[CATECHISM - LUTHERAN]. SPANGENBERG, Cyriacus.

Catechismus. Die Fünff Heuptstück der Christlichen Lehre, Sampt der Haußtafel, und dem Morgen und Abendt gebet, Benedicite und Gratias, etc. ... Zum andern mal vom Autore selbst corrigiert, und mit fleiß ubersehen.[Erfurt, Georg Bawman], 1565. 4to. With title printed in red and black; 23 woodcut illustrations in the text (7 x 5.5 cm; 1 repeated on title-page), a woodcut tailpiece, 1 large (31 mm) and numerous smaller fraktur initial letters; cast ornaments and pointing hands. Contemporary richly blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards with brass clasps.

      (830) pp. Karlsruher Virt. Kat. (1 copy, UB Tübingen); NUC, vol. 560, p. 215 (1 incomplete copy,U. Illinois); not in Adams; BMC STC German; Cathedral Libraries Cat.; OCLC WorldCat; VD 16. EXREMELY RARE AND BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED Lutheran catechism by Cyriacus Spangenberg (1528-1604), known only from two other copies (one incomplete). It begins with an eight-page foreword by Hieronymus Mencel (1517-1590), dated 1 March 1564, followed by Spangenberg's own four-page note to the reader (where he provides information about his work on his book, begun more than nine years before, and about his late father Johan Spangenberg, a prolific theological author) and two-page dedication to the brothers Otto Heinrich and Johann Friedrich, Dukes of Braunschweig and Lüneburg, also dated 1564 from "Thal Manssfeld." After the catechism comes Die Christliche Haustafel noted on the title-page, with a drop-title on its first page. It provides guidelines for behaviour, with chapters devoted to bishops, ministers and other religious leaders, members of the congregation, people in government, servants, married men and women, parents, children, men and women generally, various sorts of servants and workmen, young people, widows and others.The book did indeed appear in the year 1564, also printed by Bawman in Erfurt. The present edition is new, however, with quite a different collation and corrected by the author. A third edition printed by Michel Schmuck at Schmalkalden appeared in 1566. OCLC WorldCat , the Karlsruher Virt. Katalog and the NUC record several copies of the 1564 and 1566 editions, as well as five later editions before the end of the century, but the only copies located for this first corrected edition are at the Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen and the University of Illinois.The Haustafel begins a new alphabet series in the signatures, and (with a Schwabacher type for its main text and italic for the marginal notes) differs typographically from the rest of the book (which uses a fraktur for its main text with notes in a smaller heavy fraktur and Latin passages in an attractive Venetian-style roman with small capitals), but the two parts use the same rotunda for the running heads and some quotations, and the preliminaries (set in a third fraktur) use both the small fraktur of the catechism and the italic of the Haustafel for its marginal notes. So the colophon at the end of the Haustafel likely applies to the entire book: "Gedruckt zu Erffurdt, durch Georgium Bawman, zum bunten Lawen, bey Sanct Paul."Both boards richly blind-tooled in panels, with roundels containing portraits of Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon and Huss, and in the central panel a larger figure of Justice with sword and scales, with the motto, ":IVSTICIA QVISQVIS PICTVRA:LVMINE CERNIS:DIC*DEVS EST*IVSTVS."Hand-written owners' inscriptions and marginal notes, sixteenth-eighteenth centuries; waterstained throughout, with the title-page damaged (not affecting the text or woodcut), and lacking only the final blank leaf (present in the Tübingen copy; the Illinois copy lacks this and three printed leaves). With minor marginal worm damage in the first forty and last five leaves, not affecting the text or woodcuts, a few minor tears (three very slightly affecting a catchword, one word in a marginal note and three words of the main text) and stains, small corners of two leaves gone (not affecting the text), and the text areas of an occasional sheet browned. Some pages numbered in manuscript to "826" (beginning with "1" on the second leaf and skipping one leaf between pp. "1" and "13"). Binding good, with only a few small wormholes and slightly rubbed. A sound and complete copy of an extremely rare catechism in an interesting and attractive contemporary binding.