VERSTEGAN, Richard

by Richard Verstegan

£3,350 · Offered by Sokol Books

A remarkably preserved, charmingly-bound copy of the second edition of the French translation, first published in 1584, the year after the first edition (in Latin) of this important and finely illustrated martyrology. A work of Counter-Reformation propaganda which caused great offence to Queen Elizabeth. The scenes evoked are of rare violence: monks gutted or castrated, a captain wearing a necklace made of priests ears, children cut to pieces by sadistic soldiers a transposition of the massacre of the Innocents. Richard Verstegan (i.e., Richard Rowlands, ?1548-?1636) was a Catholic Anglo-Dutch antiquarian, goldsmith and publisher. The first half of his life was spent in England, but he was prevented from obtaining a degree from Oxford because of his religion. Following the prejudice he suffered at Oxford and as a response to the incarceration and treatment of Mary Queen of Scots, Verstegan published the first edition of Theatrum Crudelitatum , in 1583. The book may also have been conceived as a Catholic reply to the famous Protestant Book of Martyrs by John Foxe. Verstegan s book attempted to record, in gruesome detail, the cruelty, torture and murder of Catholic martyrs in Europe especially English and Irish victims under Elizabeth I, at the hands of Protestants. On publication he was arrested and imprisoned for libel against the Crown and all copies were confiscated and destroyed, a single page has survived. Verstegan was able to secure his release and fled the country, ult

• Binding: Hardcover

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