Description d'un olyphant ou grand cornet

Bourg: P-F. Bottier, Imprimeur du Roi. n.d. [1819].

First and only edition. 8vo. 202x130mm. pp. [ii], 69, [1bl]. Errata pasted to blank verso of title page. Some light foxing. Remains of the original blue paper wrappers now perished. Rare, Worldcat locating three copies (BNF, Lyon and Berlin). An account of a carved medieval elephant, in the sense of "a horn or trumpet of ivory", discovered by villagers in Ain (in the Rhône-Alpes between Lyons and Geneva) in about 1400. It was then deposited with a religious community who, at the beginning of the 19th century passed it to Thomas Riboud, the President of the "Cour Royale de Lyon" and the curator of the church at Brou. Riboud was of the view that this "Grand Cornet" had belonged to Roland, the alleged nephew of Charlemagne and the ideal of the medieval Christian Knight. Regardless of the truth, the object provided an opportunity for much romantic antiquarianism.