A collection of around 1,500 pamphlet tracts, in Latin or German, written by Luther and the other German reformers, and their opponents. It contains publications dating from 1511 to 1598, but the majority of the tracts were actually printed between 1516 and 1550. Apart from Luther, the authors Andreas Bodenstein and Caspar Schwenckfeld, a Silesian nobleman, known as the Protestant Mystic, are well represented. A large part of the collection comprises pamphlets of no more than four leaves, and a feature of this cheaply produced polemical literature is the use of illustrative woodcuts and ornamental borders on the title-pages. Some of the tracts by Luther contain a portrait of the reformer, a notable example being Luther's 'Ain Sermo[n] von dem vnrechten Mammon', printed at Augsburg in 1522, which has a woodcut portrait of the author signed by Lucas Cranach. The collection is arranged chronologically in one sequence and each item is numbered.

Organisation

Collection-level record for the collection only. The collection has been assigned the shelfmark 'Crawford.R.'.

Acquisition

Deposited in 1975 by the David Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford.

References

'Bibliotheca Lindesiana Collations and Notes No.7: Catalogue of a Collection of Fifteen Hundred Tracts by Martin Luther and his Contemporaries', JP Edmond, [Aberdeen], 1903. (The catalogue is arranged chronologically and the numbers of the entries correspond to the numbers in the pamphlets).

'Bibliotheca Lindesiana and Other Collections of German Sixteenth-Century Pamphlets in Libraries of Britain and France', MA Pegg, Baden-Baden, 1977.