Menestrier - New Reasoned Method Of The Coat Of Arms Or The Heraldic Art. Lyon, Ponthus, 1780.

MENESTRIER (Claude-François) - New method of reasoning for blazons or heraldic art. Lyon, Chez Pierre Bruyset Ponthus, 1780; in-8, frontispiece, title page, one engraving, full marbled calf binding of the time, spine decorated with 5 ribs, title piece in red morocco, edges painted red. Complete with 49 plates (including the last folding one) as well as a frontispiece and an engraving illustrating the dedicatory epistle. Edition augmented by Le moine, archivist of the chapter of Lyon. One of the great classics on the science of heraldry, essential for anyone who really wants to grasp the knowledge necessary to decode and describe blazons. Claude-François Ménestrier, born in 1631 in Lyon to a family originally from Franche-Comté and died in 1705 in Paris, was a Jesuit priest, heraldist, choreographer, theorist and historian of music, and French dance theorist. His first treatise on coats of arms, the Véritable art du blason, was published in 1671, followed by several completed reissues, until 1688, the year of publication of his Méthode du blason. He had a controversy on this subject with Claude Le Laboureur, but this work on coats of arms earned him a citation by Voltaire as a remarkable writer in the Siècle de Louis XIV.