Phantoms and Folios

Phantoms & Folios

Hallowe'en in the Old Library

For Halloween 2023, Trinity DPhil student James Lees worked with College Librarian Emma Sillett to put together an exhibition from Trinity's Old Library of spine-chilling treasures.

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These bones were unearthed from the Fellow’s Garden, where they were used as decorative cobblestones for a pathway. Evidently, past Trinity Fellows had macabre aesthetical tastes.

Oddities from the Archive

Rev. Fr. Sinistrariof Ameno, Isidore Liseux(editor), Demoniality, or, Incubi and Succubi,Paris, 1879.

The core text of this volume has a rather peculiar history -Isidore Liseux, the editor, claims to have bought the text as a manuscript from the shop of a London bookseller, who had in turn acquired it from a Sotheby’s auction of the estate of Baron Seymour Kirkup, an English book collector. In a lengthy narrative, he recounts how after searching the Index librorumprohibitorum(a register of books banned by the Catholic church), enquiring at the French National Library, and the Saint SulpiceSeminary in Paris, he determined the identity of the author to be one Ludovico Maria Sinistrari. Sinistrariwas a member of the Franciscan order, Consultor to the Supreme Tribunal of the Catholic Inquisition, and author of banned and censored texts on sexual sins.

Henry Boguet, Discoursdes sorciers: avec six advisenfaictde sorcelerie. Et uneinstruction pour un jugeensemblable matière, 1608.

Henri Boguet(1550-1619) was a French jurist and demonologist who personally tried and condemned 16 witches between 1598-1600. Drawing on his extensive personal experience, Boguetwrote Discoursdes sorciersas a manual for judges –he provided summaries of existing statutes, legal procedures for trials, and detailed descriptions of accusations to construct a portrait of witchcraft. The book was sufficiently popular that it was reprinted several times in three editions.

The Art of Embalming

The art of emblaming pages

Thomas Greenhill, Nekrokedeia: or,the art of embalming; wherein is shewn the right of burial, the funeral ceremonies, London, 1705.

Thomas Greenhill, a surgeon and author, lamented that while anatomical dissection “has been learnedly treated by our own countrymen, as well as foreigners, and is admirably performed even at this day in our anatomical theatre” embalming was “surreptitiously cut off from surgery, and chiefly practiced by ignorant undertakers.”

To reverse the fortunes of what he saw as an important but threatened medical science, Greenhill wrote Nekrokedeia, drawing extensively on examples of embalming from antiquity as authorities. He focused especially on ancient Egypt with the text featuring several fold-out printed illustrations touching on sarcophagi, hieroglyphs, and pyramids which were dedicated to the sponsors of the book. The text is structured as a series of letters addressed to leading scientific and medical figures of the day; Charles Bernard, the Serjeant-Surgeon to Queen Anne; John Lawson, a former President of the Royal College of Physicians; and Hans Sloane, Secretary to the Royal Society.