PICART, Bernard (1673-1733), Antoine BANIER (1673-1741) & Jean-Baptiste LE MASCRIER (1697-1760). Histoire générale des cérémonies, moeurs, et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde: représentées en 243 figures dessinées de la main de Bernard Picard, avec des explications historiques et curieuses. Paris, Chez [Jacques] Rollin fils, 1741. 7 volumes Folio (401x265 mm). With a frontispiece and 226 (of which 32 folding or duble-page) plates engraved by Picart, engraved head and tailpieces, initials and title vignettes (by Cochin fils). Contemporary mottled calf, covers with a triple fillet border, spine on raised bands elaborately gilt with lettering and numbering pieces of red morocco, marbled endpapers and edges. Corners slightly scuffed, a small chip to one headcap.                                   

Published ten years before Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie, this work marks one of the striking moments of high scholarship of eighteenth century France. The original copper plates of Jean Frédéric Bernard's and Bernard Picart's celebtrated Cérémonies et coutumes réligieuses (1723-37) were sold at auction in 1737 to the Paris publisher Jacques Rollin, who at the end of the following year already advertised his own contribution to comparative religion. For the text he engaged Antoine Banier and as chief-editor the antiquarian Jean-Baptiste Le Mascrier. "The French clergymen no doubt had complicated motives of their own in revisiting an encyclopedia that had recently  been officially condemned by the Church in Rome ... Although they altered the text in many places, they retained not only all the original Picart engravings but also most of Bernard's original text, however much rearranged and recontextualized ... Banier and Le Mascrier strove to maintain a clear distinction between Christian and pagan practice ... True, the emphasis on history allows them to show many supposedly central practices of the Catholic Church did not come into usage until many centuries after the death of Jesus, but they seem more interested in setting up potential comparisons to the practices of Jews, Protestants, Turks, and various pagan peoples ..." (Lynn Hunt). The editors made alterations and left out the invectives against the Roman church. The added new texts include also Joseph-François Lafitau's important report on Brazilian Indians and Banier's Dissertation préliminaire sur l'origine et le progrès de l'Idolâtrie, which introduces the section on paganism. The considerably expanded section on Freemasonry in the sixth volume became an important source of information on a fraternal organisation the papacy had condemned in 1738.

A fine copy.

Bibliographie: Lipperheide Oc 24; Cohen 134; Lewine 414; Hunt, L. The Book that changed Europe: Picart and Bernard's Religious Ceremonies of the World (2010), p. 195.

CHF  8 500