La cabale des Reformez, tiree nouvellement du puits de Democrite.Montpellier [= Lyon?], “chez Le Libertin, imprimeur juré de la saincte Reformation” [= Jacques Roussin?], 1597. With: (2) REBOUL, Guillaume. Apologie ... sur La cabale des Reformez.[Lyon?, Jacques Roussin?], 1598. 2 works in 1 volume. 8vo. 17th-century gold-tooled calf; rebacked, preserving most of the backstrip.

224; 141, [1 blank] pp.First edition of an incendiary satirical pamphlet ("farce Rabelaisienne" - Pioffet) and one of the earliest editions of the author's defence of it, both attacking the Huguenot ministers of the Languedoc, three years after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Of special interest are some parts are written in Languedoc patois. La cabale raised a storm of protests, especially because it attacked the Huguenot ministers very personally under their full names. The present Apologie, responds to their threats and continues the attacks.Guillaume Reboul (1564-1611), a notorious French pamphleteer, came from a Huguenot family, converted to Catholicism, and was excommunicated almost immediately. As secretary to the Duke of Bouillon he cheated the Duke out of a large amount of money and fled to the Pope's Court at Avignon, where his ban was lifted. He then went to Rome where he became the protégé of Cardinal Baronius. He wrote several violent satirical pamphlets against the French Huguenots before and after the present La cabale and Apologie. When he also wrote a violent satire against the Pope (apparently never printed) he went too far and was sentenced to death and executed in his prison cell. With contemporary owner's inscriptions and some contemporary marginal manuscript notes. With a crease down the middle of the first title-page, a water stain at the head of the last quire and with the manuscript notes sometimes showing through on the back of the leaves, but still in good condition. The binding has a crack in the front hinge, but the tooling on the spine is still well-preserved.l Ad 1: Barbier I, col. 469; French books 45466 & 45467; ad 2: French books 45472 & 45473; cf. Pioffet, "Masques auctoriaux ... anti-Huguenots", in: B. Parmentier, ed., L'anonymat de l'oeuvre (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), pp. 135-152.