Onkel Hans gave this to me, as something of a legacy to pass on as the oldest of the Worle kids. It is a book, entitled "Rugitus Leonis, Geistliches Löwen-Brüllen." The first part of the title is in Latin, and means "Lion's Roar", while the second part is in German, and means "Spiritual Lion's Roar." I'm guessing the title is a reference to Proverbs 20:2, which says "The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul," or in the Latin Vulgate Bible, "sicut rugitus leonis ita terror regis qui provocat eum peccat in animam suam." The book is a collection of sermons by P. F. Leone Wolff, according to the title page "Sonntags Predigen durch ein ganzes Jahr," or "Sunday Preaching through a whole year".
The incredible thing about this book is the printing date, noted on the bottom of the title page as "M. DCCII.", or 1702. This book is over 300 years old! Onkel Hans doesn't know much about the book's history, except that it had been handed down for an unknown number of generations on Oma's side of the family. When they acquired it, or how, is unknown. There is also a personal dedication of some kind written on the opposite of the frontispiece, which I cannot decipher - nor can Dad or Onkel Hans, at this point. I have taken a picture, and enhanced it by increasing the contrast and sharpening the image. Hopefully, with some work, we can figure it out.
All we can make out so far is a date, on the third line: "14 Juni 1814," though even that could be wrong - it could be "Juli", or maybe another month - at the end it looks like a "y" with an umlaut, but I don't know what that would mean.
Anyway, it's something pretty cool that I thought I would share with you here.
