Apologie pour tous les grands personnages qui ont este faussement soupconnez de magie

Paris: Adrian Vlac, 1653. ~Original full calf, blind fillets to boards, additional vertical line tooled parallel to spine, creating two panels; small tools used to decorate corners of each panel thus formed. Rebacked in near-matching calf, with original spine laid down. Faint traces of lost spine label. 8vo (12 x 18cm). All edges red, with two tiny spots to fore-edges. Hinges sound. Replacement laid paper endpapers and endpages, as well as original blank endpages, with offset browning, to front and rear. Pencil annotations to front endpages. Owner's initials in old hand to title page. Some pencil annotations and a couple of pen annotations in old hand. Tightly rebound. Minor scattered foxing and age-browning. A little dampstaining to top corners of early pages. Gabriel Naude (1600-1653), French librarian and scholar. Librarian in turn to Cardinal Guidi di Bagno, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and Cardinal Mazarin, for whom he built up the famous Mazarin Library. Between 1642 and 1653 Naude travelled across Europe buying entire libraries for Mazarin's collection, which, with forty thousand volumes, became the largest library in Europe. When the library was looted during the 1652 Fronde uprising, Naude was able to hide many of the most valuable volumes. At Naude's insistence, the Mazarin Library became the first public library in France, and was open to the public as early as 1644. Naude was a prolific author: this work, first published in 1625, is an intervention in the contemporary debate over the existence of magic. Coming down decidedly on the side of scepticism, Naude defends notable thinkers including Pythagorus, Virgil, Raymond Lull, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Roger Bacon, and Albertus Magnus from what he frames as false and credulous accusations of magic. An important work by a foundational figure in French bibliography, in sensitively restored original binding. ~Robust packaging. All UK orders trackable, others on request.. 2nd edn. Hardback. Very Good. (24), 640, 607-615, 22pp. Binding tight, text unmarked.