Dit es dleven ons liefs heeren Ihesu Cristi met addicien van schoonen moralen en geesteliken leeringhen en deuoten meditacien de LUDOLPHUS de Saxonia (d. 1377) - 1503

Antwerp: Henrick Eckert van Homberch, 1503. Small folio (254 x 184 mm). Collation: A8 a-f6 g4 h-z 8 8 A-Z Aa-Gg6. 336 leaves. 41 lines, double columns. Gothic types. Title in nine lines (the first a xylographic block) over a cut of Salvator Mundi flanked by two blocks of architecture, 149 woodcut illustrations, (some composite, 24 full-page, 125 half-page); woodcut printer's device at end. 20th-century vellum. Lacks A2 and gathering A bound out of sequence, some light dampstaining, mostly marginal, Gg1 with strip torn away from mostly blank fore-margin affecting letters. Provenance: M. J. Schretlen (bookplate); from the Collection of Arthur & Charlotte Vershbow, purchased from Marlborough Rare Books, 1960. Eckert's second edition of the Vita Christi, one of the most popular and influential devotional works of the later Middle Ages appearing in many languages by the end of the fifteenth century. Henrick Eckert van Homberch moved to Antwerp from Delft in 1500 and set up his business in the Huys van Delft, where he published until his death in late 1523 or early 1524. He published a continuous flow of works of quite varied nature-including classical authors, romances of chivalry and school books - though chiefly with a religious content. In 1503 he published this edition of Leven ons liefs heeren Ihesu Cristi. According to both title-page and colophon this is a second edition, but no traces have been found of an earlier edition by Van Homberch. Most of the cuts in this Dutch edition were formerly used in Snellaert's edition of 1488, while among those specifically made for Eckert are the small Passion cuts as reused in his 1510 edition.

Ludolphus was Prior of the Carthusian house at Coblenz from1343-48, and later lived some years in the Charterhouse at Mainz before moving to Strasbourg, where he died in 1377. Written in the form of a dialogue between Man and Scripture, the text relates the life of Christ, occasionally interrupted by meditation or prayer, offering a distillation of patristic, ascetical, and mystical works. Rare. Fairfax Murray German 247; Rosenwald 1112. Fact and Fantasy 13.