13.  Nicolaus Reusner, Emblemata

Nicolaus Reusner studied at the University of Wittenberg and later held a chair at Jena and Strasbourg. This emblem book includes 120 woodcuts by Virgil Solis of Nuremberg and Jost Amman who succeeded him.

This is an interleaved copy with blind stamps of initials of the owner (M T S) and the date '1601' on the upper cover. Judging from marginalia, this copy was owned by one Michael Triller of Sangerhausen who studied at Wittenberg and Leipzig in 1601-1607.

The book functioned as a 'liber amicorum', just as emblem books then often did; many of the inserted blank leaves are filled with short Greek, Latin, and Hebrew passages in various hands together with the signature of the writer and the date of entry [1]. Most of the signatures belong to 1601 when Triller presumably began his life as a student, while toward the end of the book, one find two pages of a laudatory verse in Latin, dedicated to Triller by a friend in 1607 on his graduation.

The emblem with the motto, ‘Speculum hominis peccatoris’, is about the precarious existence of man in this world [1]. Man sits on the pit of hell only partially covered, with the sword of Damocles hanging above him. He is constantly under attack by Sin, Devil, Death, Body and the Corruption of the Flesh.

The story of Theseus and Ariadne's thread was a popular theme in the emblem books. This emblem with a motto 'Fata viam invenient' [2] shows that divine grace is the only sure guide in this world with many false ways. The same motto also appears in Claude Paradin's Devises heroiques [3] (no.34).

Adams, R404; BL STC German, p. 734; Landwehr, German, 496; Praz, p.469

Reusner, Nikolaus, Emblemata Partim Ethica, et Physica: Partim vero Historica & Hieroglyphica (Frankfurt am Main 1581), introd. by Michael Schilling (Hildesheim, 1990)