The Coimbra Book of Saint Cyprian

Today I am very pleased to announce the release of The Coimbra Book of Saint Cyprian, an isolated publication of Ms. 2559, with an introduction tailored for this content. This is the Ms. 2559 from José Leitão’s Opuscula Cypriani: Variations on the Book of Saint Cyprian and Related Literature released by Hadean Press in 2019. In the Opuscula Cypriani one can find the facsimile of the manuscript as well as an extended introduction and additional material related to it; in the The Coimbra Book of Saint Cyprian we offer the English translation and Portuguese transcript of this very important text.

 We chose to extract this from the Opuscula Cypriani for a number of reasons, one of which being its importance to the Cyprianic tradition. This little manuscript was, until José found it in the Coimbra University Library, little more than a folktale. No one believed such a book existed, until that fateful day when José called up Ms. 2559 from the archives, and there it was. José says it best in his introduction:

For at least one hundred and twenty years, a small manuscript has rested in the Reserved and Special Collections of the General Library of the University of Coimbra. This, while technically referred to as Ms. 2559, was at some point in time given the title Various Prayers to Drive Away the Devil. Neither the library staff nor any Coimbra University historian knows exactly where it came from, what it is doing there, or how it came into the possession of the Library. It is just one among the many other anonymous manuscripts that an eight hundred year old institution tends to accumulate…

This is a consistent, coherent and concise book. It is a long lost orphan of a lineage of books which have become the stuff of legends and minor references by cynical positivist ethnographers.

This is a Cyprian Book of treasure-hunting, presenting all details, steps and technicalities to re-create what had, by the time I found it in Coimbra, become a lost ritual.

We also chose to publish this standalone edition of Ms. 2559 to maintain the stance we took when we published the Book of Saint Cyprian: The Sorcerer’s Treasure. Again, we follow in the footsteps of Bernardo Barreiro, as stated on page 257 of that book, in releasing an affordable edition of the text so as to prevent anyone from “squandering all their possessions on the purchase of The Book”. In this case, ‘the book’ is the Coimbra Book of Saint Cyprian. As with that book, any errors in this text are mine.

But there is one, final, reason and it is a personal one. At some point in my future I fully intend to spend a month travelling through Portugal, hunting for treasure, just like the cyprianistas of old –and there is no way I’m carrying a book weighing two kilos with me. So in that sense, I have published this book for me.

The Coimbra Book of Saint Cyprian comes in two editions: 500 litho-printed paperbacks are currently available exclusively through Hadean Press, as is a digital edition. There will be no hardcover edition of this book, but at some point in the future a digital edition will appear on Amazon for Kindle.

May we all find the treasure we seek.

Erzebet