BADERS, Ernestus
Poemata
Leovardia, Wilhelmum Rysbeeck, 1684
1 vol., 12mo, contemporary parchment, title in manuscript to spine, (12)ff. + 307 pp.; good copy, parchment worn and burn stains to the back side, binding intact
Rare first edition copy of Baders’ Poemata, his first collected works. Ernestus Baders (1651–1706) was a descendant of a family of organ builders from Antwerp who provided numerous churches in Friesland with a new organ. After his unfinished studies in medicine in Franeker, he developed into a prolific writer who poetically accompanied appointments, marriages and deaths of mainly members of the Frisian nobility, the Frisian Nassaus and Franeker professors. His early collection Juvenilium Poëmatum Libellus (1673) contains many praise verses on disputations, promotions, appointments and marriages in Franeker. Current political events also play a role (disaster year 1672, the battle for Groningen). In later poems he also comments on war and peace and the military successes of the Frisian governor Hendrik Casimir II. His poetry is characterized by great virtuosity in comparisons, word choice and meter. His longest poem, Venus Cammingana, is a typical example of a clever epithalamium for two descendants of the Frisian nobility (Camminga and Aylua), in which genealogy and mythology are balanced in 517 hexameters.
