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On the abuse of alcohol by the great German chronicler and popular historiographer of the 16th century

FRANCK, Sebastian.
Von dem greüwelichen laster der trunckenhayt so inn disen letsten zeytten erst schier mit den Frantzosen aufkommen, Was füllerey, sauffen und zutrincken, für jammer und unrath, schade der seel und deß leibs, auch armut und schedlich not anricht, und mit sich bringt. Und wie dem ubel zuraten wer, gründtlicher bericht und rathschlag/ auß götlicher geschrifft.

Large woodcut on title with an elaborate banquet and 'Vomitus' scene by H. Weiditz (the Petrarca master), woodcut initials.

(Augsburg, H. Steiner, 1533). 4to. Later marbled boards. Large woodcut on title with an elaborate banquet and 'Vomitus' scene by H. Weiditz (the Petrarca master), woodcut initials. (38) lvs. Collation: A-H4, I2, K4.

One of the 5 issues of this treatise 'concerning the horrible vice of drunkenness' published in 1533, all having 38 lvs. Most of these issues have been printed in Augsburg by H.Steiner. The work was first published in 1531. The extensive VD16 bibliography of German imprints lists 8 1531-issues, all printed in Augsburg by H. Steiner and all having 32 fols. Franck has composed this treatise about the excesses of eating and drinking and the abuse and use of wine and other alcoholic liquids in 1528: the preface is dated 'Justenfelden. Anno Domini M.D. xxyiii (sic)', which caused the assumption that the first edition of Franck's pamphlet was printed in 1528. No issues of 1532 being known, it was frequently reprinted during the 16th century.

The five pp. with mss. notes preceding our copy contain an interesting discussion on the date and order of the first editions and issues, mainly written by Friedrich Latendorf (1831-1898) who in 1876 has edited Sebastian Franck's erste namenlose Sprichwörtersammlung vom Jahre 1532 in getreuen Abdruck.

Sebastian Franck von Werd (1499-1542/3) was a 16th century German freethinker, humanist, and radical reformer who became disillusioned with the Catholic and Lutheran churches and the Anabaptists before abandoning all three. His thoughts and writings led him to a peripatetic existence. He entered the University of Ingolstadt in 1515, and afterwards went to Bethlehem College, incorporated with the university, as an institution of the Dominicans at Heidelberg. Here he met Martin Bucer and Martin Frecht, with whom he probably attended the Augsburg conference in October 1518.
Originally ordained as a priest, in 1525 Franck went over to the Reformed party at Nuremberg and became preacher at Gustenfelden. On March 17, 1528 he married a gifted lady, whose brothers, pupils of Albrecht Dürer, had got into trouble through Anabaptist tendencies. In the same year he wrote this treatise against drunkenness, one of his earliest works, one of the scarce pamphlets against drunkenness published during the Reformation. The treatise is also of medical interest since Franck deals with several illnesses of the body and mind, real or imagined, which are caused by drunkenness. Franck attributed a variety of social ills to alcohol, including blasphemy, idolatry, theft, murder and even the German Peasant War of 1525. The work is dedicated to Wolf von Heßberg, magistrate at Colmburg. All the works by Sebastian Franck were on the index of 1559.
Advance in his religious ideas led him to seek the freer atmosphere of Strasbourg in the autumn of 1529. To his translation (1530) of a Latin Chronicle and Description of Turkey (Turkenchronik), by a Transylvanian captive, which had been prefaced by Luther, he added an appendix holding up the Turk as in many respects an example to Christians. He also substituted, in lieu of the restrictions of Lutheran, Zwinglian and Anabaptist sects, the vision of an invisible spiritual church, universal in its scope. To this ideal he remained faithful. At Strassburg he also published, in 1531, his most important work, the Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel, largely a compilation on the basis of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), and in its treatment of social and religious questions connected with the Reformation
Franck combined the humanist's passion for freedom with the mystic's devotion to the religion of the spirit. Luther contemptuously dismissed him as a mouthpiece of the devil. In 1532 he set up a printing shop in Ulm from whence he was expelled in 1539; he began printing again in Basel in 1541 but died not long after.

Good copy with ownership's entry by Friedrich Latendorf (June 1857).- (With 3 leaves of annotations mainly by Friedrich Latendorf dated 1857, pasted to title with tape; blind stamped library stamp on title; library labels on front cover and spine; some minor staining).

VD 16 F 2142; Goedeke II, 10,6; Kaczerowsky, Sebastian Franck Bibliographie, A 4; Hayn Gotendorf II, 357; P. Hayden-Roy, The inner world and the outer world: a biography of Sebastian Franck (1994), pp. 19-25; not in Vicaire, Adams, Fairfax Murray.

Related Subjects: 16th Century Cultural History Germany Medicine Oenology Pamphlets Reformation Social Science

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