OPUSCULA CYPRIANI:
Variations on the Book of St.
Cyprian and Related Literature
Translated and with Commentary
by
José Leitão
Fine hardcover edition. List Price: $124.95
968 pages.
290mm x 195mm
Covered in recycled leather with gold foil stamp.
Black endbands, black ribbon. Pearlescent gold endpapers.
Colour interior.
Paperback edition. List Price: $58.95
968 pages. 297mm x 210mm. Black & white interior.
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Presented as a sequel to his first
work, The Book of St. Cyprian: The Sorcerer’s Treasure, the
Opuscula Cypriani is José Leitão’s most extensive and detailed
exposition of the tradition of the Portuguese Cyprian Books to date.
Covering a time span from the 17th
century until the late 1920s, this work contains an unprecedented
amount of Portuguese Cyprian-related material. From the records of
the Inquisition to anonymous prayers, from elusive and previously
unpublished manuscripts to printed books, and from pamphlets to
periodicals, José takes us through a history of Portuguese sorcery
and its various books, all of which, in one way or another, are
branded with the name of the sorcerer Saint.
Throughout its 968 pages, one can
identify the mechanisms of folk composition of prayers and
incantations, and identify the cultural, social and political forces
which have stood as either opposers or instigators of Portuguese
written magical culture. Through this the concreteness of José
original work can be seen to gradually dissolve into a restless sea
of melding titles and compositions, whose only determining factors
are the circumstance of their immediate present.
The Opuscula Cypriani is composed of
three parts. The first, reaching the farthest into the past, analyzes
variations of the magical and religious composition known as the
Prayer of St. Cyprian, presenting several instances of this complex
prayer, as well as other smaller compositions which call on Cyprian
in his quality of healer, diviner, and dominator.
The second part focuses on variations
of the very Book itself, offering the translated contents of five
different Books of St. Cyprian, presenting various arrangements
echoing their own times and circumstances, from French to
Afro-Brazilian cross-pollenizations. Here, for the first time, an
18th-century Portuguese manuscript Book of St. Cyprian is presented,
and the shadows of many others are followed throughout 19th century
scholarship and ethnography.
Finally, the third part offers the
largely unknown underground children of these same books - small
pamphlets and almanacs, which constantly circle around the contents
of their larger fathers, but ultimately blossom into uniquely local
expressions of magical conceptualization. Love and domination
sorcery, harmful and demonic malefica, constant variations and new
systems of cartomancy and Cyprian divinations are here presented
among hundreds of prayers, sorceries and incantations, until it all
fades into the dark shadow of the Portuguese dictatorship of the
Estado Novo.
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. Along its
many pages a clear image of the Portuguese Books of St. Cyprian is
created: that of a continuous and ever changing tradition, constantly
revolving around itself, interacting with its environment and its
temporal preoccupations, taking in and apart both local and external
expressions of magic and religion, and where only the recognition of
the imminently pressing present matters.
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