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1ST ED. EMSER NEW TESTAMENT IN A CONTEMPORARY BLIND-TOOLED BINDING
[BIBLE - NEW TESTAMENT - GERMAN]. EMSER, Hieronymus. Das Naw Testament nach lawt der Christliche(n) kirchen bewerte(n) text, corrigirt, un(d) widerumb zu recht gebracht.
(Colophon: Dresden, printed by Wolfgang Stöckel), 1527. Folio. With 19 full-page apocalypse woodcuts by Lucas CRANACH; 1 full-page woodcut on the title-page (with the letterpress text printed in red in windows), 1 other full-page woodcut (plus 1 repeat) and 7 half-page woodcuts by Georg Lemberger; 1 woodcut half-title; 6 large woodcut pictorial initials (plus 8 repeats), 5 large interlaced (and 1 other decorated) initials (plus 5 repeats) and numerous smaller (mostly Lombardic) initials. With some rubrications and with red manuscript shoulder headings. This copy has 22 small extra woodcuts pasted in the margins, these and some of the initials and half-page woodcuts coloured. Contemporary blind-tooled parchment(?) over wooden boards, in a panel design with a floral roll forming an outer frame and a design with lilies filling the centre, 2 ornamented brass clasps on leather straps with 2 catch-plates, spine with 3 double and 2 single raised bands, pastedowns made from 2 bifolia from a manuscript Vulgate Bible (in red and black) on parchment.
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First edition of the Emser New Testament of 1527, presented as a Roman Catholic refutation of Luther's translation, with the famous Cranach woodcuts and in a fine contemporary binding.
Hieronymus Emser (1477/78?-1527), born in Ulm, received his education at Tübingen and Basel. In 1502 he became a priest. He worked as secretary to Cardinal Peraudi and, from 1505, to Duke Georg von Sachsen, who would become one of the main opponents of the Reformation. From 1511 Emser dedicated himself entirely to his studies and publications. He was in Georg von Sachsen's company during the Leipzig Disputation of June 1519, at which Luther defended his views on indulgences. From that moment on, Emser devoted himself entirely to opposing Luther and the Reformation. He even bought a printing press to facilitate the publication of his writings and those of his friends. His other works have been largely forgotten, but the New Testament stands as the one great monument to his quest.
Emser had already written against Luther's famous and hugely popular translation of the New Testament in 1523 but without much success. At the instigation of Georg von Sachsen he prepared a Catholic counterpart to Luther's translation. The present Naw Testament (The New Testament according to the authorized text of the Christian Church, corrected and revised) caused a storm of protest when it appeared in 1527, because the text was almost identical with Luther's translation, with some minor adaptations taken from the Vulgate and official Catholic doctrine, and some marginal commentaries. Luther called him a "Sudeler" (bungler), and others accused him of plagiarism. But its great similarity to Luther's New Testament also helped the Emser New Testament to become hugely popular. It was reprinted 29 times, and an additional 65 times with the revisions of Dietenberger and Eck, and so contributed to the distribution of Luther's text among Catholic readers.
In his imitation of Luther, Emser even incorporated the woodcuts of Luther's New Testament. Lucas Cranach had made a series of 21 expressive woodcuts for the Book of Revelation. The woodcuts were first published in the famous Septembertestament, the first edition of Luther's translation. The astonishing apocalypse sequence of 21 full-page woodcuts made this work one of the most important woodcut-illustrated books in Germany. The woodcuts were modelled after Dürer's work on the same theme, but Cranach succeeded in revealing Luther's message in his depiction of the apocalypse. The Antichrist, in the figure of a dragon, and the Whore of Babylon, are wearing a papal tiara. This representation amounted to a fierce attack on the Catholic church and was mitigated in the next edition in December 1522, when the papal headdress was replaced with an ordinary crown. The other references to papal Rome, for instance the representation of Babylon by the city of Rome, copied after Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik, were retained.
Emser persuaded Georg von Sachsen to buy the woodblocks and use them in his version of the New Testament. Two woodblocks were probably already impossible to obtain, because the Emser New Testament contains only nineteen of Cranach's woodcuts, numbers five and six being replaced by two half-page woodcuts by Georg Lemberger from Melchior's small folio edition of Luther's New Testament of 1524. Lemberger also made the full-page woodcut for the title-page (depicting God, angels, Jesus with the apostles, prominently featuring Peter, Paul and the Evangelists), one full-page woodcut with Moses and the prophets showing the stone tablets to Mary and the baby Jesus (repeated once), as well as seven half-page woodcuts in the text, showing the risen Jesus with a lion, the presentation of Jesus in the temple, God and the crucified Jesus, the sending out of the apostles, Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, and the two woodcuts noted in the Book of Revelation. Some of these have been signed "G.L." and dated "MDXXVII." Some of the pictorial woodcut initials also come from Luther's New Testament. They show the four Evangelists and Paul. Finally, 22 small woodcuts, some with two or more lines of letterpress text, have been pasted in the margins (one covers a few words of text). We have not determined their source.
With numerous marginal restorations and reinforcements in the first half, very rarely affecting a few words in the shoulder notes or a few letters of the text. Death's face has been abraded in one woodcut, leaving a small hole, and tears run into the text in four leaves. The binding is somewhat worn, with a few minor worm holes, but most of the tooling remains clear. A landmark publication in the history of the Reformation, with some of the finest woodcuts ever made.
