ALBER (Erasmus)]

L'alcoran des cordeliers. Tant en Latin qu'en François nouvelle édition. Amsterdam, aux dépens de la compagnie,

      - 22 engraved plates by Bernard Picart (including two frontispieces and one folding plate), title-pages in red and black. 2 vols. 12mo. Contemporary mottled calf with gilt arms on sides of Marie-Auguste de Sultzbach (1724-1765), gilt and panelled spines, initials "B.P." (i.e. Bibliotheca Palatina) stamped at foot of spines (some minor repairs). 1734. First edition to hold the illustrations of Bernard Picart. The first part of the work was written by the reformer Erasmus Alberus who refuted the various "blasphemies" which he found in the De conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam domini Jesu by Bartolomeo degli Albizzi. The work first appeared in Wittemberg, 1542, under the title Der barfusser Monche Eulenspiegel und Alcoran, with the first French version appearing in Geneva, 1556. In this well illustrated edition the large folding plate in volume one depicts the mystical tree with the 40 "conformités" of St. Francis with Jesus Christ. Provenance: Fine armorial stamp on the covers of Marie-Auguste de Sultzbach (1724-65) who married her German cousin Charles Philippe Theodore de Sultzbach (1724-99), Electer Palatin, Duke of Bavaria, prince of Mors, graf von Veldentz, also a knight of the order of St. Hubert. Voltaire addressed letters to him in his Lettres de M. Voltaire à l'electeur Palatin et au roi de Prusse (1761), after being received at his court in 1753 and 1758 (see Bengesco III, p. 32). Brunet I, 152. Rothschild II, 2024. See Guigard I, p. 122 for a very similar armorial stamp.