Narratio De Ortv, Vita, Et Obitv…Henrici Bvllingeri…. Accessere Carmina à viris bonis & doctis in eiusdem obitum scripta. Item Oratio Fvnebris…D. Ioanne Gvilielmo Stvkio.
Zürich, C. II Froschauer 1575.
Two parts in one volume. 4to (209 x 143 mm.). 84, 24 leaves. Woodcut Froschauer device on the main and divisional titles.
Contemporary orange vellum (worn, soiled, slightly defective, spine faded), evidence of four pigskin ties, old blue edges.
First Edition of the first two biographies of the Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504-75). Simler was Bullinger’s son-in-law and ward. He contributed the longer of the two, which is a year-by-year account of his mentor’s life emphasizing his work to promote Protestant theological consensus and his leadership of the Zurich church. The second is an elegant humanist funeral oration by Johann Stucki (1542-1607) which places Bullinger in the context of world religious history — in the ranks of the Celtic druids, Hindu Brahmans, Ethiopian sages and Roman priests, but (of course) superior as a Christian Reformer. Between the two biographies, elegies in Latin, Greek and Hebrew laud Bullinger as wise and pious. Blank lower margin of the main title cut away, scattered wormholes in the first gathering. Manuscript ex-libris of grw and scattered reader’s marks, 18th-century bookplate of Friedrich von Mülinen, stamps and bookplates of Stinnecke Maryland Episcopal Library.
¶Backus, Life Writing in Reformation Europe 66-90; Staedtke, Heinrich Bullinger Werke. Erste Abteilung Bibliographie 1040 & 1041; VD 16 S 6507.
Price: $1,200.00