'THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN'
[AUBIN, Nicolas]. Histoire des diables de Loudun, ou la possession des religieuses ursulines, et la condamnation & du suplice d'Urbain Grandier, curé de la même ville , Amsterdam, chez Abraham Wolfgang, 1693
12mo. 238ff. Woodcut device on title-page, in contemporary mottled calf, compartments of spine ruled in gilt, morocco title-label, spine a trifle rubbed.
FIRST EDITION of the Calvinist Aubin's account of the execution, by burning alive, of Urbain Grandier, the French priest accused of sacrilege, adultery and witchcraft. Born in Sablé in 1590 he arrived at Loudun some time in the early 1620's and very soon obtained two livings in the town. This, combined with the fact that he was a stranger, his success as a preacher, his good looks and his haughtiness of manner, soon excited the animus of much of the religious fraternity against him. In 1630 he was arraigned on charges of immorality and for having written a pamphlet denouncing clerical celibacy and was sentenced to a three-month fast and forbidden to leave the town for five years. Meanwhile, in 1626, a convent of Ursulines, inhabited for the most part by upper class girls, had been established and it was not forgotten later that Grandier had tried to become its director. In October 1632 strange rumours were heard that several nuns and the superior were possessed by devils and some of Grandier's enemies denounced him to one of Richilieu's ministers, de Laubardement, who coincidentally happened to be in Loudun on other business, adding for good measure that Grandier was the author of a violently anti-Richelieu satire which was circulating at the time. A year later de Laubardement returned to Loudun and Grandier was arrested on 7 December 1634. After a seven month trial in which all kinds of conflicting evidence were produced he was sentenced on 18 August and executed the same day. The early, French, printed accounts are in no doubt as to his guilt; but the later protestant ones, like Aubin's, regarded the whole affair as a complete fraud adding that his death was Richelieu's revenge for the pamphlet that Grandier was supposed to have written against him. Whatever may be truth of the affair it is curious that the diabolic possessions and apparitions continued to haunt the convent for three years after Grandier's death.
Caillet (509 & 510) records only later editions; NUC locates only the copies at Harvard, the University of Michigan and Yale Medical Library
£750
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