After the dedication there follows a short preface by Vincent Lirinensis, a Frenchman, in a more robust and militant register, entitled ‘Against profane innovations’. Then Hoffmeister lists a catalogus patrum of some forty patristic authorities from whom he cites opinion, and throughout his text places in the margin the name of the authority on whom he is there relying. Virtually all his paragraphs have one or more references to patristic texts with chapter and page cited, taking points which may have been in dispute and setting out the Catholic position with support from the Fathers or sometimes from the decisions of a Council.

The binding uses a structure borrowed directly from late-medieval archival binding practice, with transverse twisted tackets and the sewing reinforced by support-stiffeners made from short lengths of brass rod. It is certainly north German, probably Westphalian. Bound with the Hoffmeister is a rare, early edition of John Caspar Rutland’s similarly-titled Loci communes Theologici, qui hodie potissimum in controversia agitantur … (Antwerp, Willem Simone, 1560), pp. [viii], 146, [1], with Q1 torn away.

Very rare: VD16 H 4269; not in BM STC German Books, 1455–1600; this edition not in Adams (which lists five later editions); OCLC locates a copy at Emory University only; on the binding, see Nicholas Pickwoad’s chapter ‘Tacketed bindings: a hundred years of European bookbinding’ in ‘For the Love of the Binding’: studies in bookbinding history presented to Mirjam Foot, ed. David Pearson (British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2000).
      [Bookseller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd.]