{"product_id":"a-swiss-chronicle-caught-in-the-religious-wars-of-1548","title":"A Swiss Chronicle Caught in the Religious Wars of 1548","description":"\u003ch3\u003eJohannes Stumpf’s Monumental Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation in Contemporary Colour and a Dated Nuremberg Binding by Hans Pfister\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStumpf, Johannes. \u003cem\u003eGemeiner Loblicher Eydgnoschafft Stetten\/ Landen vnd Völckeren Chronic-wirdiger thaaten beschreybung […].\u003c\/em\u003e Two parts in one volume. Zurich, Christoph Froschauer, 1548.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the great illustrated chronicles of the sixteenth century: Johannes Stumpf’s monumental history of the Swiss Confederation, magnificently printed by Christoph Froschauer in Zurich in 1548 and preserved here in a partially contemporary coloured copy whose illumination appears to document the confessional tensions surrounding the fall of Protestant Constance in the very year of publication.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith more than 3900 woodcut illustrations drawn from approximately 2500 blocks, including over 1900 coats of arms, coloured maps, city views, battle scenes, genealogies, and historical imagery, the chronicle stands among the most ambitious illustrated historical books of the German Renaissance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe present copy is especially remarkable for the highly selective and ideologically revealing nature of its colouring, which strongly suggests an early Protestant owner connected to Constance during one of the city’s most dramatic moments of crisis.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEdition \u0026amp; Bibliographic Information\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e*6 a-z6 A-Z6 Aa-Ll6; aa-tt6 uu4 xx-zz6 AA-ZZ6 aaa-kkk6 lll4 mmm-zzz6 AAA-KKK6 LLL-MMM6 = 6 leaves, 331 [instead of 332] numbered leaves, 9 leaves of index; 465 [instead of 467] numbered leaves, 1 errata leaf, 9 leaves of index. Lacking leaves E3 (part I, 165), dd2 (part II, 20), II4 (part II, 188, blank), uuu3 (part II, 387), the final blanks Ll6 and MMM6, and the double-page map of the Swiss Confederation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIllustrated with coloured printer’s device on title, 22 coloured maps including eight full-page and four double-page mounted maps, a full-page coloured genealogical tree of the Turkish emperors, approximately 3900 woodcut illustrations, several genealogical tables and chronological diagrams, and numerous decorative initials. Colouring extends through leaf 79 in the first part and selectively throughout the second part, especially in maps, city views, and battle scenes. Folio (380 × ca. 240 mm).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContemporary blind-tooled pigskin binding over bevelled wooden boards on five raised bands with double fillets in spine compartments; covers decorated with ruled frames and roll tools surrounding different central panels on front and rear covers; front cover titled “Schweitzer Cronica” and dated “1591”; preserved brass corner pieces and clasps; remnants of page markers at the beginning of books. Some rubbing and dust-soiling; clasps lacking straps; occasional staining and marginal restorations; final gatherings waterstained.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Great Chronicle of Switzerland\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohannes Stumpf’s \u003cem\u003eChronik\u003c\/em\u003e was among the most ambitious historical publishing projects of Reformation Switzerland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHistorian, theologian, cartographer, and chronicler, Stumpf sought to create a unified historical vision of the Swiss Confederation at a moment when religious conflict threatened to fracture it permanently. The work combines geography, political history, genealogy, ethnography, battle narrative, and civic identity into a vast encyclopedic panorama of Switzerland and its neighbouring territories.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe scale of the illustration program is extraordinary. Maps, coats of arms, city views, battles, rulers, landscapes, and historical scenes unfold across nearly every page, transforming the chronicle into one of the great visual monuments of sixteenth-century printing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA Chronicle Shaped by Confessional Conflict\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat makes the present copy exceptional is the nature of its contemporary colouring.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe illuminator began carefully, using a broad and vivid palette on the title and opening sections, before gradually reducing the colouring programme and ultimately abandoning it except for particularly meaningful images. The selection of coloured views and maps reveals a striking geographic concentration on German-speaking Protestant Switzerland and especially on the Lake Constance region.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConstance itself, although not formally part of the Confederation, is prominently coloured. Nearby trade and transport centres along Lake Constance and the Rhine likewise receive unusual visual emphasis. The colouring therefore appears to reflect not an abstract “Swiss” identity, but the perspective of a specific Protestant milieu centred around Constance and the eastern Swiss trade routes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe year 1548 was catastrophic for Protestant Constance. Following Charles V’s victory in the Schmalkaldic War, the city lost its status as a Free Imperial City and was forcibly recatholicized. The chronicle appeared precisely during this political and religious crisis.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne contemporary marginal note beside the phrase:\u003cbr\u003e“Keiser Fridrich freyet Costentz mit dem Stattamman”\u003cbr\u003eappears to reinforce the owner’s particular concern with the city’s political liberties.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe Extraordinary Illumination of Pope Joan\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe most astonishing illumination in the entire volume appears in the image of Pope Joan.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike the surrounding illustrations, the notorious female pope is rendered with almost luxurious care in turquoise, blue, violet, and extensive gold highlighting. Her body visibly emerges beneath papal vestments while the infant supposedly born during a papal procession appears between her feet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe image functions not merely as decoration, but as confessional satire. In the context of Protestant Constance in 1548, the lavish illumination of precisely this anti-papal image becomes an unusually bold ideological statement hidden within the pages of a historical chronicle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe unfinished state of the colouring may itself reflect the political catastrophe of the owner. The campaign was perhaps interrupted when the changing religious and economic conditions of Constance forced the original patron to abandon or even sell the book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA Nuremberg Binding by Hans Pfister\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome decades later the chronicle reached Nuremberg, where it received its imposing dated pigskin binding in 1591.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe binding bears rolls and plaques associated with the Nuremberg binder Hans Pfister, twice elected head of the city’s guild of binders and active until his death in 1600. Particularly notable are Protestant roll tools incorporating medallions of Luther, Hus, Erasmus, and Melanchthon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe front cover carries a large central Caritas plaque, while the rear features an allegorical figure of Justice. Additional devotional engravings were mounted onto the endleaves, framing the chronicle symbolically between divine mercy and divine judgement.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe binding transforms the chronicle into an imposing Protestant civic object of the late sixteenth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eProvenance\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProbably commissioned by a Protestant citizen of Constance during the political crisis of 1548; later rebound in Nuremberg in 1591 by Hans Pfister. Later ownership stamp of the Bavarian Freiherren von Haysdorf on rear cover.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see \u003cem\u003eWunderkammer\u003c\/em\u003e Catalogue 90, number 50b:\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/issuu.com\/heribert-tenschert\/docs\/katalog_90_vol_1_web?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"\u003eWunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46842485637308,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0736\/1285\/3436\/files\/p019_img01-Photoroom.png?v=1779241863","url":"https:\/\/atelierzweig.com\/products\/a-swiss-chronicle-caught-in-the-religious-wars-of-1548","provider":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}