This work was first published in 1520 by Melchior Lotter in Wittemberg and Leipzig, this is one (possibly the first) of the numerous reprints which quickly followed from presses all over the German Protestant world; it was not used in the Catholic areas and indeed Ignatius Loyola is said to have deprecated its use in a letter to the Jesuit Peter Canisius.
The German humanists were enthusiastic in their take-up of Agricola’s De inventione dialectica published first by Martens in Louvain in January 1515, a work which St John Fisher was reading in May of that year as he mentions in a letter to Erasmus remarking that he would rather have written it that have an archbishopric (Allen Opus ep.ii, no. 336). This work, published decades after Agricola’s death (27 October 1485), had circulated in manuscript form and one which disappeared and then re-appeared in 1528. On 1 May 1528 Alardus of Amsterdam writing to Nicolas Cleynaerts (Clenardus, 1495-1542) speaks at length about the work writing that in his opinion that not even Proserpina carried off by Pluto was more eagerly sought by Ceres than this manuscript which he hopes to publish in Cologne (this detailed letter, referred to by P S Allen in his article in EHR xxi 1(1906) is printed in N. Clénard, Correspondance ed. A. Roersch, Brussels, 1940, I pp. 1-7; II, 1-13 (notes)). It was eventually printed in 1539 in Cologne edited by Alardus (VD16 A1080). The work and its influence is discussed fully by Lisa Jardine in chapter 3 (pp. 83-99) and elsewhere of her Erasmus Man of Letters The Construction of Charisma in Print, with a new preface by the Author. Princeton & Oxford, 2015 .
Melanchthon’s little book is heavily indebted to Agricola and lays stress on the organisation of arguments rather than the ‘scientific’ demonstration of truth as had been the case with late medieval scholasticism which had been largely rejected by the humanist movement. Hre it is noticeable that the name of Aristotle is not mentioned whereas Cicero’s in. This work in its numerous reprintings and edition became a staple of education in Lutheran Germany and in Basel for the rest of the 16th century, particularly in the third much enlarged edition, Erotemata Dialectices, printed first by Lufft in Wittemberg in 1547. The text is divided into four books, ‘De ratione disserendi’, ‘De Pronuntiato’ (2), ‘De argumentatione’(3), ‘De locis’ (4). The work was dedicated in March 1520 (dedication reprinted here) to Johannes Schwertfeger (ca. 1488-1524) a jurist and humanist who was married to Anna Barbara Krapp, sister of M’s wife Katharina. He is best known because of his involvement in the illustrated book Passional Christi & Antichristi. There is a complete English translation of the text of Erotemata by Jeanne Fahnestock (Leiden: Brill, 2021).
This copy has considerable contemporary annotations in at least two hands (both interlinear and marginal, ) scattered throughout but particularly on ff. b2-b5, c1-c6, d1-2 (on d2 recto there is a reference to Agricola). These show that the work was carefully used as a textbook.
Provenance: small modern book label of Hanns-Theo Schmitz-Otto of Cologne (d. 1992) with no. 454.
VD16 M2805.
