De periculis contingentibus circa sacramentum eucharistiae

Würzburg: Georg Reyser. Hardcover. Very Good. [ca. 1486]. Small folio (270 x 204mm). Pagination: [4] leaves (without signatures, catchwords, or foliation, but comprising q1-4). Later manuscript initial “P” supplied and affixed at incipit Primum, painted in red, green, blue, pink, and gold. 32 lines of Gothic type. Rubric (fol.1r): ‘De periculis contingentibus circa sacramentu[m] Eucharistiae/ et de remediis eorundem ex dictis S. Thomae de Aquino feliciter incipit.’ Incipit (fol. 1r): ‘[P]rimum periculum est quod si sacerdos morte uel graui in infirmitate preoccupetur . . .’ Explicit (fol. 4v): ‘... quod a ieiuniis sumatur.’ Late 18th or early 19th-century half sheep over marbled boards; (edges worn; light marginal spotting; otherwise the four leaves are intact and fresh). Inscription on front endpaper, “The types in this little tract bear a strong resemblance to those in the "Legenda Wolfgangi-Burgdorf 1475 – a similarity may also be traced to those of Valdarfer, especially in his ‘Liber de Catholica Fide contra errores infidelium’.” Formerly in the British Museum Library
collection (their cancelled red ink stamp on first and last page); armorial bookplates of James Thomas Hand and Jacob Weinberg in front, and Estelle Doheny (her sale, Christie’s, 22 October 1987, lot 71).

Rare Thomistic tract on the sacrament of the Eucharist; this is a self-contained extract comprising the “Q” quire of the Statuta Synodalia Herbipolensia, a set of ecclesiastical rules written for the diocese of Würzburg. The name Herbipolensia (for Würzburg) comes from
the Latin Herba (herb) and polis (city). The De periculis contingentibus circa sacramentum eucharistiae was printed at least 17 times before the year 1500; ISTC records the earliest by the Printer of Dictys (Arnold Ther Hoernen) in Cologne at around 1470. The originating book was a synodal decree, which detailed specific proscriptions for the clergy in Würzburg. It is purported that the Würzburg council recommended including this Thomistic tract on the Eucharist as it was attached to a number of other ecclesiastical law documents of the time. In 1479, Georg Reyser was granted printing rights in Würzburg by the prince-bishop and produced many liturgical books for that city, also the administrative capital of Franconia. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the attributed author of the tract, was a great medieval theologian. One of the central tenets of his scholarship was transubstantiation, or, the theory that bread and wine consumed in the Eucharistic mass are Christ’s true flesh and blood.
The inclusion of this Aquinas tract in a German incunuable is culturally important – in about 30 years the full impact of Luther’s Reformation would be felt in this region. This tract is important evidence of Catholic history in 15th-century Franconia. ISTC no. is00741000.