For promoting the war against the Turks: the only xylographic indulgence form of the fifteenth century

Sixtus IV, Pope. (Indulgence for the war against the Turks). Forma confessionalis et absolutionis ad opus sanctae cruciatae.

€ 65,000.00

Scarce indulgence for the crusading, promulgated by Pope Sixtus IV in 1480 and printed several times, with almost identical wording, in the years 1482 and 1483, mostly on behalf of the individual commissaries. Printed from a single woodblock, this is a block book like, verbatim copy of Friedrich Creussner’s typographic Nuremberg issue (GW 32). It opens with the “Forma confessionalis”, granting the bearer the right to choose a confessor, followed by the “Forma absolutionis”. The blanks (name, diocese, date) remain unfilled. This impression belongs to the second state with the correction in line 4 (“potestatem habeat eligendi”).

The suggestion by Voulliéme, followed by Schreiber, that Johann Schaur, the proto-typographer of Munich, may have been the woodcutter and printer, is circumstantial only. If true, it would make this indulgence likely the earliest surviving printing from Munich. The Bodleian Library now assigns the piece to the Augsburg workshop of Johann Blaubirer on paper evidence, specifically the distinctive ‘scales’ watermark shared with the "Summarium indulgentiarum" (S 237). Long disputed since 1892 (Voulliéme argued for forgery in 1904), the Munich xylographic indulgence was demonstrated to be authentic by Georg Leidinger in 1905 and is accepted as the only xylographically printed indulgence known.

As typical for the group, surviving examples often derive from bindings of the Franciscan convent at Munich, and appear never to have been issued. A singular and early monument of post Gutenberg broadside printing.