Bidspirit auction | Macedo, José Agostinho de —

Macedo, José Agostinho de — REFUTAÇÃO DOS PRINCIPIOS METHAFYSICOS, E MORAES DOS PEDREIROS LIVRES ILLUMINADOS. Lisbon. Na Impressão Regia. 1816. x, 251, [i] pp. 16.3 × 9.3 cm. E. - Very rare work, consisting of 16 chapters and an appendix containing the extract of a Revolutionary Project by the Count of Mirabeau, originally published in Paris without its author's authorisation, and included in a work entitled ”Mysterios da Conspiração”. The Refutação constitutes one of the most violent attacks on Freemasonry and the Illuminati written in Portuguese, its author being one of the fiercest opponents that the anti-Masonic cause had in Portugal during this period. This copy is complete with the list of subscribers (pp. 233–243) and with the catalogue of the author's works, details absent from other known copies, as was the case with the copy recorded by Innocêncio IV, 195. José Agostinho de Macedo (Beja, 1761 – Pedrouços, 1831) was an Augustinian friar, expelled from the Order by his superiors who considered him ”contumacious and incorrigible”, and later secularised by papal brief. He became one of the most notorious preachers of his era, appointed royal preacher in 1802, and a member of the Nova Arcádia under the pseudonym Elmiro Tangideu. A declared enemy of the French Revolution, of Voltaire, and of Napoleon, his entire polemical output was centred on the denunciation of Freemasons and Jacobins. Innocêncio IV, 183–215 and XII, 200–203. Contemporary binding, worn, full leather, with raised bands, gilt tooling, and a title label on the spine.