MAURICE VON HESSE-KASSEL

Fourth edition, first published 1589, of this very scarce translation of the Psalms into Latin verse by Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassell, a presentation copy from the author to Daniel Tossanus, with the German polymath Johannes Hartmann, professor of mathematics at the University of  Marburg acting as intermediary, Tossanus gave the book in honour of Maurice to his son-in-law Theodore Haak and grandson Friedrich, in an exceptional commemorative binding of pierced vellum over red silk, with Maurice’s arms at centre.

Psalm translation and metrical paraphrase were central traditions of Protestant worship during the C16th. Maurice’s Psalms are preceded by a Latin laudatory poem to his father, the Lutheran stalwart William IV, also called William the Wise, with a two-line chronogram containing the date of composition, 1589, which was Maurice’s eighteenth year. The Latin Psalms appear in a wide variety of meters, some quite unusual, such as Psalms 97 and 120, in which every line contains only five syllables.

Maurice of Hesse-Kassell, also known as Maurice the Learned, was intensely interested in academic pursuits, so the presentation of his own Latin verses to one noted academic, with another acting as intermediary, makes perfect sense. The University of Marburg, where the mathematician and chemist Johann Hartmann was professor, was the academic jewel in the Hesse-Kassel crown, having been founded by Maurice’s ancestor Philip I in 1527. The religious dimension of the Calvinist Tossanus’s gift to his descendants in honour of Maurice is also unsurprising. Maurice inherited the landgraviate in 1592, immediately becoming a target for both Calvinist and Lutheran proselytisers, as he gradually moved towards a personal conversion to Calvinism, officially declared in 1605, upon which this became the official state religion of the landgraviate. While this edition was the product of another city in Maurice’s possession, the intensely Lutheran city of Schmalkalden, from which the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League derived its name, the gift of this book by a Calvinist theologian resident in Germany clearly expressed hopes for Maurice’s future conversion and for greater security for Calvinists in Europe.

Born in France, Tossanus was educated in Basel and Tübingen. Returning home as a reformed minister in the 1560s, he was subjected to a decade of religious persecution and itinerancy, finally fleeing to Basel as a refugee after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris in 1572. He was appointed chaplain to the Calvinist Count Palatine Frederick III at Heidelberg, but after Frederick’s death and the accession of his Lutheran son, Louis VI, Tossanus was forced to find refuge again, this time in Neustadt with Louis’ Calvinist brother, John Casimir. However, when Louis died and John Casimir acceded, Tossanus was able to return to Heidelberg as professor of theology at the university, where his daughter married one of his students, Theodore Haak, to whom Tossanus gave this book, apparently to commemorate the birth of his grandson Friedrich, about whom nothing is known. Another of his grandsons, Theodore Haak Jr. (1605-90) later came to England and was a member of the "1645 group" who preceded the foundation of the Royal Society.

Pierced vellum bindings of this sort are extraordinarily rare, and many surviving examples are associated with this work and Maurice's presentation copies, attributed to the Schmalkalden binder Hans Bapest of Erfurt. There are a few examples of this work in similar bindings, in green and red silk, including in the Bodleian Library (40.A.111.Th.BS) and British Library (c27e7) and three examples illustrated in Ludwig Bickell, Bucheinbände des XV. bis XVIII Jahrhunderts aus hessischen Bibliotheken (Leipzig: 1892), plate XIX, who records an inscription by Bapest on a copy of Maurice's Psalms in calf, which bore the same tools as the examples in vellum.

Not in USTC. OCLC records three copies of this ed. in the US, at Emory, Duke and Princeton. All early editions are extremely rare.