A Counter-Reformation Presentation Copy with Illuminated Canon Leaves on Vellum
Missale secundum ritum Augustensis ecclesie diligenter emendatum et locupletatum. Dillingen, Sebald Mayer for Cardinal Otto Truchseß von Waldburg, 1555.
One of the most important German Counter-Reformation liturgical books of the sixteenth century: the Augsburg Missal of 1555 commissioned and financed by Cardinal Otto Truchseß von Waldburg-Trauchburg, printed in Dillingen in the very year of the Augsburg Religious Peace.
The present copy contains the Canon Missae printed on vellum with illuminated woodcuts by Matthias Gerung and survives in its original contemporary binding, probably executed by the Lauingen binder Balthasar Werner for Otto von Waldburg himself. The bishop’s arms remain stamped on the front cover, while the reverse preserves his pelican emblem and motto associated with sacrificial devotion and Catholic renewal.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Large folio (360 × 248 mm). Double-column printing throughout in black and red, with eight leaves on vellum.
Illustrated with a monumental woodcut title border, a full-page woodcut of the Virgin and Child, repeated architectural frames with varying narrative scenes, and three illuminated woodcuts within the Canon Missae: a full-page Crucifixion, a historiated Te igitur initial, and a medallion of the Agnus Dei. The volume further contains around sixty large woodcut initials, more than two hundred medium-sized initials, numerous red lombards and paragraph marks, and musical notation printed in black on red four-line staves.
Contemporary calf binding over bevelled wooden boards, probably by Balthasar Werner of Lauingen, decorated with blind-tooled rolls and Otto von Waldburg’s supralibros. Preserved with traces of original gilding and painted decoration.
Otto Truchseß von Waldburg and the Counter-Reformation
The Missal belongs entirely to the religious and political atmosphere of mid-sixteenth-century Germany.
Between 1489 and 1510 seven editions of the Augsburg Missal had appeared. Then the sequence abruptly stopped under the pressure of the Reformation and the growing Protestant influence within Augsburg itself. Only forty-five years later, in 1555, was a new edition finally produced. It would remain the last Augsburg Missal printed during the sixteenth century.
Its initiator was Cardinal Otto Truchseß von Waldburg-Trauchburg (1514–1573), among the most important Catholic reform figures in the Holy Roman Empire. Otto devoted enormous financial and institutional energy to defending Catholicism in southern Germany after the Protestant advance.
The timing is significant. The book appeared in the same year as the Augsburg Religious Peace, whose concessions to Protestant territories Otto strongly opposed. Rather than retreating, he intensified his efforts at Catholic renewal through education, liturgy, and pastoral reform.
Dillingen and the Jesuit University
Much of Otto’s Counter-Reformation program centered on Dillingen.
There he founded the Collegium St. Hieronymi in 1549, elevated to university status by Pope Julius III in 1551 and later entrusted to the Jesuits under the influence of Petrus Canisius. It became the first Jesuit university in Germany and one of the principal intellectual centers of the Catholic Reformation.
The printer Sebald Mayer, brought to Dillingen by Otto in 1550, formed part of this larger project. His press functioned explicitly as a Catholic instrument against Protestant theology, and the present Missal was regarded even by later bibliographers as his finest typographical achievement.
The Pelican of Dillingen
The title page already announces the ideological character of the book.
Alongside the episcopal arms appears repeatedly the emblem of the pelican feeding its young with blood drawn from its own breast. In Christian symbolism the pelican represents Christ’s sacrificial love, but here the emblem also refers directly to Otto von Waldburg himself and his motto: “Sic his qui diligunt” — “Thus do those who love.”
The symbolism is deliberate. Otto presents himself as a bishop willing to sacrifice himself for the spiritual survival of his diocese during the confessional crisis.
The emblem reappears on the rear cover of the binding, still visible despite centuries of wear.
Matthias Gerung and the Visual Program
The woodcuts are attributed to Matthias Gerung, among the most important south German artists active in the generation after Dürer.
The title border combines saints, heraldry, and emblematic imagery within a monumental Renaissance framework. The full-page Marian image places the Virgin and Child within a celestial vision populated by angels and overshadowed by God the Father himself. Gerung even discreetly inserted his own monogram and the date 1555 into the clouds of the composition.
The repeated architectural frames throughout the volume create unusual visual unity. Their lower sections alternate scenes from the life of Christ with legendary material, while the Canon Missae returns to more traditional imagery through the illuminated Crucifixion, the historiated Te igitur initial, and the Agnus Dei medallion printed on vellum and coloured in strong blues, reds, greens, and gold-browns.
A Bishop’s Presentation Copy
Otto von Waldburg not only financed the printing of the Missal. He also distributed copies to ecclesiastical institutions throughout his territory as part of his broader pastoral and confessional program.
The present example appears to have been one such presentation copy. The binding, likely commissioned directly by the bishop, prominently displays his arms on the front cover and his pelican emblem on the rear.
Despite losses to the clasps and some evidence of use, the volume survives in notably strong condition. Nagler already observed in the nineteenth century that copies had often been broken apart because of the desirability of Gerung’s woodcuts. Complete copies, especially with illuminated vellum canon leaves and original bindings, are therefore exceptionally uncommon.
Provenance
Cardinal Otto Truchseß von Waldburg-Trauchburg, with his supralibros on the binding. Later institutional ownership with shelfmarks repeated on the title. Possibly the copy described by E. P. Goldschmidt in Catalogue XVI (London, 1929), no. 64.
Literature
Adams L 1178; BM STC German 512; Brunet III, 1766; Bucher 39; Butsch II, 41; Dodgson II, 213; Ebert 14145; Graesse IV, 543; VD16 M 5556; Weale/Bohatta 109; Haebler I, 474–475.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 27:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
