957J Riederer Friedrich
Spiegel der waren Rhetoric: vsz Marco Tulio Cicerone: vnd andern geteutscht Mit iren glidern clůger reden Sandtbrieffen vnd Formen mencher Contract seltzam Regulierts Teütsch/ vnd nutzbar Exempliert mit füege[n]m vff Götlich vn[d] Keyserlich gschrifft vn[d] Recht gegründet.
Getruckt vn[d] volendet zů Straßburg durch Johannem Knobloch/vnd Paulum Götze[n] 1517 . Price $9,800
Folio 30x 20 cm. Signatures : []⁶, A-V⁶, X⁸, Y-Z⁶, a⁶, b⁸ ((final leaf b₈ blank) Fourth edition (all are very rare) first printed in Freiburg 1493 | Strasbourg reprints (1505/1509/1517). Bound in quarter deerskin of wooden boards clasps and catches lacking. On the title there is a woodcut vignette depicting a master of rhetoric or law seated in a vaulted interior, instructing a younger student. The elder figure, bearded and turbaned in a quasi-orientalizing humanist guise, gestures with his right hand while holding a closed book; the pupil, seated opposite, writes attentively in an open volume placed across his lap. The scene is set within an architectural interior with Gothic windows and a view to a distant landscape. A small dog rests at the student’s feet, reinforcing the domestic and pedagogical setting. Likely intended as an allegory of instruction—rhetoric, dictamen, or legal composition—visually aligning authority, transmission, and practice.
This is the Mirror of true rhetoric; translated from Marco Tulio Cicerone and others, with their members of clever speeches, letters, and forms of many contracts, strangely regulated German, and usefully exemplified, founded on divine and imperial script and law. Among the earliest works of rhetorical theory in the German language, Friedrich Riederer’s Spiegel der waren Rhetoric(Mirror of True Rhetoric) occupies a position of singular importance. Riederer (c. 1450–c. 1510), a humanist-trained clerk and legal practitioner active in Freiburg im Breisgau, sought to assemble the full range of rhetorical knowledge available to him and to render it accessible to practitioners engaged with communication, correspondence, and legal writing.
Conceived as a comprehensive three-part manual in Early New High German, the work integrates rhetorical theory derived from classical and humanist sources with practical instruction in letter writing and the formulation of contracts grounded in Roman and imperial law. Its scope and originality ensured continued use well into the early modern period, and it remains without close parallel among German rhetorical writings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Following its authorial first printing at Freiburg in 1493, the Spiegel circulated in a small number of Strasbourg reissues, culminating in the 1517 Knobloch–Götze edition, which represents the mature and stabilized form of the text at the end of its early sixteenth-century transmission.
While German readers encountered Cicero in scattered moral adaptations and epistolary models in the later fifteenth century, a full vernacular treatment of rhetoric itself remained rare; Riederer’s Spiegel is among the earliest works to translate Ciceronian method into a practical German-language system for writing, persuasion, and legal form.
VD16 R 2341; Benzing 1566 (= Schmidt 136). Stobbe 1, 160. Stintzing-L. I/1, 84. Kaspers 178. Goedeke I, 444.5. Nickisch, Briefsteller 14.
For university and special collections purchases, I am accustomed to working within committee timelines and budget cycles. Titles may be placed on hold during review, and flexible invoicing arrangements can be discussed where appropriate.
I welcome inquiries at jamesgray2@me.com.
Leave a Reply