Immaculate Conception of the B.V.M.
TRITHEMIUS, Johannes.
De purissima et immaculata [con]ceptione virginis Marie. Et de festivitate sancte Anne matris ei[us].
[Nuremberg, Peter Wagner, after 17 Sept. 1497].
4to, pp. [15], [1 (blank)]; large woodcut of St Anne to p. [2], capital spaces; stain to fore-edge of first leaf from tab, a couple of small chips to edges, slightly toned; very good in twentieth-century drab blue boards; nineteenth-century bibliographical note to title-page, a few contemporary marginal marks and underlining.
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De purissima et immaculata [con]ceptione virginis Marie. Et de festivitate sancte Anne matris ei[us].
Only edition of a defence of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, drawn from chapter 7 of Trithemius’ De laudibus sanctissimae matris Annae (1494), with a woodcut showing St Anne with the Virgin and Child.
The belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception has a long and varied history and was not without controversy. While St Thomas Aquinas, and hence the Dominicans, opposed the belief ‘on the grounds that in every natural conception the stain of original sin is transmitted and that, as Mary was conceived in the natural way, she was not exempt from this law’ (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church), it was strongly defended by Duns Scotus, and hence the Franciscans, in opposition to the Paris theologians.
The related end matter here is most interesting. First comes a revocation (dated 16 September 1497) by the Dominican preacher Jean Veri apologising to the theology faculty of the university of Paris for a controversial sermon preached on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in the diocese of Rouen, and retracting three propositions made therein, which are described as ‘false, impious, and offensive to pious ears’. Then follows a statement by the Paris theology faculty on the subject (dated 17 September 1497), and the text ends with a list of 82 Doctors of Theology ‘adhering to the purity of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary’, including Benedictines, Cistercians, Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Carmelites.
Trithemius joined the Benedictine monastery of Sponheim in 1482 and just a year later was elected its abbot. ‘He rapidly brought about its reform, collecting a library of MSS which soon made it one of the most famous in Europe … for his last ten years he presided over the Scottish abbey of St Jakob at Würzburg. His writings include many useful historical compilations ... and some fine sermons’ (ibid.).
BMC II 465; Goff T437; ISTC it00437000. ISTC records only seventeen holding libraries, of which only one in the UK (BL) and two in the US (LoC, Morgan Library).
