INSTITORIS, Henricus.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Tractatus varii cum sermonibus plurimis contra quattuor errores novissime exortos adversus divinissimus eucharistie sacramentum. First edition. The Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Krämer, or Institoris, won lasting notoriety as the co-author of the witch-finder's handbook, Malleus maleficarum, an edition of which Koberger published only nine days before this treatise, which comprises 36 sermons preached by Krämer in Augsburg Cathedral.Krämer defended the right of the faithful to worship hosts that had been miraculously preserved, in opposition to those such as Jean Gerson who warned against superstitious cults of dubious origin. "The treatise constituted a defence of the so-called wunderbarliches Gut (wondrous good), a miracle-working bleeding host in the Holy Cross church in Augsburg, which was claimed to have been miraculously preserved since its transformation in 1199 and had become the subject of episcopal enquiry and considerable controversy in the 1490s" (Zika). In Krämer's view, incorrupt or bleeding hosts confirmed the Real Presence, and his defence of their veneration was an indirect attack on those who doubted the reality or ubiquity of witchcraft.Provenance: The library of the Order of Hermits of St Augustine in the Monastery of Seemannshausen, Lower Bavaria, with early ownership inscription on title "Ad conventum St. Magdalenae in Seemanshausen ord. Eremitarum S. C. Augustini", and with another fainter inscription above: "Ad usum fratr. August. [?]".

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