[30] This was no uncommon representation in the early period of art. "In the church of St. Peter the Younger, at Strasbourg, about the year 1515, there was a kind of large printed placard, with figures on each side of it, suspended near a confessional. On one side, was a naked Christ, removing the fire of purgatory with his cross, and sending all those, who came out of the fire, to the Pope--who was seated in his pontifical robes, having letters of indulgence before him. Before him, also, knelt emperors, kings, cardinals, bishops and others: behind him was a sack of silver, with many captives delivered from Mahometan slavery--thanking the supreme Pontiff, and followed by clergymen paying the ransom money to the Turks. There might also be seen captives, at the bottom of a deep well, shut down by bars of iron; and men, women, and children, making all manner of horrible contortions. "Those, says the chronicler Wencker, "who saw such a piteous sight, wept, and gave money liberally--for the possession of indulgences;--of which the money, raised by the sale, was supposed to be applied towards the ransom of Christian captives." HERMANN; Notices Historiques, &c. de Strasbourg: vol. ii. p. 434.
[31] His account of the PRINTED BOOKS in the XVth century, in the monastery above mentioned, was published in 1786, in 2 vols. 4to. That of the MANUSCRIPTS, in the same monastic library, was published in 1791, in 2 vols. or rather perhaps, six parts, 4to.
[32] Among the books in this monastery was an uncut copy of the famous edition of the Meditationes J. de Turrecremata, of the date of 1467, which is now in the Library of Earl Spencer. In Hartmann Schedel's Chronicon Norimbergense, 1493, fol. CLXII, are portraits of the Founders of the Town and Monastery of Eichstadt, or EISTETT; together with a large wood-cut view of the town. This monastery appears to have been situated on a commanding eminence.
[33] [This Abbey was questionless one of the most celebrated and wealthy in Europe. The antiquarian reader will be pleased with the OPPOSITE PLATE--presenting a bird's eye view of it, in the year 1619--(when it stood in its pristine splendour) from the Monasteriologia, attached to the Imagines Sanctorum.]
[34] In the BAVARIA SANCTA of RADERUS, 1615-27, 3 vols. folio, will be found a succession of martyrological details--adorned by a series of beautiful engravings by Ralph Sadeler. The text is in Latin, and the author has apparently availed himself of all the accessible authorities, in manuscript and print, which were likely to give interest and weight to his narrative. But it seems to have been composed rather for the sake of the ENGRAVINGS--which are generally most admirably executed. Great delicacy and truth of drawing, as well as elegance of grouping, are frequently discernible in them; and throughout the whole of the compositions there is much of the air of Parmegiano's pencil; especially in the females. Sadeler makes his monks and abbots quite gentlemen in their figures and deportment; and some of his miracles are described with great singularity and force of effect.
[35] Such is ZAPF'S work, entitled Annales Typographiæ Augustanæ, 1778; 4to. republished with copious additions in 1786, two volumes, 4to. The text of the latter is (unfortunately, for the unlearned) printed in the German language.
[36] [This Latin Bible came from the Eichstadt Monastery.]
[37] Bibliographical Decameron, vol. iii. p. 115.
[38] See the Bibliographical Decameron, vol. ii. p. 170. &c.
[39] [The first Horace, the Cicero Epist. ad Familiares, 1469, the Latin Bible by Frisner and Sensenschmidt, 1475 and the Polish Bible of 1563, (all so warmly and so justly eulogised in the above pages) have been reposing these last ten years in the library of Earl Spencer: and magnificent and matchless as is that library, it contains no FINER volumes than the four preceding. I conclude this detail by subjoining the Autographs of the two BIBLIOGRAPHICAL WORTHIES who have cut such a conspicuous figure in the scene above described. The latter is now NO MORE.]