Eliseo Masini - Sacro Arsenale, pratica dell'Officio della Santa Inquisizione ampliata - 1639-1640

Sacred Arsenal,
Overo practice of the office of the Holy Inquisition, expanded

In Rome: at the heirs of Corbelletti, 1639

(at the colophon:) In Rome: at the printing shop of the heirs of Francesco Corbelletti, 1640

Rarest manual of the inquisitor for interrogating, torturing, and leading to the stake witches and demons

Frontispiece with a wide copper-engraved vignette representing Saint Peter the Great Martyr, a woodcut mark at the end.
Issued in 1639 from the Capitoline presses of the Heirs of Corbellini, with a frontispiece enriched by a typographic mark depicting Saint Peter Martyr, known as Peter of Verona (c. 1205–1252), a friar belonging to the Order of the “Domini canes” (thus a fellow member of the author), active as a preacher and inquisitor especially in the central-northern territories of the Italian peninsula. He was killed, for reasons not entirely resolved, by Pietro da Balsamo, called Carino, in the woods of Barlassina, while he was walking the road from Como to Milan. Faithful to the traditional iconography, the engraving on the frontispiece depicts him with tonsure and robes of his religious order, while displaying the instruments of his martyrdom (a falx that cuts the skull and a knife plunged into the chest), symbolized by the palm clutched in his right hand, unlike the left which holds the Sacred Scriptures; the figure he crushes represents, instead, the defeat of heresy by Faith.

Pages slightly yellowed with minor scattered foxing, some with pale pinkish oxidations.

Solid contemporary binding in full parchment with a manuscript title on the spine slightly faded due to the ink.

On the flyleaves and the rear pastedown are ancient handwritten notes referring to details of a trial of the year 1641 (the transcription of a letter sent by Don Comincio Luino in 1641 to the Vicar General against the Procurator Testamentary for a dispute over a tithe left by a will in September 1627 is followed by the transcription of a sentence of the Holy Inquisition Tribunal) such notes were probably written by an Inquisitorial judge who was the owner of the book.

This is the famous practical manual of the inquisitor written in Italian by the inquisitor Cesare Eliseo Masini, Dominican and theologian who served as inquisitor in Genoa between 1609 and 1627.
The first edition, published in Genoa in 1621, was completely destroyed by order of the Holy Office and no copy survived, so this should be considered the first true edition of this very rare treatise.
The book contains the famous sixth chapter: “Of the way to interrogate the Kings in torture” which was censored in some other copies of the volume and is therefore extraordinarily rare.
Ref. Caillet, III, no. 7203.

This manual was used by the judges of the Inquisition throughout the seventeenth century and beyond; it treats all the main aspects of the inquisitorial process, not only from the procedural point of view: reflections on detention, torture, penalties, abjuration, degrees of heresy, witchcraft, etc., and the present volume was indeed used by one of the inquisitorial judges who also glossed one of the most important sentences.

Dimensions: in Quarto (197 x 147 millimeters).
Pages: [8], 384, [48].
Note that, according to SBN, the first fascicle is 8 leaves, but it appears as 4, as clearly visible in all digitized copies and in all the rare copies in libraries.

Shipping in a dedicated rigid protective case designed to preserve the book during shipment; please review the attached photos which are an integral part of the description.