[Abraham Nicolas Amelot de La Houssaye]. Abrégé du procès fait aux Juifs de Mets. Avec trois Arrests du Parlement qui les déclarent convaincus de plusieurs Crimes, & particulierement Rahaël [sic] Levi d’avoir enlevé sur le grand chemin de Mets à Boulay, un enfant Chrestien âgé de trois ans : pour reparation de quoy il a esté brûlé vif le 17. , 1670. Paris, Frédéric Leonard, 1670. Little in 12 . 96 pp. Havana calf, back with 5 decorated raised bands, title piece in havana morocco, golden fillet on cuts, red speckled edges. (Contemporary binding).
Beautiful copy of the rare original edition.
According to Reinach, it would be the corporations of the Christian merchants of Metz who would be at the origin of this violently anti-Semitic publication which relates the condemnation of Raphaël Lévy victim of the false accusation of ritual crime, by taking up all the clichés usually accompanying this type of slander : cruelty to children, crucifix whipped in the synagogue, blasphemy against Christ and the Blessed Virgin, desecration of hosts, and other charges (usury, “plunders”, deception and various trafficking). The Turinese R. Jonas Salvador du Pignerol and oratorian Richard Simon defended the Jews indicted and thrown into prison, too late however to save Raphael Levy who, despite the appalling torture to which he is subjected, continues to proclaim his innocence and fidelity to his faith ; he will be burned alive.
Since the day of the execution, the Jews of Metz took the pious custom of fasting on the anniversary of his death, and to glorify him, they called him the “Rabbi and the Saint”. Abbé Grégoire in his work on the “régénération des juifs…” still speaks of this custom that he had found still in 1788. And the village of Glatigny, crime scene, has been declared gessaert (cursed), no Jew having to spend the night there ; this ban was still respected today until the rehabilitation of Raphael Lévy in 2011, 344 years after his conviction, and the symbolic lifting of the rabbinical decree.
Barbier, I, 42, f, according to Father Lelong; Szajkowski, 1418 ; Joseph Reinach : Erreur judiciaire sous Louis XIV (Essais de politique et d’histoire), Paris, Stock 1899 ; Grand Rebbe Nathan Netter, Vingt Siècles d’Histoire d’une Communauté juive (Metz et son grand passé), Paris, Librairie Lipschutz, 1938, pp. 60-67.
Discreet restoration to the head of spine, quire D offset bound. Excellent conditions however. Of the most insignificant rarity.
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