Hardcover
1496 · Nuremberg
by Institoris, Henricus [Heinrich Kramer] (c.1430-1505)
Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 26 Jan, 1496. SOLE EDITION. Hardcover. Fine. Bound in contemporary half-pigskin, ruled and stamped in blind, over wooden boards, lacking the catch-plate and clasp, with notch in the wood of the lower board where the strap has been removed (a few wormholes, small hole in the pigskin, binding lightly soiled.) With an original title label affixed to the upper board. Internally a fine copy with these exceptions: the title is soiled and stained, and frayed at the corners. A very light angular damp-stain affects the opening leaves. The text is otherwise very crisp and in fine condition. Rare. ISTC locates 9 North American copies: Harvard, LC, Columbia, Huntington, Illinois, Yale (2), Texas A&M, and Univ. of California Law Library. Sole edition of this remarkable work, full of the marvelous and the bizarre, by the author of the “Malleus Maleficarum”, defending the doctrines of the “real presence” (i.e. that Christ is truly present in the consecrated host) and of transubstantiation (the miraculous transmutation of the wafer into flesh and blood) against claims to the contrary.
The author discusses witchcraft (and attacks “dangerous and uneducated” preachers who do not believe in witches and demons), the worship of miraculous religious relics, heretical beliefs (especially those of the Hussites, a favorite target), and practices punishable by excommunication (such as worshipping a decayed Eucharist.) Kramer lauds the ability of certain pious women -including the mystic Catherine of Siena- to live without eating anything but the Eucharist; and certifies the miracle of a Eucharist (still to this day venerated at Augsburg) that, miraculously, had turned into human flesh.
Kramer wrote the book, “Various Tracts with Many Sermons against Four Errors Appearing Recently against the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist” after participating in a public disputation in Venice, occasioned by controversial claims that one could not know with certainty that Christ was present in the Eucharist.
The defense of the “real presence” was a central theme in Kramer’s persecution of witchcraft. The desecrated host was a powerful tool for witches and the demons who seduced them, as demonstrated in Kramer’s famous tale of the “Toad Witch” (in which a woman, directed by a demon, stole a consecrated Eucharist and buried it with a toad in order to work malevolent magic.)
“Desecration of the host became a regular feature of witchcraft mythology at an early stage… A fundamental characteristic of early witchcraft theorists was their craving for empirical confirmation of eucharistic reality, made evident by their frequent and vivid descriptions of witches mishandling the sacrament. Eucharistic desecration was necessary to the logic of witchcraft: it too was corporeal interaction with the supernatural. The eucharist was commonly defined by theologians as ‘corpus verum’, the true body of Christ. Just as the virtual body of demons had to make imperceptible demonic reality evident, so the Lord's body was required to demonstrate its hidden nature to human perception. The ‘corpus demonis’ [“the body of the demon”, i.e. physical manifestations of demonic activity] and the ‘corpus domini’ [the Eucharist, in which God is made flesh] were subject to the same doubts.”(Stephens, “Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief”, p. 209)
The Eucharistic Miracle at Augsburg:
Kramer devotes a large section of the third part to defending the truth of a miraculous host venerated at Augsburg since the late 12th century.
“In 1194, a woman from Augsburg who was particularly devoted to the Most Holy Sacrament, received Holy communion. After communion, without being noticed, she put the Host in a handkerchief, took the Blessed Sacrament home and placed it in a container of wax inside a cupboard. Five years passed and on the 11th of May 1199, the woman, tormented by remorse, confessed to the superior of the convent of the Heilig Kreuz, Father Berthold, who had her bring the Host back. The priest opened up the wax covering that enclosed the Host and saw that the Holy Eucharist had been transformed into bleeding Flesh. The Host appeared “divided into two Parts connected together by the thin threads of the bleeding Flesh.” Father Berthold went immediately to the bishop of the city of Udalskalk who ordered that the Miraculous Host be “transferred, accompanied by the clergy and by the people into the cathedral and exhibited in an ostensorium of crystal for public worship.”
“The miracle continued: the Host began to grow from Easter Sunday until the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Following this, Bishop Udalskalk had the Host brought back to the convent of the Heilig Kreuz and proclaimed that “in memory of such a memorable and extraordinary event,” there should be a special commemoration each year in honor of the holy relic. In 1200, Count Rechber donated to the Augustinian Fathers a rectangular chest of silver with an opening in the front for the placement of the Host of the miracle. Besides the Eucharistic miracle, other extraordinary incidents took place. There was an apparition of the Host accompanied by the Baby Jesus dressed in white, His face radiant, and His forehead encircled with a crown of gold. In another instance, the crucifix in the church began to bleed.”(“The Eucharistic Miracle at Augsburg”, The Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association)
Catherine of Siena: The Eucharist as Sustenance:
“[In] his ‘Tractatus varii’, which he had probably begun writing during his sojourn in Venice, Kramer explicitly refers to the Sienese mystic Catherine of Siena’s Eucharistic devotion. Kramer’s praise of Catherine’s mystical gits appears in one of his ‘sermons on the body of Christ, very useful against certain new heresies that in the present times sprout up in the world’, namely against the errors of Hussite groups in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Noting Catherine’s recent canonization by Pius II, Kramer advised preachers active in regions infested by Hussite heresies to mention her Eucharistic ‘inedia’ (ability to live without eating or drinking) in their sermons. According to Kramer, Catherine’s total abstinence from earthly nourishment, and her subsistence on the Eucharist alone ‘for many months’, serves as a proof for the miraculous powers of consecrated hosts, and hence of the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was rejected by Hussite groups such as the Bohemian Brethren.”(Herzig, Italian Holy Women against Bohemian Heretics, in Catherine of Siena, The Creation of a Cult, p. 317-18)
See also: Charles Zika, “Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany,” Past and Present 118 (1988), pp. 25–64 (esp. pp. 27-8). (Inventory #: 5138)
The author discusses witchcraft (and attacks “dangerous and uneducated” preachers who do not believe in witches and demons), the worship of miraculous religious relics, heretical beliefs (especially those of the Hussites, a favorite target), and practices punishable by excommunication (such as worshipping a decayed Eucharist.) Kramer lauds the ability of certain pious women -including the mystic Catherine of Siena- to live without eating anything but the Eucharist; and certifies the miracle of a Eucharist (still to this day venerated at Augsburg) that, miraculously, had turned into human flesh.
