LACTANTIUS [Opera.] Divinarum institutionum libri VII. De ira Dei, liber I. De opificio Dei, liber I. Epitome in libros suos liber acephalos. Phoenix. Carmen de dominica resurrectione. Carmen de passione Domini.

Reading Lactantius during the Counter-Reformation

LACTANTIUS [Opera.] Divinarum institutionum libri VII. De ira Dei, liber I. De opificio Dei, liber I. Epitome in libros suos liber acephalos. Phoenix. Carmen de dominica resurrectione. Carmen de passione Domini. [Basel: Andreas Cratander. 13 February 1521.]

[bound with:]
SYMMACHUS, [Quintus Aurelius]; Laudivio [ZACCHIA DA VEZZANO]. Epistolae familiares. Item Laudini Eovitis hierosolymitani in epistolas Turci Magni traductio. [Strasbourg: Johann Knobloch [I]. 1511].

Two works in one volume, 4to. Sixteenth-century blind-stamped pigskin over wooden boards, sewn on 3 cords, borders roll-tooled with pomegranates, two-headed birds flanked by small six-pointed stars, and flowers in pots, two brass clasps and catchplates, spine lined with manuscript waste, seventeenth-century paper spine label; Lactantius: pp. [20], 433, [1 (errata)], final leaf k6 (printer’s device, blank) excised; Symmachus: ff. [55], [1 (blank)]; title of Lactantius within elaborate architectural woodcut border by Hans Holbein the Younger, woodcut initials and headpieces; short split to upper joint, lower compartment of spine rubbed and discoloured , pinhole wormholes to upper board, slight wear to corners and extremities, lower corner of rear free endpaper excised; first two quires of first work slightly loose, sporadic light toning to both works, Lactantius with small wormtrack to Book I of Divinae institutiones (touching one or two words per page but not affecting sense) short closed tear to upper corner of i1, small marginal loss to upper corner of i2, sporadic light toning, short closed tear to o3 fore-edge not touching annotations or text; very good copies; early sixteenth-century motto to title of Symmachus, cancelled in mid-sixteenth-century red ink, mid-sixteenth-century initials ‘FC’ and motto ‘sua ?cuique sors ferenda [est]’ to both titles, contemporary annotations in red and occasionally dark brown ink to c. 100 pp. of Lactantius in the same hand, partially cancelled ownership 1580 inscription ‘Ex Libris Michaelis Rhommeysen’ and 1589 reading note ‘perlegendo finii’ to front pastedown (see below), seventeenth-century ownership inscription ‘Collegii Societ[at]is Jesu Fuldae’ to title of Lactantius.

Handsome first Cratander edition of the works of Lactantius, bound with a very rare Strasbourg edition of fifteenth-century letters spuriously attributed to Sultan Mehmet II, with over one hundred pages of near-contemporary annotation and with the 1589 reading notes of a Catholic canon from Rasdorf; this volume was soon afterwards transferred to the newly established Jesuit college in nearby Fulda, the site of one of the largest witch trials in Germany at the start of the seventeenth century.

Cratander (born Andreas Hartmann, c. 1485–c. 1540) published editions of Lactantius’ works in 1524, and with Johann Bebel, in 1532. He collaborated on several occasions with Holbein and was particularly notable for his editions of the classics; the ornate woodcut border to the title, employed here for the first time, incorporates putti, Cratander’s device, portrait medallions, Salome with the head of St John the Baptist, and Lucretia (Johnson, ‘The Title-Borders of Hans Holbein’, Basel 9).

In his preface, Cratander brings to light his efforts to compare multiple manuscripts to minimise error, at some points in the text arranging ‘for another reading to be added: thus, if you have once acquired this single booklet, you can claim that you have obtained many and different copies of Lactantius’ (trans. Manuwald), e.g. providing variant readings in the form of printed marginalia on p. 51. Bound with the Lactantius are the letters of the Roman statesman and orator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, and the Zacchia’s purported translation of the letters of Sultan Mehmet II to Turks living in various parts of the Christian world, in fact a literary invention by Zacchia himself.

This volume was owned by a mid-sixteenth-century reader (whose initials, F.C., appear on the titles of both works), with over one hundred pages of annotations demonstrating a careful reading of the text, providing lists of relevant philosophers mentioned by Lactantius as well as concise summaries of complex points, the annotations largely to books I and II of Lactantius’ Divinae Institutiones, a defence of Christianity dismissing paganism as absurd and rooted in superstition. A motto to the title and to one page of the Symmachus in a greyish ink indicate the presence of an earlier reader.

By 1580, the volume was in the hands of Michael Romeisen (also Rommeysen or Rhommeysen), canon of the collegiate church of Rasdorf. Little is known of Romeisen’s life, but he produced two cartularies in Rasdorf, one of which commissioned by the church’s provost, and in 1587 he produced a manuscript choirbook-cum-processional for the church. Other books from his library frequently note start and end dates, as here: on the front free endpaper, he notes that he began reading in 1580 and finished nine years later, on 20 December 1589. His copy of Laurentius Surius’ legends (now at the University Library of Marburg) was given to the Jesuit College at Fulda in 1628, and later to the Princely Abbey of Corvey; the present volume was likewise given to the Fulda Jesuits, with the college’s early seventeenth-century inscription to the title of the first work and final page of the second in dark brown ink.

Rasdorf’s collegiate monastery had been a subsidiary monastery of Fulda’s since the eighth century. Fulda and Rasdorf, situated within the largely Protestant region of Hesse, were important Catholic strongholds during the Counter-Reformation.

The vehemently anti-Protestant Prince-Abbot Balthasar von Dernbach, a Benedictine monk at the monastery in Fulda, had invited the Jesuits to Fulda in 1571 to found a college and a school, and, in 1584, a Jesuit papal seminary college under Pope Gregory XIII as a means of promoting the cause of the Counter-Reformation.

Von Dernbach ‘had not previously known [the Jesuits] or seen one of their colleges; only their reputation … and most likely urgent recommendations from the Elector of Mainz persuaded him to do so. The summoned religious men arrived with delightful haste from Mainz and Trier and established a joint colony there. [Von Dernbach] built them a house and a school and provided them with income … he laid hands on Protestant religious practice in the main church and the subsidiary churches of the city of Fulda, managing to eliminate the Protestant clergy … and replace them with Catholic clergy of the strictest order, often Jesuits. Finally, these measures were extended to other towns of the Prince-Bishopric … and to the surrounding countryside using the same methods’ (Deutsche Biographie, trans.).

Lactantius’ documentation of the persecution of early Christians ironically coincides with the growing oppression of Protestants in Fulda, fomented by the presence of the Jesuits: in the coming years, von Dernbach would banish Protestants from Fulda, and the Fulda Witch Trials of 1602 to 1606 – one of the four largest witch trials in Germany – resulted in the deaths of some 250 people, largely used to target suspected crypto-Protestants.

Symmachus: OCLC finds only four copies outside continental Europe, two in the US (Michigan, Yale) and two in the UK (BL, Bodley).

Lactantius: Adams L-18; USTC 671383; VD16 L 38; this edition not in BM STC German (see p. 480 for the 1524 edition). Symmachus: BM STC German, p. 846; USTC 695348; VD16 S 10391; not in Adams. On Romeisen and his library, see Graf, ‘Michael Romeisen, Canon in Rasdorf’, in Ordensgeschichte (2014), online; on Cratander’s paratextual apparatus, see Manuwald, ‘Cratander’s Edition of Cicero (1528) from Humanist Basel’, in Cicero in Basel: Locating Classical Reception in a Humanist City (2024).

SKU: 2123413