Although we have taken off our caps in passing to Erhard Reuwich and Michael Wolgemut for their admirable work, the one in the Mainz _Breidenbach_, the other in the _Schatzbehalter_ and _Nuremberg Chronicle_, it is Albrecht Durer who must be regarded as the inaugurator of the second period of German book-illustrations. During his Wanderjahre Durer had produced at Basel for an edition of S. Jerome's Epistles, printed by Nicolaus Kesler in 1492 (reprinted 1497), a rude woodcut of the saint extracting a thorn from his lion's foot. Durer's important bookwork begins in 1498, when his fifteen magnificent woodcuts illustrating the Apocalypse (which influenced all later treatments of this theme) were issued twice over at Nuremberg, in one edition with German title and text, in the other with Latin. Stated in their colophons to have been "printed by Albrecht Durer, painter," neither edition bears the name of a professional printer. The types used in each case were those of Anton Koberger, Durer's godfather, and the effect of the artist's personal superintendence, which the colophons attest, is seen in the excellence of the presswork. The following year Koberger published an illustrated edition of the _Reuelationes Sanctae Birgittae_ (German reprint in 1502), and Durer has been supposed to have helped in this, but the theory is now discredited. In 1501 he probably contributed two woodcuts to an edition of the comedies of Hroswitha, a tenth century nun of the Benedictine Abbey at Gandersheim. Conrad Celtes had unearthed these comedies some years previously in a Ratisbon library, and they were now printed under his editorship for the _Sodalitas Celtica_ at Nuremberg. The illustrations to the comedies themselves, which vie in heaviness with their subjects, are attributed by Mr. Campbell Dodgson to Wolfgang Traut.[44] One of the cuts assigned to Durer represents Celtes offering the book to Frederick III, Elector of Saxony; the other shows Hroswitha herself presenting her plays to the Emperor Otto I (see Plate XXIII). In 1502 Durer designed another cut of a presentation and an illustration of Philosophy (both very feebly rendered by the cutter) for the _Quatuor libri Amorum_ of Celtes. In 1511 the Latin Apocalypse was reprinted, and three other sets of woodcuts by Durer appeared in book form, in each case with Latin text by Benedictus Chelidonius. One of these commemorated in twenty designs the life of the Blessed Virgin (_Epitome in Diuae Parthenices Marie Historiam ab Alberto Durero Norico per Figuras digestam cum versibus annexis Chelidonii_), the other two the Passion of Christ, the Great Passion (_Passio domini nostri Jesu ex hieronymo Paduano, Dominico Mancino, Sedulio et Baptista Mantuano per fratrem Chelidonium collecta cum figuris Alberti Dureri Norici Pictoris_, in folio) in twelve large woodcuts, the Little Passion (_Passio Christi ab Alberto Durer Norembergensi effigiata c[=u] varij generis carminibus Fratris Benedicti