Vanini, Giulio Cesare (1585-1619).

8vo (166 x 103mm.), [24], 336, [8]pp., illustration: woodcut device on title-page, woodcut initials, head- and tail-pieces, binding: eighteenth-century mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, some browning, binding rubbed, lower joint partly split 

After studying in Rome, Naples and Padua, the philosopher and free-thinker Vanini led a peripatetic life in France, Switzerland and the Low Countries. In 1612 he went to England where he renounced his Catholic faith and joined the Anglican church. A subsequent change of heart led to his imprisonment in London. After escaping from prison he fled to France, where he published both the Amphitheatrum, an apparent attack on atheists, and De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis (1616), which was condemned and burned. After fleeing once more from Paris to Toulouse, he was eventually arrested in 1618, tried and found guilty on charges of atheism and witchcraft. On 9 February 1619 his tongue was cut out, he was strangled at the stake and then burned.