JUDAÏCA. - [DA COSTA (Uriel)].

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JUDAÏCA. - [DA COSTA (Uriel)].
Exemplar humanae vitae. [In]: LIMBORCH (Philippe van). De veritate religionis christianae amica cum erudito judaeo. Gouda, Justus van der Hoeve, 1687. In-4, brown calf, double cold-framed filets, fleuron on the corners, spine decorated, red title coin, red edges (contemporary binding). Original edition of the testamentary autobiography of Uriel da Costa (1585-1640), a Marranian philosopher born in Portugal, freethinker and forerunner of Spinoza. Written shortly before the author's death, this moving text was published almost by chance (Daniel Lacerda) forty-seven years after his suicide. It occupies pp. 341-354 of a collection by Limborch, a Calvinist minister. Before putting an end to his life, it is the whole of humanity that Uriel bears witness to the infamous treatment inflicted upon him by the Judeo-Portuguese community of Amsterdam. ...] The Exemplar humanae vitae is of twofold interest to the historian: first of all, as a moving confession of a Portuguese "neo-Christian" of Jewish origin, devoured by religious anxiety and tormented throughout his life by the greatest metaphysical problems; but also, in its final part, as an exposition of a naturalist deism not devoid of originality at the time it was composed. The Exemplar humanae vitae, written in exceptional conditions of sincerity, is precisely one of those autobiographies of "neo-Christians" which, compared with the inquisitorial documentation on the family of their authors, substantially guarantee the religious reality of peninsular "Marranism" (Revah, Des Marranes à Spinoza, 1995, pp. 109 and 119-121). Ex-libris manuscripts of the period at the top of the title, the first of which is crossed out: Thomas Fry, and St John's, Oxford. Clear freckles. Redone spine.
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