Beschreibung:

Erklärung der zwölf Artikel des christlichen Glaubens . Ulm: Conrad Dinckmut, 21 August 1485.
Erklärung der zwölf Artikel des christlichen Glaubens . Ulm: Conrad Dinckmut, 21 August 1485. Chancery 2° (269 x 175mm). Collation: \Kp\k 4 a-t 8 v 6 (\Kp\k1r blank, \Kp\k1v subject index, a1r prologue, b1v woodcut, b2r text, v6r colophon, v6v blank). 161 leaves (of 162, lacking q8). 35 lines and headline with foliation. Type: 2:109G. 12 full-page woodcuts COLOURED BY A CONTEMPORARY HAND in red, green, tan, orange, and ochre, and 13 woodcut ornamental initials coloured in paler washes. 3-line initial spaces, some at the front filled in a 17th-century hand. (Light dampstaining, soiling and fraying in preliminary quire, a few wormholes at beginning and end, small hole in c8 affecting a few letters, occasional staining, more noticeable in margins of d8v-e1r, last leaf a little soiled.) Contemporary blindtooled Augsburg calf (Kyriss 77,1; (Schunke-Schwenke Bogenfries 22; K 77 tools 1 and 3) over thick unbevelled wooden boards (board fore-edges sometime reduced), spine label, fragment of a German broadside almanac as front pastedown (lifted, see below), evidence of a single fore-edge clasp (rubbed, loss of leather at fore-edges); modern red cloth folding box. Provenance : 17/18th-century annotations, scribbles on blank versos and endpaper -- Reiner Wachendorff (17th-century inscriptions; a pastor of this name at Weidesheim and Dom-Esch, fl. c. 1590-1624) -- Dr. Jur. Sigmund Graf Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden, 1906 (bookplate). FIRST AND ONLY 15TH-CENTURY EDITION. The Apostle's creed, the fundamental statement of Christian belief, forms the basis of the Erklärung . It is related to the blockbook editions of the Creed, Symbolum Apostolicum , in that both works use pictorial representation to summarise and reinforce the text as a visual symbol of the Credo; although similar in content, the woodcuts in the xylographical and typographical editions are independent of each other. Rare on the market. In the last half-century only the Sexton copy (now Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam; cf. Ford, BPH 80) and a copy in Germany in 1966 are the only others to have been sold at auction. H *6668=6667; GW 9379; BMC II, 534 (IB.9348); Bod-Inc. E-26; BSB-Ink. E-88; Arnim/Schaefer 125; Amelung, Frühdruck 109; Schreiber 4106; Goff E-102. Bound in as the front pastedown, now lifted, is part of a rare broadside almanac: HORDT, Jobst. Almanac , in German. [Augsburg: Johann Bämler, c.1484-85]. Broadside. Fragment (c.173 x 271mm) comprising most of 28 lines of text (lines 12-33, of 62), one woodcut of a solar eclipse, double column, type 3:119G. The text gives the phases of the moon and an Aderlass (blood-letting) table. KNOWN ONLY IN A DAMAGED COPY AT THE BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK AND ONE COMPLETE COPY (Schumann, Zurich, 1977; Stogdon catalogue VIII; Christie's, 20 November 2002, lot 94). C 2228; GW 13535; GW (Einbl) 171; Heitz-Haebler 44; BSB-Ink. H-382. Schreiber 3181.