Introducing nuns to “the cloistered life.” No U.S. copies.

Magnus Schmid / [Nuns] / [Manuscript binding]. Kurtzer Underricht Vom Clösterlichen Leben. Würzburg: Georg Fleischmann, 1603. 4to [18.5 x 14.3 cm], 144 pp., with woodcut initials and tail-pieces. Contemporary binding of a re-used 15th-century vellum manuscript leaf (see below), early manuscript title label laid to spine, modern shelf-mark label laid to spine, remnants of ties. Fading and chipping to spine, text on lower cover largely washed out, text of upper cover well preserved, with contemporary annotations and later pen trials, tears to pastedowns, various manuscript shelf-marks, library stamps, and ownerships inscriptions to front pastedown and title page (see below). Minor to moderate toning to some quires. A very genuine item. 
 
 
Rare (no U.S. copies) first edition of this 1603 German guide to “cloistered life” intended for the use of Franciscan nuns.
 
The volume is preserved in its contemporary vellum binding of a recycled 16th-century liturgical leaf, which consists of 19 lines from a Latin missal written in fine textus quadratus (of German origin).
 
Kurtzer Underricht Vom Clösterlichen Leben was written by Magnus Schmid, a native of Bregenz, who at the time was working in Würzburg. He addresses the book to “the nuns, Mother Superior, and the entire Convent of Talbach in Bregenz,” and writes that his sister, Margaretha Schmid, is a professed nun there. 
 
Schmid first asks whether the cloistered life is pleasing to God and grounded in scripture (he mentions Luther and his wife, Catarina von Bora [p. 10]) and then describes the nature of cloistered life and its “fruits” and “usefulness.” 
 
Chapter five discusses what material is needed in the cloister, with special emphasis given to books that should be in the library. Next Schmid discusses communal prayer, the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
 
It is clear that Schmid’s book was no mere theological exercise: In 1605, two years after the work was printed, Magnus Schmid and other members of his family founded a rival Poor Clare convent in Bregenz, the Nonnenkloster zu St. Anna bei Bergenz. Margaretha Schmid decamped from Kloster Thalbach for St. Anna, and she later became its Superior. St. Anna survived as a Franciscan convent into the 1630s, at which point it was converted to a Carmelite house (see L. Rapp for this interesting history).
 
This volume shows traces of its use in Carmelite houses: An early inscription at the top of the title page indicates that the book was win a Carmelite convent (the exact house is illegible to me). Later library stamps show that the book was in the Swiss Carmelite libraries at Sion, Sursee and Brig.
 
OCLC and KVK locate no U.S. copies of this 1603 first edition, which is also rare in European census. There exits an issue date 1604 on the title page; it is equally rare and also is not located in the U.S.
 
 
*VD17 12:744865Y; Ludwig Rapp, Topographisch-historische Beschreibung des Generalvikariates Vorarlbergm, vol. 2 [Dekanat Feldkirch. Zweite Abtheilung. Und Dekanat Bregenz. Erste Abtheilung.], pp. 645-61.