Rare German edition of a letter Erasmus sent to the papal legate Lorenzo Campeggi (1474-1539) on August 18, 1530. In this letter, Erasmus expresses his fear that the Holy Roman Emperor would declare war to the Protestant German princes, and explains in 17 articles why violence is not the answer. He never printed the letter himself and it probably never reached Campeggi. According to Allen, Erasmus wrote that "it was intercepted by the treachery of some unnamed 'evangelical' and printed without authority in Strasburg". The letter was translated into German and indeed published several times in Strasbourg, Wittenberg, Magdenburg, and Nuremberg, in 1531. The present edition does not have an imprint, but was either printed in 1531 in Strasbourg by Georg Ulricher, or in 1546 in Nuremberg by Wolfgang Heußler. It is quite rare, as we not been able to find any other copies of the present edition in sales records of the past hundred years.
With a red bookbinder's label ("Period Bookbinders Bath, England") mounted on the recto of the last free flyleaf. The work is lightly browned and foxed, the inner margins have been reinforced. Otherwise in good condition. Bezzel 26; Erasmus Online 1874; USTC 704493 and 704494; VD16 E 1881 and VD16 E 1882; Vander Haeghen I, 88; not in Adams; BM STC German; De Reuck; cf. Allen, Opus Epistolarum Erasmi, vol. IX, intro. to Ep. 2366.