24th ILAB International Antiquarian Book Fair - Vereinigung der ...

description of the Swiss confederation. This version
has a dedication by Stumpf (Stammheim,
January 1, 1554) to the municipal secretary of
Zürich, Johann Escher, who had been charged
by the Zürich authorities together with Heinrich
Bullinger to inspect the Description in 1545 for
theological orthodoxy.
The dominating figure in the circle around Stumpf
was Henrich Bullinger, the successor of Zwingli in
Zürich. Bullinger was not only his superior, but
also very much his spiritual mentor. Quite naturally,
therefore, he turned to the latter for help
with some historical problems which delayed the
completion of the revision of the chronicle of his
father-in-law, Heinrich Brennwald. Stumpf ’s plan
to publish a Swiss chronicle probably resulted from
a rumor in September 1536 that Aegidius Tschudi
was about to publish such a work (Tschudi in fact
published his Alpisch Rhetia in 1538). Not long afterwards
Stumpf must have begun the preliminary
investigations for the Description of Switzerland.
Late in 1542 Bullinger approved the division of
the volume into thirteen books. Stumpf obtained
help from various collaborators. One was Nicolaus
Briefer, dean of St. Peter’s in Basel, a man learned
in Swiss antiquities. Another was Joachim Vadian,
humanist, reformer and historian from St. Gall and
the already mentioned Aegidius Tschudi. In Summer
1547 Froschauer begun to set the completed
portions in type and in October the volume was
ready to be bound. In November Bullinger wrote
out the text of the introduction (based on a preface
which Stumpf had written some ten years earlier for
the Brennwald chronicle). In December the first
presentation copies were distributed. The general
trade edition dated 1548 came on the market in
January of that year. But a few controversial pages
aroused Catholic resentment and in March the
Description was banned in the Empire: any printer
and bookseller who attempts to sell it will be
arrested, said the Imperial decree. As late as 1554
the Zürich authorities were obliged to draw up a list
of objections being voiced against portions of the
Description and called Stumpf to furnish answers
to them. However, the work was soon recognized
as a very major accomplishment and in Jean Bodin’s
catalogue of historians Stumpf stands as the only
representative of Swiss historiography. He was
in fact, one of the most effective of the sixteenth
century chorographers, informative, plain spoken,
a source of enlightenment and entertainment to
his readers and a mine of facts for subsequent
writers (cf. G. Strauss, The production of Johann
Stumpf’s Description of the Swiss Confederation, in:
« Enacting the Reformation in Germany: Essays
on Institution an Reception», Aldershot, 1993, pp.
104–122).
The shorter Swiss Chronicle was intended, as
Stumpf writes in his dedicatory letter to Johann
Escher, to those who could not afford the expenses
of the larger volume «unnd besonder die
aufwachsende jugend in einer Eydgnossenschaft,
sich mit ringenrem koste(n) in den Historien und
Geschichten jrer Altfordern dest leychter ersähen
unnd üben möchtend». The work opens with a
short ethno-geographical description of Switzerland
(Book I), the remaining eight Books contain
a chronologically arranged series of historical
facts, illustrated with medallion portraits of rulers,
including a portrait of Erasmus and Zwingli, and
small woodcuts showing, e.g. William Tell shooting
at the apple placed on the head of his little son,
battle-scenes, prodigies and disasters, the invention
of gun-powder and of printing, etc. (cf. P. Leemann-van
Elck, Der Buchschmuck der Stumpfschen
Chronik, in: «Bibliothek des Schweizer Bibliophilen»,
Serie II/5, 1935, passim).
VD 16, S-9866; H. Müller, Der Geschichtschreiber
Johann Stumpf, Zürich, 1945, p. 162; M. Vischer,
Bibliographie der Zürcher Druckschriften des 15.
und 16. Jahrhunderts, Baden-Baden, 1991, C-495.
Gilhofer & Ranschburg GmbH 47