599J. Balde, Jacobus . (1603-1668)

Reverendi Patris Jacobi Balde e Societate Jesu. Poema. De Vanitate Mundi.

Herbipoli BencardWürzburg.1659 Price $1,000

Page from the book 'De Vanitate Mundi' by Jacob Balde, featuring ornate engravings and text in Latin.

Duodecimo, 12.5 x 7.4. Second edition A⁴–B-N¹² O⁸ (O8 blank and present ,bulls head watermark) This edition has a frontice (bound as A4) ay Wolfgang Kilian.   Bound in beautifully preserved contemporary full sheep decorated in blind with flowers and ivy leaves, lacking ties  

Close-up view of a vintage book with a worn brown leather cover, featuring decorative tooling along the edges and corners.

Faber du Faur , comments that Bade’s verse while of a past time in both Latin and German with “incomparable virtuosity making the whole a remarkable dance of death instilled with terrifying macabre merriment. The poem has also some of the qualities of the Bavarian village feast whichends with a lusty fight and much broken earthenware. In this case ii is the whole earthball which literally goes to pieces”

Illustration of the title page from Jacob Balde's poem 'De Vanitate Mundi,' featuring a child playing with spheres, skulls, and a background of ruins and trees.

Jacob Balde,eventually know as The German Horace” was born 1604, at Ensisheim, Alsace and died in  1668, at Neuburg, in the Bavarian palatinate. He attend the Jesuit school at Ensisheim and while at this school his Grandmother was found guilty of witchcraft, and he had to leave yet he eventually was to finish his education at the University of Ingolstadt and there after entered the order of the Jesuits in 1624; became court-preacher and Bavarian historiographer in Münich, 1640, confessor and court-preacher to the count-palatine, Philipp Wilhelin; and acquired a great fame as a poet, not in his native tongue, or singularly enough his German poetry is but in Latin, as an imitator of Horace, Virgil, etc. He wrote odes, satires, and epics, of a romantic, humorous, and religious character.

His Odae Partheniae to the Virgin were separately published in 1648. His Urania Victrir (1657), describing the contest between the Christian soul and the temptation of the five senses, impressed Pope Alexander VII. so much that he sent the author a golden medal. A collected edition of his works appeared at Cologne, 1660, and a more complete one at Munich, 1729. Minor selections have often been made; for instance, by Orelli, 1805. See Georg Westermayer: Jacobus Balde, sein Leben u. seine Werke, München, 1868.

DeBacker-Sommervogel, Vol. I Col.818 No.5 ; Faber du Faur ; no. 991 Reproduction: Mikrofilm-Ausg./ New Haven/ Research Publications,/ 1969./ 1 microfilm reel./ Yale University Library collection of German baroque literature ; reel 294, no. 991;vd17ppn001188666; VD1723:330685W

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