For at least one hundred and twenty years, a small manuscript has rested in the Reserved and Special Collections of the General Library of the University of Coimbra. Given the title 'Various Prayers to Drive Away the Devil', it is in fact a Cyprian Book of treasure-hunting, presenting steps to re-create what had previously become a lost ritual.
THE BOOK OF ST. CYPRIAN: THE SORCERER'S TREASURE is a translation of one of the most complete Portuguese grimoires attributed to St. Cyprian of Antioch, O GRANDE LIVRO DE S.CYPRIANO OU THESOURO DO FEITICEIRO, including extensive commentaries on the history of Western Iberian Bruxaria and Feiticaria, Catholicism, the blood war of Old and New Christians, the slave trade, and the Empire. The Book of Saint Cyprian is revealed as a manifestation of vaster and pre-existent magical and folkloric traditions and is inserted into its proper cultural background, providing the reader with the keys to its unwritten content including the Book's connection to the vast mythical corpus of the Mouras Encantadas. THE BOOK OF ST. CYPRIAN: THE SORCERER'S TREASURE is an essential read for all those interested in folk magic, be it diabolical or saintly, fey traditions, the largely unknown West Iberian magical current and its various traces and manifestations in the modern Ibero-African-American cults of Brazil.
The Opuscula Cypriani stands not only as a tour of the past of the book currently known as The Book of St. Cyprian, but it is, much more importantly, an invitation towards the future of a centennial and unregulated magic tradition.
The Immaterial Book of St. Cyprian presents a collection of 31 newly translated Portuguese legends about The Book of St. Cyprian. This text features facing language translations from the Portuguese into English.
Precious Apothecary A Catholic Grimoire compiled from the writings of Ângelo Sequeira, for the acquisition and sustenance of Grace, the Blessing of the Virgin, the succour of her Divine Son our Lord, and the patronage of one hundred and twenty Saints. English translation by José Leitão. Precious Apothecary is a translation of Botica Preciosa, a Catholic Grimoire compiled by Ângelo de Sequeira Ribeiro do Prado (1707-1776) who was perhaps the most important Brazilian missionary in history. The Botica Preciosa (1754) was his first book and is a collection of prayers, devotions and exercises to the Lady of the Rock and 120 other Saints. Suffused with the author's missionary purpose the book also contains the consecrations and blessings for oils, flowers, statues and food, as well as exorcisms and prayers for many ailments intended for situations where no priests were available. This is a leading work of pragmatic religious practice in which Sequeira addressed the devotional needs of the ordinary people, and thereby gained a significant following in both Portugal and Brazil. This work presents an exceptional insight into practices outside the influence of a Protestant narrative, offering a window into the multifaceted world of baroque Catholicism, heresies, deviations and Rigorist movements within this. The Catholic Pantheon of Saints is introduced, together with its hierarchy and the techniques needed to access and work with them. The book also includes extensive instructions on the creation and consecration of the materia sacra/ magica, rarely found outside of liturgical literature. This grimoire presents a system which will appeal to Catholics (and other Christians) with an interest in magic, and those exploring pre-contemporary forms of spirit work from within a Christian framework. It is likewise essential reading for occult scholars and practising magicians interested in exploring Christian Magic, seeking sources for folk magic and expanding their knowledge of the grimoire tradition. José Leitão is a scholar and researcher on the history of Portuguese magic and the author of a number of books including The Book of St. Cyprian: The Sorcerer's Treasure.
The Book of St Cyprian is a massive occult work complete with images from original texts, copious amounts of notes and reference citations and, best of all, information that has only been available in the original Portuguese texts. The author was granted unprecedented access to private collections and studied the original texts in great detail He has taken everything he could from them and compiled what we believe to be the single greatest reference on the subject of the magick of ST. Cyprian. In the author's own words: "This edition brings together the three texts from the fourth century that gave rise to the magical tradition associated with the name of St. Cyprian (Conversion, Confession and Martyrdom), the four most important Iberian grimoires of the nineteenth century (the Portuguese that gave birth to the Brazilian versions and the Spaniards containing the instructions of ceremonial magic) and several other magical texts associated with the Holy Sorcerer. The material was organized in sections that allow a comprehensive analysis of the contents (The Origin of the Book, Vita Cypriani, Magical Art, Talismans and Amulets, The Book of the Spirits, Cyprian Prayers, Exorcisms, Magical Treasures, Magical Secrets). The historical introduction has a broad and detailed description of the origins and development of the tradition from the fourth to the nineteenth century. The edition is enriched with a Preface by Nicholaj De Mattos Frisvold and the Presentation by Felix Castro Vicente."
Knowledge of the pragmatici sheds new light on pragmatic normative literature (mainly from the religious sphere), a genre crucial for the formation of normative orders in early modern Ibero-America. Long underrated by legal historical scholarship, these media – manuals for confessors, catechisms, and moral theological literature – selected and localised normative knowledge for the colonial worlds and thus shaped the language of normativity. The eleven chapters of this book explore the circulation and the uses of pragmatic normative texts in the Iberian peninsula, in New Spain, Peru, New Granada and Brazil. The book reveals the functions and intellectual achievements of pragmatic literature, which condensed normative knowledge, drawing on medieval scholarly practices of ‘epitomisation’, and links the genre with early modern legal culture. Contributors are: Manuela Bragagnolo, Agustín Casagrande, Otto Danwerth, Thomas Duve, José Luis Egío, Renzo Honores, Gustavo César Machado Cabral, Pilar Mejía, Christoph H. F. Meyer, Osvaldo Moutin, and David Rex Galindo.
List of illustrations -- Introduction -- Abbreviations -- Saints: entries A - Z -- Bibliography -- List of Websites -- Glossary -- Lists of National Martyrs.
Ginzburg, "the preeminent Italian historian of his generation [who] helped create the genre of microhistory" ("New York Times"), ruminates on how perspective affects what we see and understand. 26 illustrations.
Ecclesiastical Vestments: Their Development and History by Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister, first published in 1896, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.