The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World

GENERAL PREFACE

...added a supplement to it, which one finds incorporated here under the title of the third Historical Treatise on the Religious Duties and Customs of the Jews compared with the Ordinances of the Roman Church. In this Treatise, a very remarkable similarity is observed between the Ordinances of the Jews and those of the Roman Church; and it almost seems that this sufficed to justify the latter in various matters against the accusations of the Reformers original: Nieusgezinden, literally "those of new views," a term used in the 17th and 18th centuries to refer to Protestants., which were laid to their charge by them when they separated themselves from the communion of their Church.

If one may believe Father Simon Richard Simon (1638–1712), a French priest and influential biblical critic who translated and annotated Leon of Modena's work., as he expresses himself in his Preface to the work of Leon of Modena Leon of Modena (1571–1648), a renowned Venetian rabbi whose work on Jewish customs was widely read by Christians., everything regarding the churchly manners and customs of the Jews that this Italian Rabbi overlooked should perhaps be regarded as nearly useless and superfluous. We must nonetheless confess that he is mistaken in this, if one only reads the second Treatise (which we, as the Translator, have inserted between the first and the third for the reason that it fit best there, and to give the last place to the similarity of Jewish religious duties with those of the Roman Church, since the description of the Roman religious service was to follow thereafter). This second Treatise is then divided into two Sections, of which the first—after we have reviewed the political revolutions The Dutch Staats-omkeeringen refers to the various changes in government and legal status. that the Jews suffered under the dominion of the Christians and Mohammedans—provides an account of various particulars regarding their sentiments which Leon of Modena had left untouched and omitted, yet without them being considered unnecessary. As for the second Section of this Treatise, one finds therein an explanation of Jewish ceremonies and a distinction of various Jewish ecclesiastical customs. This is what this Rabbi may have intentionally omitted: but despite what Father Simon says about it, it is a flaw in the Rabbi's work, arising from the fact that thi—