Dat vitrum vitreo Jonæ vitrum ipse Lutherus
Ut vitro fragili similem se noscat uterque.
Then, beautifully written and illuminated, there is a breviary (1350?) of an English Queen with the inscription:—
La Liver du Roy de France Charles
Done a Madame la Roigne D’engleterre.
Among the early printed books is a copy of the “Rationale Durandi” (1459, Mainz), of “Boccaccio” (1472, Mantoni), and of the “Florentine Homer” (1488).
Matthäus Landauer’s Almshouse—Landauer’sche Zwölfbrüderhaus (east end of Ægidien Platz) has frequently been mentioned. The almshouse has now been turned into a school of technical design, but the chapel (1502) will repay a visit. The roof, supported by two spiral columns, has the cone-shaped pendants of the contemporary English style, very exceptional in Germany. It was for this church that Durer painted his All Saints’ picture, now at Vienna.
There were many foundations, in the old days, for the relief of the sick and needy. Amongst others were two houses for waifs and strays, founded no one knows by whom. They were transferred later to the Barfüsser Kloster. In connection with this institution a charming annual procession takes place. One charitable lady, Elizabetha Krauss, left in 1639 a sum of money to provide the children with a good dinner on St. John’s Day. In grateful memory the children always go on that occasion to the St. Rochus Churchyard. On their way they must pass the corner house near the Karlsbrücke. On that house is the statue of a youth, busily engaged in pounding with pestle and mortar. People say this figure represents the apprentice of an apothecary who once lived there. And because the apprentice ran away from his work to gaze at the procession of children, who clad in red and white, and, roses themselves, crowned with garlands of roses were wending their way hand in hand to the tomb of their benefactress, his master grew so angry that he killed the lad.
It is in the churchyard of
St. Rochus
that Peter Vischer (90) lies buried (Rothenburger Strasse). In the church itself are some paintings after Durer, some altar-pieces by Veit Stoss (?), and some glass by Veit Hirschvogel. But the chief burial-place of Nuremberg from the sixteenth century, and one of the most peculiar and impressive spots of the town, is the Churchyard of St. John. For this has been the burial-place of the Nuremberg patricians from generation unto generation, ever since in 1517 the Council decreed that everybody, with the exception of the clergy, must be buried in St. John’s Churchyard, and no longer in the churches within the town. Such a wise measure of compulsory extramural interment must have been almost without parallel at that time.