Jacques Collin de Plancy

Who was Jacques Collin de Plancy?

Jacques Albin Simon Collin de Plancy, was a French occultist, demonologist and writer; he published several works on occultism and demonology.

He was born Jacques Albin Simon Collin on 28 January 1793 in Plancy son of Edme-Aubin Collin and Marie-Anne Danton, sister of Georges-Jacques Danton who was executed the year after Jacques was born. He later added the aristocratic "de Plancy" himself - an addition which would later cause accusations against his son in his career as a diplomat. He was a free-thinker influenced by Voltaire. He worked as a printer and publisher in Plancy-l'Abbaye and Paris. Between 1830 and 1837, he resided in Brussels, and then in the Netherlands, before he returned to France after having converted to the Catholic religion.

Collin de Plancy followed the tradition of many previous demonologists of cataloguing demons by name and title of nobility, as it happened with grimoires like Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, and The Lesser Key of Solomon among others. In 1818 his best known work, Dictionnaire Infernal, was published. In 1863 were added some images that made it famous: imaginative drawings concerning the appearance of certain demons. In 1822 it was advertised as: