First and only 15th-century edition of a devotional work composed by the Carthusian Henricus Arnoldi of Basle (1407-1487), published while he was prior of the Basel Charterhouse; the first book from the press of Michael Wenssler. This devotional treatise on how to attain the true and perfect love of God and of one’s neighbour feels highly personal; unusually for this sort of text, it is written in the first person, as a dialogue, the speakers being ‘ego’ the individual and Dominus, the Lord or God.
Arnoldi entered the Carthusians in 1437, after early studies in Rome and activity as a papal notary at the council of Basel. As prior from 1449-80 of the Charterhouse (St. Margarethental, founded 1403, closed 1526) he was actively engaged in building works, although in 1478 he became paralysed. He also wrote a history of the Charterhouse, which has been printed, and is an important document for the cultural history of Basel. That Arnoldi and his successor Louber were involved with local printers may be seen from such facts as that Amerbach and Johann Petri presented to the Charterhouse in 1488 or 1489 fourteen copies of the edition of Arnoldi’s Meditationes de vita et beneficiis salvatoris with fourteen copies of Gerard of Zutphen De spiritualibus ascensionibus (ISTC ig000177000).
Arnoldi’s text clearly circulated in manuscript at the same time, as surviving in the University Library Basel are two manuscripts both coming from the Basel Charterhouse. They contain this work and a collection De humilitate, one of which (A X 83) is dated 1472 and was written in the Charterhouse by Johann Gipsmüller (the other manuscript is A X 69). The work was quickly printed as one of the copies in Basel UB has a note of purchase on 1 December 1472. Four tracts by Arnoldi tracts were printed between around 1472 and 1500 in ten editions recorded in ISTC, of which one Meditationes de vita et beneficiis Christi, sive Gratiarum actiones was printed in seven editions.
It must have become something of a classic of spiritual writing as in the eighteenth century it was reprinted in volume VI of the Bibliotheca ascetica published at Regensburg 1723-40, edited by the learned librarian at Melk, Bernhard Pez OSB (1683-1735).
This Tractatus is probably the first book printed (anonymously) by Wenssler, who was from Strasbourg and matriculated at the University in Basel in May 1462. A difficult man, who encountered various problems, he was dead by 1512. Much of his output was printed in partnership with Biel, Ruppel and Richel, and consisted of standard works of the period including a number of liturgical texts (including two for the diocese of Salisbury). Wenssler also printed in around 1478 Historia de veneranda compassione B.V. Mariae cum officio (a tract of 8 leaves; ISTC io00051210) which Basel UB attributes to Arnoldi. (For Wenssler’s later career see V. Scholderer ‘Michael Wenssler and his Press at Basel’ reprinted in Fifty Essays in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Bibliography ed. Dennis E. Rhodes, Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger & Co, 1966 pp. 46-60).
RED PRINTING: The short ‘printer’s (?) preface is printed in nine lines of red printing. It gives no author statement but does indicate that the text is by a Carthusian (often the case with Carthusian writers): ‘Tractatus… Editus a quodam cartusiensi ad Dei laudem et aliorum edificacionem’. There follows the prologue and the table of contents, the text proper beginning on f. 6verso. The chapter headings are also printed in red. Many of the chapters begin with the word ‘Ego’ also in red, with some having the word Dominus (or Dns) similarly printed. In the two manuscripts mentioned above ‘Ego’ and ‘Dominus’ are always written in red. The text is written in the first person. It is ‘I’ who addresses the Lord, but sometimes the Lord begins (e.g. chapter 9 & 46).
PRINTING DETAILS: On f. 48 verso which has 23 lines only the incipit for chapter 21 (’[D]e ymagine similitudine dei. in anima [racionali]’ ) is omitted in the text and the word ‘Ego’ only is printed but in black This is the case also in both the copies available on line through ISTC. In the manuscript A X 69 this is written in red as the last 2 lines of f. 47verso, and in ms. A X 83 the heading appears as the second and third lines on f. 69recto. Also, GW 2511 Anmerkung draws attention to some minor printing variants.
MANUSCRIPT ANNOTATIONS AND CHANGES. There is some later (?16th century) marginal manuscript highlighting of passages in the text, sometimes several to a page, and on a couple of leaves another hand appears. These are for the most part in Latin, but one (f. 81verso) is in German. Annotations, with some maniples, extend throughout the whole text, and it is clear that the book has been carefully read and mistakes corrected: the heading for chapter vii is wrongly printed ‘capitulum duodecimum’, the adjective being printed in full and not as a Roman numeral. Similarly, capitulum ix is wrongly numbered xi. Both these have been corrected in ink. The heading for chap. 50 is also printed in full thus ‘Cap. quinquagesimum’.]
Provenance: at head of opening leaf a cropped 16th century inscription relating to a Cologne edition of Dionysius Carthusiensis of 1534.
Armorial booklabel of the 19th-century French bibliophile Henri Joliet (1822-1918) from Dijon, with his monogram CBMHI (Claude Bernard Marguerite Henri Joliet) and the motto “Plus penser que dire”.
ISTC ia01061000. H *11491. GW 2511. BMC III 719. BSB-Ink A-748. Goff A-1061. ISTC list 43 locations, mostly European, with only 3 copies are recorded in US libraries: Harvard, Morgan and Huntington.
