896J attributed to Heinrich Vogtherr.

Der güt frum Lutherisch Pfaffen narr haysz ich Der mich kaufft der lesze mich.

(Augsburg: Erhard Oeglin’s heirs, 1521).                                Price $4,600

Quarto 21 x 13 cm. Signatures: A⁴. First  edition (one of four) With nearly full-page woodcut on title by Heinrich Vogtherr after Albrecht Dürer’s Narrenschiff design. Bound in an Antiphonal leaf over boards.

A woodcut illustration from the satirical pamphlet 'Der güt frum Lutherisch Pfaffen,' depicting a figure in early 16th century attire, holding a broom or tool, with a dog lying on the floor and household elements visible in the background.

A rare and striking satirical pamphlet from the turbulent early years of the Reformation, issued in Augsburg only months after the Diet of Worms (1521). The anonymous author—likely one of the humanists and reformers sheltered at Franz von Sickingen’s castle of Ebernburg made the castle famous in the time of the Reformation. He granted protection to early followers of the Reformation and waged war – unsuccessfully – against spiritual and secular princes. (among them Ulrich von Hutten, Eberlin von Günzburg, Johannes Kettenbach, Martin Bucer, and Hans Schweblin)—mounts a scathing indictment of both ecclesiastical and secular authorities.

The author charges the catholics with arbitrariness and neglect of their people’s spiritual and physical welfare, aligning the text with the radical anti-clerical rhetoric that helped shape the popular face of Luther’s cause.

The title woodcut, by Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, reworks an image from Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff as illustrated by Dürer, linking the folly of the clergy with the emblematic iconography of the “Ship of Fools.” This visual repurposing underscores the continuity between late medieval humanist satire and the biting pamphlet literature of the Reformation.

The pamphlet belongs to a group of four satirical and polemical tracts produced at Ebernburg, the so-called “Reichsburg der Reformation.” All were disseminated rapidly and widely, signaling the castle’s importance as a hub of radical print in 1521. This edition is one of four known from that year: Augsburg (this, Erhard Oeglin’s heirs), another Augsburg issue by Jörg Nadler, one from Strasbourg, and one from Erfurt. Surviving copies are scarce, often incomplete, and almost always in institutional collections.

VD16 D 1164 (this edition).  Benzing, Lutherbibliographie, no. 1832.;  Knaake, Ulrich von Hutten und die Ebernburger Drucke, pp. 42–46.