This ultra-rare satirical work by the poet laureate of the Holy Roman Empire, Jacob Locher (1471-1528), is bound in a contemporary limp vellum manuscript with rubricated initials and the original leather ties.

In the main section, De Mula et Musa [On the Mule and the Muse], Locher lambasts the theologians and clerics—as sterile in their thoughts as the mule—who dismiss the gifts of the Muses and prefer to stick to the tortured logic and hair-splitting arguments of scholastic philosophy. Locher, as shown below, preferred the meadow of the muses. He makes a compelling early advocate for the artistic and literary humanism that was just taking shape in Germany and the northern European Renaissance.

The final woodcut shows us the author’s favorite female dog, Scaramella, who watches over Locher’s book—the very one we have in hand—so that it is not gnawed by mice or set to fire by fools. A Greek inscription hovers over the text; Locher addresses his dog in German, but Scaramella describes herself in Latin verse.

This book is the focus of the 24/25 Not Lost in TransLatin project for the Special Collections First-Year Fellows Program. One of our awarded young scholars is spending their first year at Hopkins translating the never-before-translated canine verses of Scaramella under the mentorship of Peabody Library curator Paul Espinosa.

An ultra-rare satirical manuscript.An ultra-rare satirical manuscript.An ultra-rare satirical manuscript.