The author was a leading German Hebraist who was also a professor of both history and Oriental languages at Altdorf University for much of the last quarter of the 17th century and later occupied the chair of ecclesiastical law. He devoted much of his time to searching out and publishing anti-Christian writings by Jewish authors, which he gathered together in Tel Ignea Satanae..., a work subtitled ‘The Secret and Terrible Books of the Jews against Christ our Lord and the Christian Religion’. Wagenseil would doubtless have been pleased to see German protestant princes show greater zeal in the conversion of the Jews, but he was nonetheless opposed to forcible baptism and similar measures, and even devoted a special treatise to the refutation of the charge of ritual murder that was so often levelled against Jews.
The Fiery Darts of Satan
BOUND in contemporary vellum, a 1681 first of Tel Ignea Satanae... [The Fiery Darts of Satan] by Johann Christoph Wagenseil was sold for £1000 (Powell) in an Y Gelli sale of June 11.
