NUMEROLOGY

Benedictis, Antonius Ferdinandus de: Saeculum Cabalisticum, ab anno MDCC. usque ad annum MDCCC. Sub CCCCXLIX. Inscriptionibus octingentas octoginta quatuor cabalas chronographicas, et in his varia, potiori autem ex parte moralia effata, exhibens. Augustae Vindelicorum [i.e. Augsburg], Typis Maximiliani Simonis Pingitzer. Anno 1755. 

First edition of this typographically interesting numerological work, in which 449 sentences are decoded each to reveal a year in the eighteenth century. The term ‘Cabala’—as referred to in the title—is ‘the Christianized form of the Hebrew Kabbalah, a mystical and esoteric form of knowledge’ used for accessing ‘secret or hidden knowledge’ (Waddell 2021). 

The process bears comparison with, but is quite different to, the much more common one of making chronograms. According to the interpretive schema outlined at the start of our text (which seems to follow the Agrippan method), each letter of the alphabet is keyed to a number (e.g. I = 9 and N = 40). Each word can thus be given a numerical value equal to the sum of the values of its component letters (e.g. ‘in’ = 9 + 40 = 49). The author extrapolates this process across entire sentences, some moralistic and others referring to historical events. Each is ‘decoded’ to reveal a year between 1701 and 1800. Particularly notable is page 18, where the decoding process is communicated through a striking and creative arrangement of type on the page—including upside-down letters, increasingly large type, and a bifurcating sentence. The purpose here is to show that both ‘Maria Anna Caroli Lotharingici Conjux’ and ‘Maria Anna Caroli Caesaris filia’ can be decoded to give 1744, the year in which Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria (1718-1744) married Prince Charles Alexandre of Lorraine. 

A second edition of the Saeculum Cabalisticum appeared in 1757. The author, Antonius Ferdinandus de Benedictis, is known only in connection with one further work: Corona honoris (1727) a poem in honour of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. It also featured numerology.

Description

One volume, 20.8 x 16.5 cms in binding, quarto, pp. [8], 88. Printed headpieces and tailpieces. Atypical arrangement of type on p. 18 (described above). Several pages with offsetting deriving from content elsewhere in the same edition. Modern pencil notes to front pastedown and front free endpaper. Bound in contemporary brown speckled paper over boards, printed waste fragments discernible underneath plain pastedowns (the fragment at front printed in red and black and comprising one line of music with stave), red speckled edges. Condition (textblock): light browning; foxing and spotting, most noticeable at end. Condition (binding): light rubbing and wear, loss to paper at head of spine.

Bibliography

VD18 14395843. OCLC shows one copy outside mainland Europe (Newberry). 
For the author’s coat of arms, see card 674 on Tiroler Wappen: Die Fischnaler Wappenkartei, an online resource by the Tiroler Landesmuseen, accessible via https://wappen.tiroler-landesmuseen.at/index34a.php?wappen_id=2559&drawer=Ban-Bl 

Mark A. Waddell, Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).