DOM CALMET - Traité historique des eaux et bains de Plombièr - Lot 266

DOM CALMET - Traité historique des eaux et bains de Plombières, de Bourbonne, de Luxeuil et de Bains. Nancy, Chez Leseure, 1748; in-8, 333 pp. + 15 figures in 9 folding plates, table and approbation, privilege and errata, bound in full contemporary marbled calf, spine with 5 raised bands, title page in red morocco, edges painted red. Complete with 14 of 15 figures in 9 folding plates and folding plan engraved by Fonbonne. Antoine Calmet, Dom Augustin in religion, was born in 1672 in Ménil-la-Horgne near Commercy, Lorraine, into a modest family (his father was a blacksmith). A keen student from an early age, he was an 18th-century exegete and scholar from Lorraine, known as Dom Calmet, a Benedictine from the Congrégation de Saint-Vanne et Saint-Hydulphe. In 1728, Dom Calmet was appointed abbot of Senones, the capital of the principality of Salm. It was in the great Vosges abbey that he worked and lived the latter part of his life, maintaining a correspondence with numerous scholars. He died there in 1757. Dom Calmet left an immense body of work. His best-known work is his Histoire de Lorraine, the second edition of which was written in Senones. It was also in Senones that he wrote a now-forgotten work, a 17-volume Histoire universelle, on which Voltaire collaborated for a few days in 1753; a Bible in Latin and French, with a Commentaire littéral et critique sur tous les livres de l'Ancien et Nouveau Testament (Paris (1707-1716; 26 vol. in-4). The Commentaire, a major work by the Abbé de Senones, who constantly returned to make corrections or check translations, was reproduced separately under the title Trésor d'antiquités sacrées et profanes, from 1722, in 9 volumes. The reprinting of this Histoire ecclésiastique & civile de la Lorraine in 1745-1757, brought Dom Calmet into conflict with the censors. Noël 5754, Favier 2807. Expert : M. Philippe HENRY