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

GENERAL PREFACE.

...divided into Chapters, with the most important subjects indicated in the margin subject matters, so that one might perceive the contained Content more clearly and briefly at a glance.

During the translation, we also felt obliged in many places, for the service of our Countrymen, to incorporate some Observations on various matters—placed between these two text brackets [ ]—for further enlightenment of this Work, adding them to the previous notes from the French edition. Likewise, we encountered some terminology specific to the solemn service of the Roman Church The "Roman Church" refers to the Roman Catholic Church; the translators are contextualizing it for a Dutch Reformed/Protestant audience., which we feared might appear incomprehensible to the Protestants of our nation; therefore, it has pleased us to briefly explain these in passing, so that the Reader might have a concise Concept of the entire arrangement.

But there is one matter of which we must inform the Reader: namely, that we had intended to translate the inscriptions and explanations on the Plates and Illustrations from French into our Dutch Mother Tongue; however, because this was advised against by the Engravers Plaatsnyders (Engravers), as the scraping away of the French and the subsequent re-cutting of the Dutch The original text uses "Duits" (German/Germanic), which in this period frequently referred to "Nederduits" or the Dutch language. would weaken the plates too much. In order to avoid damaging this excellent plate-work, we have instead placed the translated explanation of these Illustrations beneath the pages where they are to be bound—excepting some whose explanations would expand too far, which have been placed on a separate half-sheet to be inserted opposite the Illustration or the following depictions.

We would have preferred to maintain this Order consistently: but as the aforementioned difficulty arose, the Treatises on the Religious Duties of the Jews This refers to the section based on the work of Leon Modena regarding Jewish rituals. were already printed; and since the required Plates and Illustrations, as described in French, also necessarily had to be translated, we have been forced to include the Translation of these Illustrations along with the explanation of the...