CONTENTS OF THE PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
[DISQUISITIONS] on the book entitled “The Three Impostors.”
[ANSWER] to the dissertation of M. de la Monnoye on the work entitled “The Three Impostors.”
[COPY] of Part 2d, Vol. 1., Article ix. of “Literary Memoirs,” published at the Hague by Henry du Sauzet, 1716.
DISQUISITIONS
ON THE BOOK ENTITLED
THE THREE IMPOSTORS.
It has long been a disputed point if there was at anytime a book printed and bearing the title of “The Three Impostors.”
M. de la Monnoye, having been informed that a learned German[1] intended to publish a dissertation the object of which was to prove that this work had really been printed, wrote a letter, in refutation, to one of his friends; this letter was given by M. Bayle to M. Basnage de Bauval, who in February 1694, gave an extract from it in his “History of the works of celebrated and learned men.” At a later period M. de la Monnoye entered more fully into the subject, in a letter dated at Paris 16th of June, 1712, and addressed to President Bouhier, in which letter, he says, will be found an abridged but complete account of this remarkable book.
He condemns at once the opinion of those who attribute the work to the Emperor Frederick. The false charge, he says, took its rise from a passage in the appendix to a discourse concerning Antichrist, and published by Grotius, wherein he speaks as follows[2]: “Far be it from me to attribute the book called ‘The Three Impostors,’ either to the Pope, or to the opponents of the Pope; long ago the enemies of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa set abroad the report of such a book, as having been written by his command; but from that period nobody has seen it; for which reason I consider it apocryphal.”