Kramer wrote the book, “Various Tracts with Many Sermons against Four Errors Appearing Recently against the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist” after participating in a public disputation in Venice, occasioned by controversial claims that one could not know with certainty that Christ was present in the Eucharist.
The defense of the “real presence” was a central theme in Kramer’s persecution of witchcraft. The desecrated host was a powerful tool for witches and the demons who seduced them, as demonstrated in Kramer’s famous tale of the “Toad Witch” (in which a woman, directed by a demon, stole a consecrated Eucharist and buried it with a toad in order to work malevolent magic.)
“Desecration of the host became a regular feature of witchcraft mythology at an early stage… A fundamental characteristic of early witchcraft theorists was their craving for empirical confirmation of eucharistic reality, made evident by their frequent and vivid descriptions of witches mishandling the sacrament. Eucharistic desecration was necessary to the logic of witchcraft: it too was corporeal interaction with the supernatural. The eucharist was commonly defined by theologians as ‘corpus verum’, the true body of Christ. Just as the virtual body of demons had to make imperceptible demonic reality evident, so the Lord's body was required to demonstrate its hidden nature to human perception. The ‘corpus demonis’ [“the body of the demon”, i.e. physical manifestations of demonic activity] and the ‘corpus domini’ [the Eucharist, in which God is made flesh] were subject to the same doubts.”(Stephens, “Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief”, p. 209)
The Eucharistic Miracle at Augsburg:
Kramer devotes a large section of the third part to defending the truth of a miraculous host venerated at Augsburg since the late 12th century.
“In 1194, a woman from Augsburg who was particularly devoted to the Most Holy Sacrament, received Holy communion. After communion, without being noticed, she put the Host in a handkerchief, took the Blessed Sacrament home and placed it in a container of wax inside a cupboard. Five years passed and on the 11th of May 1199, the woman, tormented by remorse, confessed to the superior of the convent of the Heilig Kreuz, Father Berthold, who had her bring the Host back. The priest opened up the wax covering that enclosed the Host and saw that the Holy Eucharist had been transformed into bleeding Flesh. The Host appeared “divided into two Parts connected together by the thin threads of the bleeding Flesh.” Father Berthold went immediately to the bishop of the city of Udalskalk who ordered that the Miraculous Host be “transferred, accompanied by the clergy and by the people into the cathedral and exhibited in an ostensorium of crystal for public worship.”
“The miracle continued: the Host began to grow from Easter Sunday until the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Following this, Bishop Udalskalk had the Host brought back to the convent of the Heilig Kreuz and proclaimed that “in memory of such a memorable and extraordinary event,” there should be a special commemoration each year in honor of the holy relic. In 1200, Count Rechber donated to the Augustinian Fathers a rectangular chest of silver with an opening in the front for the placement of the Host of the miracle. Besides the Eucharistic miracle, other extraordinary incidents took place. There was an apparition of the Host accompanied by the Baby Jesus dressed in white, His face radiant, and His forehead encircled with a crown of gold. In another instance, the crucifix in the church began to bleed.”(“The Eucharistic Miracle at Augsburg”, The Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association)
Catherine of Siena: The Eucharist as Sustenance:
“[In] his ‘Tractatus varii’, which he had probably begun writing during his sojourn in Venice, Kramer explicitly refers to the Sienese mystic Catherine of Siena’s Eucharistic devotion. Kramer’s praise of Catherine’s mystical gits appears in one of his ‘sermons on the body of Christ, very useful against certain new heresies that in the present times sprout up in the world’, namely against the errors of Hussite groups in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Noting Catherine’s recent canonization by Pius II, Kramer advised preachers active in regions infested by Hussite heresies to mention her Eucharistic ‘inedia’ (ability to live without eating or drinking) in their sermons. According to Kramer, Catherine’s total abstinence from earthly nourishment, and her subsistence on the Eucharist alone ‘for many months’, serves as a proof for the miraculous powers of consecrated hosts, and hence of the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was rejected by Hussite groups such as the Bohemian Brethren.”(Herzig, Italian Holy Women against Bohemian Heretics, in Catherine of Siena, The Creation of a Cult, p. 317-18)
See also: Charles Zika, “Hosts, Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany,” Past and Present 118 (1988), pp. 25–64 (esp. pp. 27-8). (Inventory #: 5138)
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