149. (Funeral orations for Miklós Tótfalusi Kis)

(Kolozsvár, 1702.) n.pr. (1)+4-34p. (A2-D4).
Four years after publishing his epoch-making edition of the Bible, Miklós Tótfalusi Kis dismantled his flourishing printing office in Amsterdam in 1689 and returned to Transylvania with plans to establish a press. He renewed the type stock of the Reformed Church printing house at Kolozsvár, and from 1693 the revived workshop issued around ninety carefully produced books, many of them secular in character. His editorial and publishing activity, together with his strong civic consciousness, provoked fierce attacks from conservative and influential church figures. At the synod of Nagyenyed he was forced to retract the claims made in his self-defensive pamphlet “Maga személyének, életének és különös cselekedeteinek mentsége…” (1698), to destroy copies of the work, and publicly to beg forgiveness before the congregation. Broken both physically and spiritually, he died soon afterwards.
It is likely connected with these events that the printed booklet containing the funeral orations delivered at the placing of his body into the coffin (22 March 1702) and at his burial (4 April) was systematically destroyed, leaving only a few fragments, all of identical extent (RMK records eight copies). The surviving sixteen-leaf fragment contains orations by Mihály Csepregi Turkovits, Mihály Szathmár-Némethi, and the first part only of the sermon by István Enyedi. To our knowledge, no copy has previously appeared at auction.
20th-century half leather.
RMK I 1654.
 
Starting price: 600 000 Ft