Epistolae selectiores aliquot, [...] editae a Casparo Peucero

8vo. (8) leaves, 575, (1) pp., (8) leaves (the last two are blank). A-Z8, Aa-Pp8. Contemporary blindstamped pigskin. With the entry of ownership of Georgius Ammanus dated 1570.
Adams, M-1212; VD 16, M-3221; H.E. Bindseil, Bibliotheca Melanthoniana, (Halle, 1868), p. 27, no. 512; J. Hamel & M. Roebel, Bibliographie der gedruckten Werke Caspar Peucers, in: “Caspar Peucer 1525-1602. Wissenschaft, Glaube und Politik im konfessionellen Zeitalter”, H.-P. Hasse & G. Wartenberg, eds., (Leipzig, 2004), p. 340, no. 86.
 
FIRST EDITION edited by Melanchthon's son-in-law Caspar Peucer and rushed out in response to Manlius's Farrago epistolarum, published some months earlier. In his dedication to George Frederick of Brandenburg-Anhalt Peucer complains that Manlius's edition was “patched together most crudely”, that it disagreed “with histories both ancient and modern”, and that the letters in it were abbreviated and pulled together “without any judgement or selectiveness”, and published in a form that was “mutilated, imperfect, confused, alien to all Latinity - particularly in the case of those that contained matters of the greatest moment - so that it was impossible for anyone to follow the thought of the author”.
“Doch die Farrago des Manilius veranlasste ihn [Peucer] unverzüglich die ihm verfügbaren Briefe zum Druck zu geben, ebenfalls ohne Ordnung, doch mit einem Index der Adressaten und Briefanfänge. Im Gegensatz zu Manlius, der viel Privates brachte, hatte Peucer Zugang zu den inhaltsreichen Schreiben an Fürsten und Theologen. Daher sind die noch im Jahre 1565 bei Crato in Wittenberg erschienenen 144 Epistolae selectiores aliquot eine gehaltvolle Quelle zur Reformationsgeschichte. Doch hat sich Peucer Eingriffe in den Text erlaubt, der also kaum besser ist als der des Manlius” (H. Scheible, ed., Melanchthons Briefwechsel, Regesten (1514-1560), Stuttgart, 1977, I, p. 17-8).
Caspar Peucer was born in upper Lusatia, the son of an artisan. He began his education at a Latin school in Goldberg (Lower Silesia) under its rector Valentin Trotzendorf, a student of Philipp Melanchthon. He showed such remarkable talents that he began to attend the University of Wittenberg at the age of fifteen, living at the home of Melanchthon. He studied with the humanist mathematicians Erasmus Reinhold, Jakob Milich, and Joachim Rheticus, and pursued arithmetic privately with Johann Stifel, pastor at the nearby Holzdorf. In 1550 this informal relationship with the great Reformer was formalized when he married Magdalena, Melanchthon's youngest daughter. Peucer received his master of arts degree in 1545 and in 1554 became professor of mathematics succeeding Erasmus Reinhold. In 1559 he was named to the chair of medicine, and in 1560 he finally succeeded to the rectorate of the university upon the death of Melanchthon. He soon attracted the attention of the Saxon elector August and in 1563 moved to Dresden as court physician.
In this new post Peucer was in a powerful position from which to enforce and spread the teachings, especially the theological doctrines, of his father-in-law. The best way to do this, as he shrewdly recognized, was to give the principal chairs to the partisans of Melanchthon, or Philippists, as they were called, rather than to the more orthodox Lutherans. A lengthy power struggle ensued in which both sides attempted to curry the political support of the patron of the university, Augustus, the Elector of Saxony. The results were disastrous for Peucer. He was accused of being a crypto-Calvinist. Such charges were frequent during this period when there were increasing tensions among the different Protestant groups. Peucer, went to prison for 12 years for seeming to deny Christ's physical presence in the bread. Amidst this obsessive and rigidly intolerant atmosphere, Peucer was incarcerated at Pleissenburg, near Leipzig, in 1576, in spite of efforts to have him released by Wilhelm IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. When the widowed August r