Comments Off on A stray quire in Rotherham’s copy of Durand’s Rationale divinorum officiorum – something, or nothing? – A post by Ed Potten

By Incunabula Project, 13 December 2011 12:55 pm

Inspired by David McKitterick’s recent Masterclass exploring some of the ways in which the make-up of books can be changed once they leave the printer, an erroneous quire within a recently catalogued copy of Durand’s Rationale divinorum officiorum ([Basel: Michael Wenssler, not after 17 Mar. 1476] – ISTC id00411000) raises some interesting questions about the book’s production history and its later use, but frustratingly answers none.

Inc.1.C.1.2[2286] has a significant Cambridge provenance. The book appears in a manuscript list of early donations to the Library (MSS Oo.7.52), listed as item 72 ‘Ex dono Reverendi Patris in Xto Thomæ Rotherami Episcopi Lincolniensis et Cancellarii Angliæ’. The list was compiled in about 1658 by Jonathan Pindar, Under Library-keeper, and in the words of J.T.C. Oates “Its accuracy has long been suspect”.[1]

Thomas Rotherham (1423-1500), Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England, was also Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1469 and at intervals (perhaps continuously) from 1473 to 1492. In 1475 he was listed amongst the University’s principal benefactors for his contribution towards the completion of the east front of the schools, which included the Bibliotheca minor, for which he had provided the furnishings and a donation of books. This original gift was supplemented with other books during his lifetime, and possibly also following his death in 1500. Oates tentatively identified some thirty-five books he felt could be attributed with some certainty to Rotherham.

Interestingly, not only is the Durand not included in this list, but it is actually used as an example of a book cited by Pindar, but believed by Oates to be demonstrably not a Rotherham book, based on the fact that it does not appear in the library catalogue of 1556-7.[2] Happily, the cataloguing of the book proves Rotherham’s ownership beyond doubt – an annotation on sig. [b]10r can be matched to Rotherham’s hand from evidence in other incunabula.[3]

Rebound in plain quarter-blind-ruled calf over pasteboards in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the Rationale is neither decorated nor rubricated, save one quire.  Quire [e] has red paragraph marks and capital strokes supplied, with a note from the rubricator in the right-hand margin.

The presence of a single rubricated quire in the midst of 22 unrubricated is puzzling, but not inexplicable. If multiple copies of the book were stored together prior to binding, some rubricated, others not, quire [e] could conceivably have been substituted with an undecorated instance and mistakenly bound in the CUL copy.

Palaeographical evidence, however, adds a further layer of potential interest. The marginal note features a distinctive rounded letter ‘e’, very characteristic of an English hand, indicative that this particular quire could have been rubricated in England.[4] If this were the case, then in order for quire [e] to become muddled with an undecorated instance multiple copies, some rubricated others not, must have been stored together in England in the fifteenth century. Is this then evidence that the book was imported into England in bulk in sheets in the fifteenth century, then rubricated and sold here? There is ample evidence of this trade taking place,[5] but to extrapolate such from the letterform of a single rounded letter ‘e’ would require a monumental leap of faith!

An alternative hypothesis has quire [e] originating from an entirely different copy of Durand’s Rationale. We most commonly think of imperfections to incunabula being the result of use, neglect or mistreatment, but David McKitterick has convincingly shown that fifteenth-century books could occasionally come from the print shop incomplete. If insufficient sheets were printed or supplied to the binder it was often economically more viable to copy out the missing text by hand rather than set the sheets afresh.[6] McKitterick provides several examples of this practice at CUL, and more have surfaced as part of the incunabula cataloguing project. CUL’s copy of Bartholomaeus’s De proprietatibus rerum ([Basel: Berthold Ruppel, about 1479-80] – ISTC ib00132500), for example, is wanting quire [p], substituted with a contemporary manuscript version on paper bearing a watermark of scales, apparently contemporaneous, and certainly present when the book was first bound.

