Peniculus foriarum elenchi Scaligeriani pro Societate Iesu, Maldonato, Delrio. Auctore Liberio Sanga Verino Cantabro ad Clarum Bonarscium Belgam.“Metelloburgi Mattiacorum” [= Antwerp?], “apud haeredes Matthianos” [printed by Hendrik Swingen?], 1609. 12mo (14 x 9 cm). Contemporary limp sheepskin parchment.

“103” [=203], [1 blank] pp.Rare First and only edition of a fierce attack on the brilliant French-born linguist and leading Protestant scholar Joseph Josephus Scaliger (1540-1609), professor at Leiden University, by Martin Antonio Delrio (1551-1608), a learned Jesuit jurist born in Antwerp as the son of a Spanish nobleman. In 1605, a war of words had broken out between Jesuits and Calvinists in a series of polemical works published under readily recognizable pseudonyms and with false imprints. One was an attack on Scaliger and others by the Jesuit Carolus Scribani. Scaliger joined in the fray under the pen-name M. de Lescalle with a Latin poem attacking Scribani, the Jesuit Society, Juan Maldonatus and Delrio. In the present work, with the text dated at the end 26 June 1606, but not published until 1609, Delrio responds with an satirical attack on Scaliger. The text set to the shape of a carafe or decanter is supposed to represent a drinking vessel containing humility and modesty, which Delrio thought Scaliger needed.Delrio had been one of the judges of the Inquisition in the Low Countries, the so-called "Blood Council". By his own account, his merciless Disquisitionem magicarum (624) waged war on swarms of witches laying waste to northern Europe, and on Muslims and (Protestant) heretics, testifying to the furious atmosphere of Counter-Reformation Europe. With quires G and H slightly browned and a faint water stain in the fore-edge margin of quires A-C, but still in good condition. The parchment is wrinkled and shows some stains and dirt, and there are some holes in the endleaves, but the binding remains structurally sound.l De Backer & Sommervogel II, col. 1902, Delrio 16; Imhof, Jan Moretus (2014), D15 note; Simoni, Low Countries D42; for the series of polemical exchanges: Sacré & De Landtsheer, "Schrijvers, drukkers, en hun deadlines ...", in De Gulden Passer LXXXIII (2005), pp. 157-173.