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Predicting horrible events in Germany

FRIESS(EN) or VRIESE VAN MAASTRICHT, Wilhelm.
Pronosticatio. Etliche seltzame Prophezeiunge, Geweissaget von dem alten M. Wilhelmo Friesen, von Mastrich, welcher newlich gestorben, die bey ihm gefunden nach seinem tode, Vom MDLVIII bis ins LXIII. Jar sich erstrechende, in welchem sehr selzame und greuliche verenderung geweissaget werden.




(Germany), no publ. 1558. 4to. Modern wrappers. (4) lvs.

Very rare dated edition of these prognostications for the years 1558 to 1563 by the physician Wilhem Friess(en), or De Vriese from Maastricht. He has also published a prognostication for the year 1555, brimming with political and religious propaganda. Of the present prognostication, 'found after his death', at least three other editions with the German are recorded, all equally rare: two undated and one also dated 1558, printed in Nurnberg by Georg Kreydlein (VD16 F-2842; ZV 6208-9). There is also a dated edition with a mixed Dutch/German text. Two later editions, translated into Dutch, are listed in Typographia Batavia: one dated 1566, with prognostications from 1558 till 1570 (TB 5396), being a reprint from the edition Antwerp, Frans Fraet, 1557. No copy of either of these two Dutch editions is known. The other edition quoted by Typographia  Batavia  (TB 4427) is published by Cornelis Claesz in Amsterdam in ca. 1587, after the prognostications of Pilgrim Ruth. On the title is mentioned that the text is a translation from the German.
The context in which this prognostication - predicting horrible changes in Germany and the Low Countries - can be seen is Lutheran orthodoxy of the later sixteenth century, marked as it was by a sense of pessimism and anxiety. This was due in part to the apocalypticism at the heart of Luther's theology, but it was also the heritage of failed expectations. Lutheran clergymen doubted whether the movement had succeeded in its essential task, that of winning hearts and minds to the new faith. In the face of this perceived failure, and inspired by the urgency of their moral crusade, the clergy turned to other media in order to preach the faith. One such forum was popular astrology. Lutheran clergymen and almanac writers used almanacs and prognostications to relate the essentials of Luther's moral message. This 'preaching of the stars' projected an image of the natural world ordered and affected by human conduct, and it detailed in signs and wonders a divine anger which could only be overcome through a turn to improved moral conduct and intense faith.

Good copy.- (Very sl. waterstained).
VD16 ZV-17899; Zinner 2191; STC German, p. 321; cf. Typographia Batavia 5396 and 4427; C. Scott Dixon, 'Popular astrology and Lutheran propaganda in Reformation Germany', in: History, 84 (1999), pp. 403-18; not in Adams, NUC, Belgica Typographica, Machiels.

Related Subjects: 16th Century  Germany  Maastricht  Prognostication 

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