Traitté des Ceremonies Superstitieuses des Juifs tant Anciens que Modernes [“Treatise of the Superstitious Ceremonies of Jews, Ancient as well as Modern.”]

(SPINOZA, BENEDICTUS DE).

Jacob Smith

Amsterdam

1678

Bookplate of Friedrich Lessing.

Kingma & Offenberg, no. 15.

By ordinance of the Magistrate of Utrecht in 1678, it was forbidden not only to print, but even to own any of Spinoza’s works. Consequently, this French translation bears a false title-page and is in fact Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. See F. Bamberger, The Early Editions of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Polticus, in: Bibliography and Booklore (1961). See also Jewish Political Studies Review (Vol. 7, Nos. 1-2; Spring 1995), recording a colloquium on Spinoza’s theories as presented in the Tractatus, by scholars Daniel J. Elazar, George Gross, Harvey Shulman, Martin Yaffe, et al.