Dom Augustin Calmet. Histoire généalogique de la Maison du Chatelet, branche puînée de la Maison de Lorraine. Justifiée par les titres les plus autentiques, la plûpart tirés du Trésor des Chartres de Lorraine, Tombeaux, Sceaux, Monnoyes & autres anciens Monumens publics. Nancy, Veuve Jean-Baptiste Cusson, 1741. In-folio (25 x 40 cm) . xxxij pp. (preface), 204 pp. (history of genealogy), cccxij pp. (supporting documents), [1] p. of privilege. Title in red and black, ornamental initials, endpieces, many illustrations in and out-of-text. Full marbled fawn calf, back with 6 decorated raised bands, title piece in red morocco, triple gilt fillet on covers with lily flowers spandrels and large gilt arms in the center, double gilt fillet on the cuts, red edges. (Contemporary binding).
Original edition, rare, full of text, including Privilege, and 33 out-of-text plates of funerary monuments and genealogical paintings.
The illustration includes 9 vignettes engraved on copper by Aveline after Humblot, one on the title and 8 borders, some repeated, many heraldic woods and 16 engravings in the text, 10 genealogical tables 5 folding and 23 engravings, ( 5 folding out-of-text)..
Augustin Calmet (1672-1757) enrolled in 1687 at the University of Pont-à-Mousson and took the rhetorical courses of the Jesuit father Ignace L’Aubrussel, future confessor of the Queen of Spain. Ordained priest in March 1696, he became abbot of St. Leopold of Nancy in 1718. He wrote many books, including the curious Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires which expanded interest of Voltaire, with whom Calmet later engaged in correspondence. The author of Candide appreciated his erudition and based on his knowledge for the writing of his Dictionnaire philosophique. Dom Calmet had also written in 1723 a Histoire de Lorraine published in 1728. Intimate friend of Voltaire, Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1749) could only turn to him to write the genealogy of the House of the Marquis.
Precious copy for gift with leatherwork arms of Châtelet family on covers.
“Proud of the genealogical ancestry of her husband’s family, who claimed to date back to Charlemagne and the first Dukes of Lorraine., Emilie [du Châtelet] liked to spread around her this story of the House of Chatelet with copies of presents [sic] superbly bound in red porocco [or in fawn calf] and with the arms of her alliance family. In the hotel on Rue Traversine in Paris, the inventory of 1749 mentions on the second floor in “another cabinet serving as an antechamber to the next room” above an oak armoire opening with two doors: fifty-five volumes of books in folio one bound in parchment which are all covered in paper and concerning the genealogy of the House of Chatelet. The Marquise had bound in Paris through the bookseller Lambert, Voltaire’s regular editor, 90 copies of the genealogy which he demanded payment to the Marquis du Châtelet after the death of Emilie (Mémoire général de ce que doit Made la marquise du Chatelet à Lambert, 1750, Haute-Marne Departmental Archives, inv. 100 J 158) ” (Emilie du Châtelet, Une femme des Lumières à Lunéville, catalogue of the exhibition presented from 27 May to 30 septembre 2017, article by. Joudrier, p. 78).
Saffroy, III, 38554 ; OHR, 67.
Few foxing; rubbed binding, rubbed arms on front cover , corners, joints and heads of spine restored . Rare and impressive copy, however.
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