As well as the insertion of manuscript transcriptions, later book owners could complete an imperfect book by cannibalising other copies. The practice of constructing composite copies is well recognised and was a common practice by the late-eighteenth century. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors sought the crispest, cleanest, tallest, most perfect copies and booksellers, aware that such copies would realise the highest return, were keen to oblige, often advertising that they could complete imperfect books from their standing stock.[7] The CUL Durand, however, is far from a collector’s trophy piece and was in private hands by 1500 – if this is an example of ‘making-good’ an imperfect book it would certainly be one of the earliest recorded. Could the erroneous quire have been added when the book was rebound at the end of the seventeenth century? Again, this seems unlikely. There is no evidence elsewhere that the Library sought to perfect other imperfect books in this way in this period, and quire ‘e’ has the same wide margins as the other quires within the Durand – although a wholly unscientific basis on which to draw a conclusion, the quire certainly ‘feels’ as if it has been part of the book since Rotherham’s ownership.

Are there any useful conclusions to be drawn from the Durand? Not really! The quire could be explained in any number of ways, all equally probable or improbable and none provable. The discussion, however, does make one useful point – in early-printed books it is often the examination of minutiae which opens up the most fruitful paths for research. The smallest, most easily-ignored feature of any book can inform about book use, trade, movement, distribution or production.

[2] Oates, J.T.C. A Catalogue of the Fifteenth-Century Printed Books in the University Library Cambridge (Cambridge: 1954) vol. 1, p.3, footnote 4.

[3] See Inc.1.B.3.17[1419], sig. t10r.

[4] I am grateful to Laura Nuvoloni, Satoko Tokunaga and John Goldfinch for their views on both the rubrication and its explanation.

[5] See Ford, M.L. ‘Importation of printed books into England and Scotland’ in Hellinga, L. and Trapp, J.B. (eds.) The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain volume III 1400-1557 (Cambridge: 1999), pp. 179-201.

[6] McKitterick, D. Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830 (Cambridge: 2003), pp.107-108.

[7] McKitterick, D. Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830 (Cambridge: 2003), pp.144-145; Jensen, K. Revol.ution and the Antiquarian Book (Cambridge: 2011), pp. 164-165.

Comments Off on Paul Needham’s masterclass at Cambridge University Library – A post by Satoko Tokunaga (Keio University)

By Incunabula Project, 18 July 2011 11:54 am

Henry Bradshaw

On the afternoon of June 7, a workshop entitled “Collation and Composition in the Fifteenth Century” was conducted by Dr Paul Needham in the Sir Geoffrey Keynes Room, a perfect place for this special occasion. The main topic of this workshop was, as the title reveals, the collation and composition of incunabula. Borrowing Dr Needham’s words, it was a most timely topic for this workshop, for 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the “invention” of the collational formula by Henry Bradshaw (1831-86), an eminent bibliographer and librarian with a deep connection with Cambridge.

The collation is essential for us to learn, and most of us probably learned about it in foundational texts such as W. W. Greg’s “Formulary of Collation” (The Library (1934), 4th ser. XIV. no. 4), Fredson Bowers’ Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949; repr. 1994, etc.) and Philip Gaskell’s New Introduction to Bibliography (1972; corrected ed. 1974; paperback ed. 1995, etc.). Needless to say, bibliographers are trained to describe a book using the collational formula. It is an essential but not an easy task. I cannot help asking myself how much of my life I have spent counting the number of leaves in books. Of course, counting matters in the book world, but Dr Needham raised a further essential question: What, then, is collation? Why does it matter? In this workshop, we were awakened by this fundamental question, and through his wonderfully clear talk, together with stunningly beautiful books, we were able to see how much collation can reveal about the composition of a book, which provides new insights into the actual process of early printing.

First, Dr Needham pointed out that few people described the concept of collation and also that little acknowledgement was made of Bradshaw’s invention. Using Bradshaw’s handwritten memo on the collation of a mid-15th century manuscript in the Scheide Library, Dr Needham emphasized that Bradshaw’s method could reveal the physical composition or structure of a book in a simpler but clearer way than those proposed by scholars after him, such as Greg and Bowers. Then, he showed an example of the collational formula, using the CUL copy of the Gutenberg Bible (B42) [ISTC ib00526000], i.e. Inc.1.A.1.1[3761]. Of course, it does not mean that Bradshaw’s method can solve anything; there may be some limitations (and in the midst of the workshop, it was hotly argued whether there was any perfect method that could both describe the collation of an ideal copy and record the physical condition of a copy at hand, such as a lack of leaves, in a single and clear form). However, it has certain merits, for example, making a singleton leaf in a quire explicit. In a bibliographical study, such an anomaly may reveal something about book production, and Dr Needham presented the case that the blank page of the singleton in quire 25 of the B42 might explain something about the editorial decision (or hesitation?) to include the apocryphal chapter 4 of Ezra, using a handout of the collation formula handwritten by himself.

Indeed, to collate a book, we need not only to count the number of leaves, but also to scrutinize the book itself. Then, we might get a chance to find what has not been unearthed over hundreds of years, as Dr Needham did. In the last part of the workshop, he told of a wonderful episode concerning his discovery of an exemplar, as if restaging it, using the actual books he had examined. More than two decades ago, he found that “#” marks appeared regularly in the CUL copy of the B42 and further identified that they matched the page breaks of the third of the Vulgate editions printed in Strassburg by Heinrich Eggestein, c. 1469 [ISTC ib00533000], a copy of which is  Inc.1.A.2.3[84] in CUL .

[The images reproduce the beginning of the Gospel of Luke in the Gutenberg Bible, vol. 2, leaves [217] verso – [218] recto in vol. 2, and the Eggestein Bible, vol. 2, leaf [215] verso]

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[The marginal marks on the leaves of the CUL copy of the Gutenberg Bible match the beginning and the end of the text on leaf [215] verso of the Eggestein Bible]

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This means that the “#” marks were addedby compositor(s) in Eggestein’s printing shop in Strassburg and the CUL copy of the B42 served as the copy-text for Eggestein’s edition. In fact, this observation matched a study on illumination by Prof. Eberhard König, who proposed that the CUL copy of the B42 had been illuminated in either Basel or Strassburg. In early printing, there survive only a few books whose copy-texts have been identified, and it is therefore amazing to find such an example among monumental books like the B42.

What I have summed up here is only part of the talk. For example, details about Dr Needham’s discovery of the CUL copy of the B42 being used as a copy-text can be found in his article “A Gutenberg Bible Used as Printer’s Copy by Heinrich Eggestein in Strassburg, ca. 1469”, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 9 (1986). On Henry Bradshaw, see his The Bradshaw Method: Henry Bradshaw’s Contribution to Bibliography (1988). After listening to his talk, I can vividly envisage what he explains in his articles, and above all, I find more joy in collation than ever before. It is all thanks to his well-organized talk and the preparation by the staff of the Rare Books Room. Indeed, it was really wonderful to have the original materials, and it was generous of the organizers to allow attendees to freely examine them during and after the workshop. Moreover, questions from the attendees were fascinating (and the size of the group was perfect for that), though they sometimes interrupted the flow of Dr Needham’s talk. Nevertheless, he gave deliberate thought to answering all of them, always getting his talk back on track beautifully. While writing this, I am still excited that I was able to be there, and I am sincerely grateful to Dr Needham and the staff of the Munby Rare Books Room for organizing the workshop. I am looking forward to future occasions!

Satoko Tokunaga

June 2011

Comments (2)

By Laura Nuvoloni, 12 June 2011 2:31 pm

This is a cry for help ! Recent additions and amendments to the online library catalogue Newton by the incunable project include the descriptions of seven small books printed between circa 1495 and 1515 and bound together in a small Sammelband that came to the library from an unknow source before 1700, now Dd*.5.60(G). The seven booklets are preceded in the volume by three later editions, whose list is as follows: Petrus Cudsemius, De desperata Calvini causa tractatus brevis. Mainz: Johannes Albinus, 1609 [lacking title page] – Martin Luther, De usura taxanda ad pastores ecclesiarum commonefactio, in the Latin translation by Johannes Freder. Frankfurt am Main : [Petrus Brubachium], 1554 – Gabriel Valliculus, De liberali Dei gratia & seruo hominis arbitrio. