A friend of mine recently pointed out to me a fascinating rare book for sale in Germany, and upon closer inspection, we discovered the book is actually a handwritten transcript of a “colloquy” meeting involving the authors of the Formula of Concord and a group of theologians in Germany, apparently one of the many meetings held after the adoption of the Formula of Concord, in an effort to get as many German theologians “on board” before the Book of Concord was published. The meeting was held in 1578. Here is a photo of a spread from the mss, recording the conversation that took place concerning the Lord’s Supper. The Concordia Seminary library has purchased the manuscript, so it is good to know this piece of Lutheran history will not reside in the rare book collection there. As usual, click on the photo below, a new window will open and then click on the image again and the full size photo will be available to you. The notes are in German and Latin. Dr. Benjamin Mayes, my colleague here, explained to me that handwritten notes like this are much easier to read when they are in Latin, since they used a handwritten form of Latin that is more clear, than the handwriting they used when writing in German. You can see an example of that below, where, for example, the comments of Dr. Andreae, on the upper left portion of the pages are in Latin, and then you can see German above and below it. Fascinating stuff, no?