Stowe MS 47

"THE FAMOUS BOOK intitled De Tribus Impostoribus, translated from the original Latin into French, and now faithfully Englished, with a preface, annotations, and additions by the French translator ": an English version of the work published by Pierre Frédéric Arpe in 1716, which professed to be a French translation of the book De Tribus Impostoribus [Moses, Christ, and Mahomet], often referred to in the Middle Ages, but never seen and in all probability never existent. Arpe pretends to have made his translation from a MS. of the original Latin which had been stolen from the Munich Library by a German officer after the battle of Blenheim, and which he had had in his possession for a short time. The contents sufficiently prove that it was written at the end of the 17th or beginning of the l8th century, instead of in the 13th, the date assigned to the original, which Arpe ascribes to Peter des Vignes, secretary to the Emperor Frederic II., about whose time the imaginary original is first mentioned. There is also extant a Latin version, professing to be the original, and bearing the date 1598, but believed to have been really printed in 1753 from MSS., of which one is known to have been bought at a sale in 1716. This differs wholly from the French version of Arpe (see De Tribus Impostoribus, texte Latin . . . par Philomneste Junior, Paris, 1861). The preface to the present translation differs in some of its contents from that of the French version, but the story of the acquisition of the pretended original MS. is the same. The contents are a criticism of Deism, Religion in general, the lives and religions of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, and a discussion of "certain rational and evident truths" from a vague Deistic standpoint. Paper; ff. 69. Late XVIIIth cent. Belonged to Thomas Astle. Quarto.

Pierre Frédéric Arpe: De Tribus Impostoribus: 18th cent.: Engl. transl.