Histoire générale des cérémonies, mœurs et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, Bernard Picart, [Jean-Frédéric Bernard], et al., Paris: Rollin fils, 1741

7 volumes (15 1/4 x 10 in.; 387 x 254 mm): Vol. 1: 420 pages; Vol. 2: 475 pages; Vol. 3: 426 pages; Vol. 4: 418 pages; Vol. 5: 434 pages; Vol. 6: 459 pages; Vol. 7: 432 pages. See the Condition Report for further details.

Bernard Picart (1673-1733), one of the most prolific and talented engravers of his age, was born a Catholic in Paris but moved to Amsterdam in 1710 and converted to Protestantism shortly thereafter. As an artist, he became involved in a number of book illustration ventures, including being commissioned to design the title pages of Tikkun soferim, a Hebrew Pentateuch printed in Amsterdam in 1726. His most important artistic undertaking, however, was a project completed in collaboration with bookseller and publisher Jean-Frédéric Bernard (1683-1744), a fellow Protestant French expat based in Amsterdam. Together, the two men printed a monumental work, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, originally in seven folio-sized volumes (Amsterdam, 1723-1737; with two further volumes added by Bernard thereafter), on the beliefs and practices of all world religions known to Europeans at the time, with two hundred forty-three engravings executed by Picart to accompany the text compiled and edited by Bernard. The series was one of the most comprehensive studies published on the topic of comparative religion up to that point and is particularly remarkable given its relatively even-handed, non-judgmental treatment of the dogmas and rituals of Judaism, various Christian denominations, Islam, Eastern religions, Native American belief systems, etc. Thus, Cérémonies was a major turning point in European attitudes toward religious belief and represents a key aspect of the massive transformations characteristic of the Enlightenment.

Although the book was a wild commercial success in French and would be translated into Dutch, English, and German by 1746, it was banned by the Catholic Church in Rome in 1738, a year after the seventh volume appeared, on account of its treatment of Catholicism. In seeking to make the work more palatable to Catholic readers, two clerics, Antoine Banier (1673-1741) and Jean-Baptiste Le Mascrier (1697-1760), published a revised edition in 1741 with some of the more offensive elements of the editio princeps removed, although retaining all of the original Picart engravings. The present lot is a complete set of this alternate version of Bernard and Picart’s original magnum opus, entitled Histoire générale des cérémonies, mœurs et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde.

Interestingly, Bernard and Picart decided to place their presentation of Judaism at the beginning of the first volume of the series, immediately after the introduction. The discussion consists of extracts from Rabbi Leon Modena’s (1571-1648) Riti Ebraica, the first vernacular description of Judaism written by a Jew for a non-Jewish audience (translated into French by Richard Simon in 1674 as Cérémonies et coutumes qui s’observent aujourd’hui parmi les Juifs), as well as of Jacques Basnage De Beauval’s (1653-1723) Histoire des Juifs (Rotterdam, 1706). To illustrate this section of the book, Picart took advantage of his connections with local Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam, gaining access to the Portuguese Synagogue and even attending a Passover Seder at the home of the prominent Curiel (d’Acosta) family.

The end result of Picart’s efforts was a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Amsterdam’s Jews in twenty-one engravings depicting observances of Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hoshana Rabbah, and Simhat Torah; Jewish ritual objects such as the tallit, tefillin, tsitsit, lulav, etrog, mezuzah, matsah, Judenstern, circumcision tools, and Torah scroll regalia; and various ceremonies, such as birkat kohanim, hagbahah, bedikat hamets, berit milah, pidyon ha-ben, marriage, divorce, and burial. A two-page plate illustrating the dedication of the Portuguese Synagogue in 1675, based on an earlier model, is also included. Two further engravings, focusing on the festival of Purim in the synagogue (double-page plate) and on the custom of flogging on the eve of Yom Kippur, were added to the 1741 Paris edition, although neither one was executed by Picart.

Picart’s work went a long way to make Judaism less threatening to early modern Christian society and remains invaluable as a witness to Jewish material culture and practice in that period.

Provenance

Vol. 1: 

Hugh Robert Hughes of Kinmel & Dinorben, Esq. (armorial bookplate on pastedown of upper board)

Tomas Lance, Lima, September 1, 1826 (title)

Vols. 2-7:

The Fraser Institute, Montreal (vol. 2: bookplate on pastedown of upper board, pp. 9, 19; vol. 3: pp. 9-14, 19; vol. 4: pp. 9-12, 19; vol. 5: pp. 9-14, 19; vol. 6: pp. 9-12, 19; vol. 7: pp. 9, 11-12, 19)

Herman Witsius Ryland, Mount Lilac, Beauport, near Quebec, April 1, 1836 (vol. 4: p. 335; vol. 5: title)

Literature

Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, MA; London: Belknap, 2010), 169-193.