Nicolai Remigii daemonolatreiae libri tres, ex iudiciis capitalibus nongentorum plus minus hominum qui sortilegii crimen intra annos quindecim in Lotharingia capite luerunt by Rémy, Nicholas - 1595

Lyon: Vincent, 1595. First edition. [24], 394 pp. Printer's device on title, decorative initials, head- and tailpieces. 8vo. Contemporary vellum, manuscript spine titles. Some chipping to edges of endpapers, small tear to head of spine, thumbed, but internally clean. First edition. [24], 394 pp. Printer's device on title, decorative initials, head- and tailpieces. 8vo. Walter Scott's copy of one of the most important books on demonology. Sir Walter Scott's copy of the first edition of this seminal work on witchcraft and demonolgy by the Lorraine jurist Nicholas Rémy (1530-1616). A powerful judge and privy councilor to Duke Charles III of Lorraine, Rémy began trying people for witchcraft in earnest in 1582 following the death of his eldest son, whom he believed to be the victim of a curse put on him by a local beggar woman subsequently tried by Rémy and executed. On retiring Rémy wrote the present work based on his extensive trial notes from the previous fifteen years, a period in which, he boasts, he put to death 900 people. It became one of the most influential witch-hunting manuals of the period; four editions had been published by 1598, including a translation into German. Scott had a copy of Rémy on his library shelves when writing his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830), and he references Rémy's boast about the number of witches executed in Letter VII. Scott also references Rémy in The Bride of Lammermoor, The Antiquary, and in his notes on Kempion. The present copy was a duplicate (so noted in Scott's hand on the title-page) from Scott's library at Abbotsford; it was gifted by Scott to his friend, the antiquary Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in 1824. Kirkpatrick had contributed two songs to the second volume of Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1803), and "his introduction to Robert Law's Memorialls (1818), written at Scott's suggestion and with the use of his library, remains to this day a standard history of witchcraft in Scotland" (ODNB). Cornell Witchcraft, p. 469. Provenance: library of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford (his autograph at head of title, note on f.f.e.p.); presented by Scott to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (Sharpe's note inside cover); Maggs No 574 (1932) "Curiouser and Curioser," item 93