ARS MORIENDI [German:] Kunst des Sterbens. -GERARDUS DE VLIEDERHOVEN. Cordiale de quattuor novissimorum [German:] Die vier letzten Dinge. [Augsburg: Johann Bämler at the Monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra], 1473.

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ARS MORIENDI [German:] Kunst des Sterbens. -GERARDUS DE VLIEDERHOVEN. Cordiale de quattuor novissimorum [German:] Die vier letzten Dinge. [Augsburg: Johann Bämler at the Monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra], 1473.

Median 2° (206x138mm). 19 (of 193) only, comprising 17/9-10 1810 19/1-5, i.e. Ars moriendi and part 1 of the Cordiale, and lacking other parts, for which see below. 29 lines. Type: 2:138G. One 5-line initial space blank, 2-to 4-line initials and paragraph marks in red. (Closely trimmed, rehinged to form new quires of 8 and 11 leaves.) Nineteenth-century leather-backed speckled paper over pastepaper boards. Provenance: annotations in German in a 17th-century hand following the first tract; ex dono R. D. Rosbichler nunc loci Capucini on front flyleaf; stamp of a Capuchin convent on the first leaf.

FIRST EDITION IN GERMAN of the immensely popular Ars moriendi and Cordiale, although of the second work only the first part, concerning dying, is present. These tracts are part of a volume of six works: Gregory I, Dialogorum libri quattuor: Das buch der zwäyer red mit ainander; Tundalus, De eius visio sive de raptu animae: Die Gesicht Tundali; Bede, Visio Fursei: Das Wunderzeichen des Bischoff Forsee; Speculum mundi: Spiegel der Welt. They are assigned to Bämler, working not on his own account but for the Monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra at Augsburg, on the basis of the type and a confluence of contemporary documents. An early chronicler of the monastery names this collection as one of the books printed there before the death of Abbot Melchior von Stamhaim, a contemporary inscription in a copy at the British Library names the monastery as the place of printing, and the book does not appear in the advertisement printed by Bämler in 1473, thus indicating that the edition was not his to sell. Bämler reprinted this same collection in 1476. H *7970; GW 11405; BMC II, 332 (IB. 5653); Goff G-408; Pellechet 5360; IDL 2084; BSB G-302

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