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The Teuffenbach Copy of Melanchthon's ‘Loci Communes’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The Loci Communes is Melanchthon's best known and most important work, the first systematic handbook of reformed theology, first published in 1521 and in numerous other editions since.
In 1949 Professor Carlos Moseley of the University of Oklahoma acquired a copy of the 1548 edition of this book from Germany, which is distinguished not only by the personage of its first owner but also by some autograph entries of prominent leaders of the Protestant Reformation. The copy is bound in a sixteen-century leather binding, brown, with the stamped portraits of Melanchthon on the front and Luther on the back side, each of them accompanied by a distich:
- Ingenium referunt clari monumenta Philippi,
- Corporis effigiem talis imago refert
- Ista representat faciem pictura Lutheri,
- Qui puro Christi dogmata corde doce(t).
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1955
References
1 This sounds like a rather weak attempt to rival the brilliant inscription on Dürer's immortal portrait:
Ingenium referunt clari monumenta Philippi,
Corporis effigiem talis imago refert
Ista representat faciem pictura Lutheri,
Qui puro Christi dogmata corde doce(t).
2 On p. 26 Teuffenbach has entered his name once more, with the date 1548, which seems to be smeared over an old 1551. Under this there is the signature of his brother Gabriel von Teuffenbach.
3 Foerstemann, C. E., Album Academicum Vitenbergense, vol. 1 (1844), p. 237.Google Scholar
4 Much material on Teuffenbach and his family is in C. von Wurzbach's Biographical Dictionary of the Austrian Monarchy. A detailed treatment is said to be in the Notizenblatt der historisch-statistischen Sektion der K. K. Mährisch-Schlesischen Gesellschaft (1876), Nr. 10, p. 74; this journal, however, is not available in U. S. A.
5 Specimens are easily available, e.g., in G. Mentz, Handschriften der Reformationszeit (Bonn, 1912), t.16.
6 ed. Bretschneider, K. G., Corpus Reformatorum, (Halle, 1584-60), vols. I-XXVIII.Google Scholar
7 See the list in the Bretschneider edition, vol. x, p. 425 f.
8 Positively not until 1925, since it does not appear in Fleming's and Voigt's additional lists of Melanchthoniana (in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1910 and 1912) nor in the last Index volume of the Archiv für Reformationsgeschkhte. For the time since 1925 the complete bibliographical reference was not available.
9 Mentz, t.10 and 13.
10 Another engraving, Hercules and Cacus, by Hans Sebald Beham (ca. 1500-50) is pasted into the end cover.
11 Every librarian knows the notorious treasure trove of Luther forgeries fabricated by one Kyrieleis in the 1890's. It is not certain that all of them have been caught. One specimen of them showed up as late as 1941 in a New York sales catalogue (Gimbel Brothers, An Important Collection of Incunabula, New York, 1941, no. 127) The story of Kyrieleis’ enterprise is pleasantly told in Max Herrmann, Bin Feste Burg ist Unser Gott, Berlin, 1905.
12 SeeMentz, t.10.
13 Foerstemann, 1, p. 257.
14 Several Bünaus matriculated at Wittenberg in 1535; Foerstemann, 1, p. 158; one Canitz in 1544, ibid., p. 213.
15 The name of one Nicolaus Bilde, Danus, appears in the Wittenberg matriculation book, though long after Teuffenbach's time (1573).
16 Albert von Wyss was in the Habsburg diplomatic service, like TeufFenbach him-self; see Müller, Ferd. de, Epistolae Imperatorum et Regum Hungariae Ferdinandi I et Maximiliani II ad suos in Porta ottomanka oratores Antonium Verantium, Franciscum Zay, Augerium Busbek, Albertum Wyss et Christophorum Teuffenbach (Pestini, 1808).