[Rarebooks] fa: Casaubon's TREATISE CONCERNING ENTHUSIASME 1656 - On Demonic Posession &c.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

After a long summer hiatus...

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 21. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/arch_in_la/m.html?item=351168108877&

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Meric Casaubon: A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, as it is an Effect of Nature: but is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or Diabolicall Possession. Second edition: revised, and enlarged. London: Printed by Roger Daniel, and are to be sold by Thomas Iohnson, at the Golden Key in St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1656. Small 8vo (17 cm) in recent marbled boards with gilt-lettered leather spine label; [16] + 297 pp. (bound without the four terminal leaves of advertisements). ESTC R14827; Wing C813.

A ground-breaking and fascinating treatise on "enthusiasm" — possession, rapture, inspiration, etc. — both of the supernatural (whether divine or diabolical) and psychological kind. The work is divided into six sections: Enthusiasme in generall; Divinatorie Enthusiasme; Contemplative and Philosophicall Enthusiasme; Rhetoricall Enthusiasme; Poeticall Enthusiasme; Precatory Enthusiasme. This "revised and enlarged" edition is almost 70 pages longer than the first edition published the year before. Though Casaubon does not deny the possibility of religious or supernatural enthusiasm — the soul quitting the body, etc. — he argues that most examples of such mystical experiences are in  fact pathological in nature, often the result of mental illness, and in many ways his treatise can be viewed as a pioneering psychiatric work. He argues, for example, that the famous Sister Katharine of Jesus, whose Life had been published in Paris in 1628, might have been spared the "trances and ecstasies" that ultimately destroyed her mind and body if she'd only received proper medical treatment. He also has interesting things to say about the enthusiasm-inducing effects of wine on poets.