Letter of the humanist nun Caritas Pirckheimer intercepted by Lutherans. Rare.
[Nuns] / Caritas Pirckheimer. Eyn Missive oder Sendbrieff, so die Ebtissin vo[n] Nürmberg, an den hochberümbten Bock Empser geschribe[n] hat, fast künstlich und geystlich, auch gut Nünnisch getichtet. M. D. XXiii. Wittenberg. S.l. [Nürnberg]: s.n. [Hieronymus Hötzel], 1523. 4to [19.5 x 14.9 cm], [4] ff. Bound in modern born speckled card, with red number “21” in top margin of title and remnant on tab on fore edge of title indicating that the item once formed part of a composite volume. Binding well preserved. Minor toning and dustiness, faint pencil underlining.
Rare first edition (two U.S. copies: Yale & Library of Congress) of this letter written in 1522 by the renowned humanist nun Caritas Pirckheimer (1467-1532) to the theologian Hieronymus Emser (1477-1527) in which she argues for keeping convents open against Reformation efforts to close them.
Caritas Pirckheimer did not consent to having this correspondence printed: The letter “was intercepted by Lutheran sympathizers, who published it with a satirical commentary in an attempt to discredit her” (Barker, p. 271). The sniping (dismissive, sexualized, misogynistic) comments printed in the margins have been attributed to the Lutheran reformer Andreas Osiander (1498-1552).
Pirckheimer, born Barbara Pirckheimer, was the sister of the prominent humanist Willibald Pirckheimer. As a child, she received a rigorous Latin education at home and at the age of twelve entered the school of the Franciscan monastery of Saint Clara at Nuremberg. A few years later, she joined the order and took the name of Caritas. She later became abbess and chronicled her time at St. Clara, which was largely devoted to defending the autonomy and importance of convents.
OCLC and KVK locate U.S. copies of this publication at Yale and Library of Congress. Another version of the letter was published anonymously in the same year and is attributed to the press of Johann Loersfeld in Erfurt (VD16 P 2898; no U.S. copies of that issue are traced, and no primacy is given to either of the editions).
* VD 16 P 2899; P. S. D. Barker, “Caritas Pirckheimer: A Female Humanist Confronts the Reformation,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 26, no. 2 (1995), pp. 259-272; M. Kleinhans, Der Glaube in den Schriften der Äbtissin Caritas Pirckheimer; P. A. MacKenzie, ed. and trans., Caritas Pirckheimer: A Journal of the Reformation Years, 1524-1528.