Extracted from the ground-breaking work, in French, on comparative religion by Picart (Bernard) and Bernard (Jean Frederic): The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of all the Peoples of the World, Amsterdam 1742.
These three plates (folio size 390 x250mm), from Tome (volume) VII nos. 40, 50 and 55, as detailed below – with two tableaux depictions per page – are in very good condition, and individually protected, unmounted against an acid-free backing inserted in a mylar sleeve.
no 40: Ceremony observed at the birth of an indigenous child Indigenous marriage rites
no 55 : Indigenous people’s religious supplications towards the moon Indigenous people’s religious supplications towards a dung beetle
no 56: Initiation of young men (rite of circumcision) Indigenous funeral ceremony
Background:
Two French Protestant refugees in eighteenth-century Amsterdam gave the world an extraordinary work that intrigued and outraged readers across Europe. This work sowed the radical idea that religions could be considered on equal terms.
Famed engraver Bernard Picart and author and publisher Jean Frederic Bernard produced The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, which appeared in the first of seven folio volumes in 1723. They put religion in comparative perspective, offering images and analysis of Jews, Catholics, Muslims, the peoples of the Orient and the Americas, Protestants, deists, freemasons, and assorted sects.
Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, the work was a resounding success. For the next century it was copied or adapted, but without the context of its original radicalism and its debt to clandestine literature, English deists, and the philosophy of Spinoza.
Ceremonies and Customs prepared the ground for religious toleration amid seemingly unending religious conflict, and demonstrated the impact of the global on Western consciousness. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674049284
- Overall Condition: A Very Good Copies
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