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Meditationes Sacrae (1603/4) by Johann Gerhard; Johann Anselm Steiger Review by: David Whitford The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 536-537 Published by: The Sixteenth Century Journal Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2671668 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 13:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Sixteenth Century Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:18:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Meditationes Sacrae (1603/4)by Johann Gerhard; Johann Anselm Steiger

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Page 1: Meditationes Sacrae (1603/4)by Johann Gerhard; Johann Anselm Steiger

Meditationes Sacrae (1603/4) by Johann Gerhard; Johann Anselm SteigerReview by: David WhitfordThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 536-537Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2671668 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 13:18

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheSixteenth Century Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:18:27 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Meditationes Sacrae (1603/4)by Johann Gerhard; Johann Anselm Steiger

536 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXI/2 (2000)

stdnde, etate cotifectus with Altersschwdche, coelurn with Klirna, to name only a few examples. In his substantial Nachwort, Schneider not only describes the Aesop-print of 1501 as well

as the print of the Additiones, the subject of Schneider's edition, but also analyzes Brant's intentions and methods, noting that he sometimes copies his source in its entirety, while in other cases he adds his own personal experiences, concluding with a moral lesson. Espe- cially at the beginning of the collection there are relatively frequent expansions and attempts to arrange the individual texts according to themes.This thematic principle, how- ever, was soon abandoned, because, as Schneider argues, Brant rushed to finish the work as quickly as possible before his planned move from Basel to StraBburg where he assumed the position of syndicus in 1501.

One of the attractive features of the edition are the woodcuts, reproduced in this vol- ume, and Schneider devotes a brief but insightful discussion to them. Different from those of the Aesop-edition, these woodcuts have finer and richer lines and show a more fully developed background. Schneider also convincingly argues that these woodcuts appear to have been original creations for the 1501 print, and not recycled from previous editions, as was so often the case at that time, originating most probably in the workshop of Johann Griininger, one of the most important printers in StraBburg and one with whom Brant had contact long before he moved to StraBburg from Basel.

In a final section, Schneider analyzes the impact of Brant's edition. Although the Latin edition was never reprinted, the German translation of 1508 by Johannes Adelphus Muling was reissued deep into the seventeenth century and no fewer than twenty-one editions up to 1679 are known.

With his attractively printed edition of Brant's Additionies Bernd Schneider has made accessible a delightful and important book. His edition is a solid piece of scholarship but also fun to read.What more can you expect from a scholarly book? Eckhard Bernstein ............. College of the Holy Cross

Meditationes Sacrae (1603/4). Johann Gerhard. Mit einem Faksimile des Autographs, Kritisch herausgegeben und kommentiert. Ed. Johann Anselm Steiger. Doctrina et Pietas: Abteilung 1, Johann Gerhard-Archiv, Bd. 2. Stuttgard-Bad Cannstatt: From- mann-Holzboog, 1998. 199 pp. DM 112.00. ISBN 3-772818-23-4.

"We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants; thanks to them, we see farther than they. Busying ourselves with the treatises written by the ancients, we take their choice thoughts, buried by age and human neglect, and we raise them, as it were from death to renewed life." Johann Anselm Steiger takes Peter of Blois's aphorism to heart. If anyone lies buried by age and neglect it is Johann Gerhard.

Like many other leading figures of "Protestant Orthodoxy," Gerhard has been set aside in the twentieth century. In the seventeenth century if one wanted to know what the For- mula of Concord meant or what Luther intended, one looked to Gerhard for wisdom and direction. However, today, in a brief review of church history books, Gerhard receives little more than a line or a paragraph. Steiger is on a mission to bring Gerhard from death to renewed life.

This is the second volume in a series of Gerhard works that will include critical editions, translations, and studies of Gerhard.Volume 1 is a study of Gerhard in which Steiger argues for a more sympathetic interpretation of him as a pastoral theologian instead of a dry systematician. This volume is a critical edition of Gerhard's Meditationes Sacrae in Latin. Steiger intends volume three to be a new translation of the Meditationes in German.

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Page 3: Meditationes Sacrae (1603/4)by Johann Gerhard; Johann Anselm Steiger

Book Reviews 537

The Meditationes Sacrae was certainly Gerhard's most popular work.Written in 1604-5, it is, Steiger argues, a response to his near death in 1603.As such, it is a deeply personal and devotional work. During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries it remained very popular and was translated into nearly all European languages as well as some eastern languages.

The volume begins with nearly eighty pages of photographs of the 1606 autograph. Steiger's transcription follows the photographs. He does a very thorough and faithful tran- scription of the text. One of the challenges in all autograph transcription is deciphering the shorthand. Thankfully, Steiger provides a very helpful list of the abbreviations and their meaning.

Steiger's use of two sets of footnotes (numeric and alphabetic) is also very helpful. The alphabetic footnotes provide the reader with a behind-the-scenes view of the Meditationes as Gerhard continued to shape and change the text over time and subsequent publications. The numeric footnotes provide scriptural references inferred in the text but not explicitly stated as well as quotes from texts by poets, philosophers, and theologians to which Gerhard refers.

Generally, the volume is a very thorough and faithful edition of the Meditationes. The inclusion of the photographs is especially appreciated because it allows one to make up one's own mind concerning the faithfulness of the editor's work.The only significant short- fall of the book the epilogue.

The epilogue is only five and a half pages long and attempts in those brief pages to sum- marize the intent of the critical edition, the style and composition employed in the edition, as well as the significance of the Meditationes generally and of this edition specifically. Finally, the provenience of the autographs, the work's relationship to events in Gerhard's life, and the connection between this set of autographs and later editions is summed up in little more than two paragraphs. In other words, the epilogue is hurried and incomplete and left this reader with more questions than answers.

All in all, this volume is a significant (if at times frustrating) contribution to Gerhard scholarship. Steiger's shortcomings here are sins of omission rather than commission and Steiger is to be commended for his effort to revive Gerhard for a new generation. David Whitford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Claflin University

Zauberglaube und Hexenangst im Kurffirstentum Mainz: Ein Beitrag zur Hexen- frage im 16. und beginnenden 17.Jahrhundert. Herbert Pohl. Stuttgart: Franz SteinerVerlag, 1998. 392 pp. DM 120.00. ISBN 3-515-07444-9.

The book under review here appeared in 1988 under the title Hexenglaube lind Hexenlver-

folgvng in Kurfarstenutn Mainz as volume 31 in the series Geschichtliciie Landeskutnde 32. Already then Pohl's work was welcomed as an important contribution to regional historical research on the witch phenomenon, and the publisher SteinerVerlag is to be commended for authorizing a second amended edition. Much has happened in witchcraft research since the paradigm shift in the early seventies when our understanding of the phenomenon's impact, evolution, numbers of people involved, and the effect on those caught in the machinery of the inquisition, on their families and communities was significantly reshaped by the work of H. C. Erik Midelfort and those who followed him.

In this tradition, Pohl investigates the extent documents relating to witch trials in Kur- mainz and some of the adjacent areas fell within the jurisdiction of the elector. The years covered stretch roughly from 1600 to a bit beyond 1630.Any doubt by the uninitiated as to

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