Indulgences (dubiously) dictated by a soul in purgatory. Unrecorded booklet.
[Indulgence] / [Fraud]. Kräftiges Gebeth, welches eine arme Seel dem Priester der sie erlösste, offenbahrte. Wer solches täglich andächtig betet, erlanget grossen Ablass, und kann jedesmal eine arme Seel and dem Fegfeuer erlösen. S.l.: s.a., s.a. [likely 18th century, “Gedruckt in diesem Jahr.”). 16mo [9.5 x 8.0], [4] ff., with woodcut on title page (Trinity flanked by Saints Peter & Paul). Unbound and without wrappers, likely as issued, sewing intact, dusty, toned, rubbed, edge wear touching a few letters but not affecting legibility.
Unrecorded 18th-century German devotional booklet containing prayers for freeing souls from purgatory. What is unusual here is the curious prefatory backstory, headed “Kurtze Geschichte,” which makes the claim that these prayers were dictated by a wailing purgatorial soul to a startled priest riding through a deserted wood: “A pious priest once rode through a forest and heard a pitiful cry... I am a poor soul and would have been lost forever...,” etc. (“Ein frommer Priester ritt einmal durch einen Wald, und hörte ein jämmerliches Geschrey… ich bin eine arme Seel, un wär ewig verlohren gerwesen…”).
The pitiful soul notes that he has never before made these prayers public (“ich hab auch dieses Gebet keinen Menschen nicht geoffenbaret”). The priest dutifully transcribed the prayers, and so this popular booklet has the frisson of a hot-off-the-presses cheat-code straight from the mouth of a purgatory insider (“Der Priester schrieb dieses Gebet auf, wie es ihm die arme Seel ausgab, welches hier folget”).
The booklet owes its rarity both to its small size and to the explicit requirement that the prayers be said daily, which would suggest that it needed to be carried about: The rounded corners of this example hint that the booklet spent time tucked away inside an owner’s coat pocket.
The work remains, as far as I can tell, unstudied by modern scholars, but would be worthy of investigation for its (certainly dubious) claims about the prayers’ origin.
The prayers invoke the Trinity (depicted in the title-page woodcut), Holy Five Wounds, the Mass, etc.
The booklet’s publisher sought to make it evergreen by slyly dating it as “Printed this Year” (“Gedruckt in diesem Jahr”).
Two other versions/formats of this booklet is known under the slightly different title Eine schöne Geschichte und Gebeth, welches eine arme Seel dem Priester, so sie erlöset, geoffenbaret hat. Neither is dated, provides a place of printing or the name of a printer. Only one copy of each is recorded: Wienbibliothek im Rathaus & Institute der Universität Freiburg.
The item offered her is unlocated by OCLC, KVK or VD-18.