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well-known medieval collections of exempla by the Dominicans Martin of
Opava (d. 1278) and Johann Herolt (d. 1468), also known as Discipulus,
which circulated with the same title, and to reform and adapt the genre to
the requirements and desiderata of a Lutheran audience.9 Possibly inspired
by Luther’s Decem praecepta Wittenbergensi praedicata populo,10 Hondorff
divided his material into ten Praecepta, that is, the Ten Commandments,
which in turn gather a varying number of loci communes or commonplace-
headings. Along with classical and medieval authors and historians (Livy,
Pliny the Elder, Valerius Maximus, Plutarch, Suetonius, Aulus Gellius,
Aelianus, Virgil, Ovid, Josephus, Paul the Deacon, Saxo Grammaticus,
and Petrarch), Hondorff includes numerous excerpts by Humanist
thinkers (Erasmus of Rotterdam, Conrad Wolffhart, Johann Manlius,
Melanchthon, and Martin Luther). The Promptuarium found an ever-
expanding audience among Lutherans interested in wisdom drawn from
Scripture, history, and the natural world, and it entered into the lineage
of sixteenth-century evangelical texts that explained natural wonders and
disasters as a sign of God’s anger and promoted Christian discipline.11
The 1595 German edition published in Frankfurt by the Peter Schmidt
printshop includes the following loci communes:12
9 See, respectively, the discussion in Anne-Élyse Lebourgeois, “Le Promptuarium Exem -
pl orum de Martin le Polonais, O.P. (†1278). Édition critique et commentaire” (Diplôme
d’Archiviste Paléographe diss., Ecole nationale des Chartes, Paris, 2002), and Johann
Herolt, Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. by C. C. Swinton Bland (London:
Routledge, 1928), 1–8.
10 Martin Luther, Decem praecepta Wittenbergensi praedicata populo per P. Martinum Luther
Augustinianum. (Wittenberg: Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, 1518).
11 See Philip M. Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination: The Evangelical Wonder
Book in Reformation Germany, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012), 158.
12 Andreas Hondorff, Promptuarium Exemplorum. Das ist: Historien und Exempelbuch nach
Ordnung und Disposition der heiligen Zehen Gebott Gottes, auß heiliger Schrifft, und andern
bewerten unnd glaubwirdigen, Geistlichen und Weltlichen, alten und newen Scribenten, mit
allem fleiß zusammengetragen. Gottsforscht, Burgerlicher erbarkeit, redliches wandels, auffrichtiges
lebens, und abscheuhung aller Sund, Laster vnd vbels: Jedermeniglichen, hohes und nidriges,
Geistlichs und Weltlichs Stands, zu disen lezten und gefehrlichen zeiten fur die augen gestelt. Jetzt
zum tritten mal im Truck außgangen, und auffs new widerumb (dabey es auch hinfort bleiben sol)
mit allem fleiß ersehen, und sehr vielen nuzbarn Historien und Exmpeln gebessert und vermehret:
Durch den Ehrwirdigen, in H. Exempeln gebessert und vermehret: Durch den Ehrwirdigen, in
H. Schrifft Hochgelehrten Herren (Frankfurt: Peter Schmidt, 1595) [2o]. The first edition
contains 396 folios (792 pages).
A REPOSITORY OF PROTESTANT EXEMPLA
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