An attractive copy of a staple of sixteenth-century Lutheran education, copiously annotated in at least two contemporary hands.
This work was first published in 1520 by Melchior Lotter in Wittemberg and Leipzig; the present edition is one (possibly the first) of the numerous reprints which quickly followed from presses all over the German Protestant world. It 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 German humanists were enthusiastic in their take-up of Agricola’s De inventione dialectica, to which this work is heavily indebted. Here Melanchthon stresses the humanist movement’s preference for the organisation of arguments, rather than the ‘scientific’ demonstration of truth that had so dominated medieval scholasticism; it is noticeable here that the name of Aristotle is not mentioned, whereas Cicero’s is. The text is divided into four books: ‘De ratione disserendi’, ‘De Pronuntiato’ (2), ‘De argumentatione’ (3), ‘De locis’ (4). It was dedicated in March 1520 (dedication reprinted here) to Melanchthon’s brother-in-law Johannes Schwertfeger (ca. 1488-1524) a jurist and humanist, best known for his involvement in the illustrated book Passional Christi & Antichristi.
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) which indicate that the work was carefully used as a textbook. Marginal notes summarize the text, and pull out and explain key words and subjects. In comparison to the scholarly tone of the majority of the notes, a variant of a well-known, playful syllogism in Latin has been scribbled in an early hand on the verso of the rear blank: ‘qui bene bibit bene dormit/qui bene dormit non peccat…’ [he who drinks well sleeps well/he who sleeps well does not sin/he who does not sin enters God’s kingdom/therefore he who drinks enters God’s kingdom].
Provenance: small modern book label of Hanns-Theo Schmitz-Otto of Cologne (d. 1992) with no. 454. VD16 M2805.
