SOMMERTHEIL DER POSTILL EVANGELISCHER WAHRHEIT UND RECHTER CATHOLISCHER LEHR VON OSTERN BIS AUF DEN ADVENT. [with] SOMMERTHEIL DER POSTILL DE SANCTIS. AUFF DIE FEST DER HEILIGEN SO MAN FEIERT VON OSTERN AN BIß AUFF DEN ADVENT

Mainz: druckts Franz Behem, [Arnold Birckmann (I) (heirs of)], 1558, 1559. FIRST EDITION. 320 x 205 mm. (12 5/8 x 8"). 6 p.l., CCCCCI [501] leaves; 4 p.l., CCLXII [162] leaves.
Contemporary blind-stamped pigskin over bevelled wooden boards, covers with concentric frames containing a palmette roll and roll featuring half-length portraits of King David (signed K D), St. Paul, Christ the Savior, and St. John the Baptist (dated 1549), each of these with abbreviated Latin mottos beneath the figures, central panel with botanical tooling, raised bands, inked shelfmark G 73 in bottom panel, brass catchplates and remnants of straps (corners of boards and head and tail of joints repaired with pigskin some decades ago). Title pages with printer's device, *6 with woodcut of the Crucifixion, verso of title page of second work with woodcut arms of the archbishop of Mainz. Front pastedown with FULL-PAGE HAND-PAINTED EX-LIBRIS OF JOHANNES SALICETUS [WIDENER]: his ink inscription at head of page above a shield painted yellow with curling ink leaves around the perimeter, dominated by a bearded young man in red shirt and tights standing astride three brown hillocks, one hand on his hip, the other holding three stalks of wheat, a ink-drawn homunculus at the foot of the page, his head sprouting what appear to be two antennae, the later blue ink stamp of F T E beside this. First work: USTC 694128; VD16 694130. Second work: 694130; VD16 For the binding: EBDB workshop w002792; EBDB roll r001326 (similar to saints roll, but dated 1547 and with slightly different Latin mottos). Pigskin somewhat soiled and rubbed, title page of first work tipped onto *2, leaves lightly browned (due to paper quality), with intermittent foxing and occasional (mostly trivial) stains and smudges, final leaf with a two-inch to half-inch triangular piece torn away from the upper half of the fore edge, affecting a total of perhaps 80 or 100 words. Still, a copy featuring a binding with antique appeal and considerable interest in terms of provenance (see below).

Offered in its original blind-stamped pigskin binding, this imposing collection of Counter-Reformation sermons by an influential preacher is of special interest because of the impressively large hand-painted ex-libris at the front. The two groups of sermons bound together here were written by Johann Wild (1497-1554), a Franciscan who was educated at Cologne and who served as the Domprediger (official cathedral preacher) at Mainz Cathedral. Wild's sermons were very popular, and it has been suggested that they played a significant role in keeping Mainz Catholic at a time when many surrounding cities were converting to Lutheranism. Despite his being a Catholic hero for a time, Wild later became a controversial figure in the Church: many of his works eventually faced posthumous censure, even being placed on the Vatican's Index Librorum Prohibitorum on the grounds that they might invite scriptural misinterpretation. Our copy was owned by a second German Counter-Reformation figure, Johannes Salicetus (i.e., Johann Wideman), whose exuberantly large hand-painted ex-libris takes up nearly the entire front pastedown. Salicetus was rector at the University of Ingolstadt, which had become a bastion of Catholic thought in Southern Germany under the leadership of theologian Johann Eck (1486-1543), an outspoken Luther opponent. A relative and very close friend of Eck, Salicetus composed Eck's eulogy (USTC 698476) as well as a marital poem for his son Oswald (USTC 2213477). The enormous bookplate is apparently a coat of arms, and features a particularly proud central figure posing staunchly in a very red suit with a prominent codpiece and holding three stalks of wheat. While this peculiarly emphatic expression of ownership is surely not unprecedented, we have never owned a book with provenance shown in quite such a dramatic fashion..