1679 Treaty of superstitions according to Holy Scripture, the decrees of councils, and the sentiments of holy fathers, and theologians. 1st edition

In 1666, Jean-Baptiste Thiers, born thirty years earlier in Chartres, was appointed pastor of the small rural parish of Champrond-en-Gastine, near Nogent-le-Rotrou.

He is a curious and critical mind, an indefatigable researcher who uses the hobbies left to him by his country priest to accumulate observations and notes on various points of ecclesiastical history and discipline.

Of the many works, printed or unpublished, which he left, the most important, undoubtedly, is a treatise on superstitions which he published just three centuries ago, in 1679.

His goal is clear, to compile a catalog as complete as possible of superstitions to better denounce ridicule or malfeasance and facilitate its disappearance. In doing so, he intends to participate in the great work of sanitation undertaken since the beginning of the century by most French bishops.

Rare original edition in one volume.

The reforming bishops strove, from the beginning of the 16th century, to separate the wheat from the chaff and to condemn and extirpate a number of beliefs and practices deemed incompatible with post-Tridentine Catholicism and thereby declared superstitious, a division that did not go without embarrassment or inconsistency, so often the frontier was often difficult to draw between faith and superstition.