Ars et modus contemplativae vitae

Description

This edition is a compendium of five short texts intended for the religious edification of members of the clergy. The first work, with the title Ars et modus contemplativae vitae (Techniques for a contemplative way of life), deals with the most important articles of faith central to the contemplative way of life. The text is preceded by a series of captioned medallions containing images that illustrate the themes of the work. These illustrations were pictorial or schematic aids for meditation, as were two further plates depicting the names and attributes of God and scenes from the life of Jesus. The book also contains short treatises on meditation and the art of memorization, an excerpt from a handbook on preaching attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas, and instructions on how to construct an arbor praedicandi (preaching tree), which concludes with a double-page woodcut illustration representing the rhetorical development of a sermon in the form of a tree. The edition was carefully planned to combine the method of printing using movable type with the use of xylographic prints. The woodcuts were printed on separate leaves and bound in at the beginning and end of the book. Using a muller (grinding stone), the woodcuts were transferred onto the dampened paper, which was rubbed onto the inked block with leather bundles. This technique damaged the reverse side of the print, which consequently was left blank. Often such prints were then pasted together to produce double-sided pages. By contrast, typographic printing in a press allowed both sides of the paper to be printed. The book shown here was produced in the workshop of Friedrich Creussner, a printer who was active in Nuremberg from the beginning of the 1470s to the end of the 15th century. Among his more than 140 printed editions, this is the only one to have survived in which he combined xylographic and typographic print methods.