Item #4221 Von der Gemahelschafft des himlischen Künigs. Ein wunnigklich schöns Kunstbüchlin ... wie ein weltlicher Mensch mög geistlich werden. Widerumb ernewert, gebessert, und gemehret. Adam WALASSER, d. 1581.
Von der Gemahelschafft des himlischen Künigs. Ein wunnigklich schöns Kunstbüchlin ... wie ein weltlicher Mensch mög geistlich werden. Widerumb ernewert, gebessert, und gemehret.
Von der Gemahelschafft des himlischen Künigs. Ein wunnigklich schöns Kunstbüchlin ... wie ein weltlicher Mensch mög geistlich werden. Widerumb ernewert, gebessert, und gemehret.
Von der Gemahelschafft des himlischen Künigs. Ein wunnigklich schöns Kunstbüchlin ... wie ein weltlicher Mensch mög geistlich werden. Widerumb ernewert, gebessert, und gemehret.
Von der Gemahelschafft des himlischen Künigs. Ein wunnigklich schöns Kunstbüchlin ... wie ein weltlicher Mensch mög geistlich werden. Widerumb ernewert, gebessert, und gemehret.
Von der Gemahelschafft des himlischen Künigs. Ein wunnigklich schöns Kunstbüchlin ... wie ein weltlicher Mensch mög geistlich werden. Widerumb ernewert, gebessert, und gemehret.
Von der Gemahelschafft des himlischen Künigs. Ein wunnigklich schöns Kunstbüchlin ... wie ein weltlicher Mensch mög geistlich werden. Widerumb ernewert, gebessert, und gemehret.
A page from the Protestant playbook

Von der Gemahelschafft des himlischen Künigs. Ein wunnigklich schöns Kunstbüchlin ... wie ein weltlicher Mensch mög geistlich werden. Widerumb ernewert, gebessert, und gemehret. Dillingen: Sebald Mayer, 1572.

8vo (153 x 120 mm). Collation: A-Z8 a4 (-a4 blank). [7], 173, [7] leaves. Title printed in red and black within 4-part metalcut border, repeated on title verso, shoulder notes; 121 woodcuts, of which 17 flanked by type-ornament borders; the cut on f. 113v roughly colored. One-inch tear to title, first few leaves loosening and slightly softened, some minor soiling, a few short marginal tears. Contemporary blind-tooled calf(?) over wooden boards, covers with border of a Fides-Justitia-Prudentia-Spes roll (approx. 166 x 14 mm., not in Haebler or the Einbanddatenbank), pair of metal fore-edge clasps and catches, plain endpapers (rubbed, knife slashes to front cover [by an anti-Catholic?]). Provenance: partially legible early signature on back flyleaf, Ex libris Andreas Zwy---; inscription in a different early hand on front flyleaf: ich läbte [lebte] und weiss nit wie / ich stirb und weiss nich wän / ich fahr[?] und weiss nit wohin[?]” (this popular German saying, incorrectly attributed to Martin von Biberach, was called by Luther the “rhyme of the godless”).***

First Edition of Walasser’s modernized adaptation of a late medieval allegorical romance of the soul’s marriage to Christ, in an illustrated pocket edition from the first press of Dillingen.

The compiler Adam Walasser was not a cleric, but a writer for hire, who worked as “content producer,” editor and proofreader for Sebald Mayer from the time the press was founded in 1550 until 1573, when, along with Mayer’s son Johann, Walasser helped the Tegernsee Benedictines set up their own monastic press. His charge for Mayer was to produce copy, by editing, translating, reworking, or completing existing printed or manuscript works, in order to further the Counter-Reformation program of the press’s patron (and eventually owner), the Cardinal-Prince-Bishop of Augsburg, Otto von Waldburg. The hard-working Walasser (who also had experience as a printer) also produced a few works of his own, and left dozens of works of Catholic religious devotion, Counter-Reformation polemics, and a couple of books on German heraldry and language.

The Büchlein der geistlichen Gemahelschaft, a didactic allegory in rhyming couplets, by one “Konrad of Vienna,” identified as the Viennese Franciscan Konrad Spitzer (d. 1380), circulated in manuscript in the late 14th and 15th centuries. A prose version written ca. 1418-1430, known in a few illustrated manuscripts, was printed in Augsburg by Johann Bämler in 1477-1478 (GW 5666-5668) and later by Johann Schönsperger (GW 5669). Bämler used the title Buch der Kunst, dadurch der weltliche Mensch mag geistlich werden ("the Book of art by which the worldly person can become spiritual"), hence the word Kunstbüchlin, usually reserved for practical manuals, in Walasser’s title. Walasser used one of the Bämler editions as his copy-text. In his dedicatory letter to the powerful Abbess of the Imperial Abbey of Buchau (Maria Jakoba, from the noble family of von Schwarzenberg und Hohenlandsberg), he describes his labors after receiving an “old book” from an “honorable person in Konstanze,” who suggested that he republish it; it “delighted him as if it were a noble precious treasure,” for he found it filled with the Gold and Silver of Christ’s teachings (fol. A6r-v). Walasser followed the Bämler text, modernizing the language, omitting a few words and phrases and adding others, and added chapter numbers and a final table.

The tale of seven virgins, one of whom is chosen to marry the King, is an allegory of the eternal struggle between good and evil (God and Satan). The bride is led through temptation and is accompanied on mystical visits by the allegorical figures of Hope, Faith, and Wisdom. The latter teaches her “the theocentric worldview” (Verfasserlexikon) through seven secret words. The final magnificent wedding, prepared by ten more virtuous maidens, represents the unification, through baptism, of the soul with God. The symbolic meanings of the plot developments are helpfully spelled out in printed shoulder notes. The story is used as a framework for teaching the basics of Christian doctrine, of Creation, the Passion, and the Sacraments. Using this old tale for Counter-Reformation messaging was a way to beat the Protestants at their own vernacular game, by instructing while diverting the literate lay reader unversed in Latin (often a woman).

The many woodcut illustrations are smaller copies, some in reverse, of the cuts used in Bämler’s editions. Whereas Bämler used some of his blocks more than once, there are no repeats in Mayer’s edition, and while the cuts showing the virgins in action are all copied from the incunable editions, there are some divergences in the sections on the Passion and other “generic” passages. A few of the woodcuts, which are more heavily shaded than the others and/or are narrower than the text-block, may have come from Mayer’s stock and been used in other works. The cut on 51v, stylistically different from the others, is signed BP; this monogrammist’s woodcuts appeared in other books by Walasser (cf. Nagler, Monogrammisten I:1992).

No doubt in part because of the rarity of the Dillingen editions, the source of this work does not seem to have been previously recognized. Although four more editions appeared during the next 30 years, all are rare, with none represented in American libraries.

USTC 703501; VD16, ZV 2620; Otto Bucher, Bibliographie der deutschen Drucke des XVI. Jahrhunderts. I: Dillingen (Bibliotheca Bibliographica, I) 648; cf. Bäumker, Wilhelm, "Walasser, Adam," Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 40, pp 640-643.
Item #4221

Price: $7,200.00