oldest books
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scharnbergmaxse — 9 years ago(October 10, 2016 02:20 PM)
The oldest book of which I own an original copy is
De betoverde weereld, (1691)
by
Balthasar Bekker
(The Enchanted World). This book was the most important cause why we ceased to burn witches north of the Pyrenées. The writer also had a German edition published in 1692, and likewise a French translation in 1693. I have no idea whether he made the translations himself.
I recently learned that the same book was translated into English in 1984. I guess that later re-prints must be possible to obtain from online second-hand book shops.
Among the first four persons who criticized the witch burnings, three were Jesuits. (The Jesuits have been blamed for many things which they never did or said.) One of these Jesuits was
Friedrich von Spee
. His task was to prepare those persons who was be burned on the next day. In 1632 he wrote a book whose main title is
Cautio Criminalis
. A German translation was published in 1939 and re-printed in 1982 and 1987. My own copy also bears a less prominent title in German, though it must also have been in Latin in the beginning:
Rechtliches Bedenken wegen der Hexenprozesse
.
As regards the area South of the Pyrenées, who was most important in stopping witch burnings there? He was the Spanish inquisitor
Alonso de Salazar Frías
. The Danish professor Gustav Henningsen was one of the greatest international experts. His doctoral thesis comprises 607 pages, and there is much information about Salazar. I met him some 15 years later, and I am proud that I persuaded him to publish the original and complete text of Salazar's "Visitation Protocols" with translations. Henningsen was married to a Spanish wífe. In 2004 a bilingual translation was published with the title
The Salazar Documents
edited by Gustav Henningsen.
In 1620-1621 the mother of the astronomer Johannes Kepler was tried of being
a witch
. Her son took care of her defence. After the trial he published each and every document of the case. It has been reprinted in 1870 in his
Opera omnia
(= All Works).
Scandinavians may have much profit from
Häxornas försvarare
written by
Jan Guillou
, who is both a great writer and
a muckraking reporter
. This book contains no little amount of facts that were at least unknown to me. -
scharnbergmaxse — 9 years ago(October 15, 2016 07:47 AM)
I have actually read The Aenedi by Virgillius, Loft's translation into Danish, There are a few other translations into Danish, but they are not of the same quality.
Actually I have only read the Odyssee in a Danish prose edition for children. -
felipe_o9 — 9 years ago(October 19, 2016 05:55 PM)
I also have the Epic of Gilgamesh, in a very cute pocketbook version that spends half of the book's length analyzing the Semitic myth of Gilgamesh, it's the oldest I have. Others very old I also have are the Bhagavad Gita (although not the whole Mahabharata, which I really wanted to buy but can't find a good version), Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days and Homer's Illiad and Odyssey.
"I know one thing: that I know nothing" - Socrates