibus daemoniorum hominibus liber unus
Petrus (Peter) Thyraeus. Cologne, M. Cholinus, 1598

Second edition, spotting and dampstaining throughout, 2 small tears to title, wormtrail not affecting text to inner margin continuing to p.140, defective endpapers, modern library stamp to second leaf, contemporary pigskin, stained and worn, small 4to,

MENGUS, Hieronymus.
Flagellum daemonum, se exorcismi terribiles, potentissimi, & efficaces;
Bologna, for Ioannes Rossius, 1578.

First Latin edition of this work about exorcism and demonology, originally written by Hieronymus Mengus, or Gerolamo Menghi in Italian. Mengus was the most famous Italian exorcist, and even the official exorcist of the bishop of Bologna. The book is a practical guide of how demons should be interrogated to receive information from them. Mengus writes that demons can live in a human body, that they fight with each other, and that the infidelity of the exorcists can obstruct the deliverance of the possessed. The catholic ritual of exorcism was long and complicated, made of formules, prayers, blessings with sacred water and unctions with sacred oil.

CEYLON—DEMONOLOGY
Yakkun Nattannawā. John Callaway, translator. London, Oriental Translation Fund, 1829.

A Cingalese poem descriptive of the Ceylon system of demonology; to which is appended the practices of a Capua or devil priest … and Kōlan Nattannawā: a Cingalese poem. First edition, subscriber’s copy. Calloway’s translations of the ceremonial poems are accompanied by his notes, and by his preface on Cingalese and Buddhist demon worship.

Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, Addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq. Scott, Sir Walter. London, John Murray, 1830. image via PBA Galleries

The book takes the form of ten letters addressed to Lockhart, the epistolary mode permitting Scott to be both conversational in tone and discursive in method. In these, Scott surveys opinions respecting demonology and witchcraft from the Old Testament period to his own day. As a child of the Enlightenment, he adopts a rigorously rational approach to his subject. Supernatural visions are attributed to ‘excited passion’, to credulity, or to physical illness. The medieval belief in demons is based on Christian ignorance of other religions, leading to the conviction that the gods of the Muslim or Pagan nations were fiends and their priests conjurers or wizards. In the post-Reformation period, the primitive state of science and predominance of mystical explanations of natural phenomena fed fear of witchcraft. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, witches were hunted with near-hysterical zeal. Examining Scottish criminal trials for witchcraft, Scott notes that the nature of evidence admissible gave free reign to accusers and left the accused no chance of escape. Prisoners were driven to confess through despair and the desire to avoid future persecution. Scott also observes that trials for witchcraft were increasingly connected with political crimes, just as in Catholic countries accusations of witchcraft and heresy went together. Advances in science and the spread of rational philosophy during the eighteenth century eventually undermined the belief in supernatural phenomena, although pockets of superstition remain. Scott’s account is amply illustrated with anecdotes and traditional tales and may be read as an anthology of uncanny stories as much as a philosophical treatise. synopsis and further discussion via walterscott

B-A note: The images on the binding just tickle me.