MYSTICAL PROPHECIES FOR THE LATE 17TH CENTURY. 12mo. (24), 333 pp, (3), plus 9 folding engr. plates. Bound in 19th century German half cloth over marbled boards with gilt title on spine. A neat, clean copy, with only sporadic foxing. Sole edition of this oddity in the tradition of the Vaticinia sive Prophetiae Abbatis Joachimi, with equally lively (but entirely novel!) illustrations. Albrici’s rare treatise proclaims the current Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (1640-1705) as a prophesized destroyer of the Ottoman Turks – using a combination of Biblical prophecies, anagrams, chronograms, and an occasional cabala. The 9 plates illustrate the strange divinations which Albrici purports to have unearthed: a flock of lambs kissing the mitre of a pope (p. 176); a strange dragon with the head of a man (p. 162); a fox carrying the Key to the Kingdom of Heaven (p. 264) and so on. One astonishing plate even bears a caption in a fictious language (probably intended to look like Arabic), with a Turkish transliteration beneath it. “This curious book belongs to the same class as the Vaticinia sive Prophetiae Abbatis Joachimi… It is, however, much more bulky and learned than were either the Prophecies of Joachim or the numerous Prophetic and Hieroglyphic wheels which were published about the same period in Italy… [Albricius] was a patrician, a philosopher, and a man of medical science, which makes it all the more strange that he should write such rubbish as is contained in the 350 pages of his book.” (Begley, Biblia Cabalistica). OCLC shows just a handful of copies worldwide, with US examples at Harvard and Princeton (lacking 1 plate). * Cicogna, Saggio di bibliografia Veneziana #5051; Begley, Biblia Cabalistica, pp. 156-157.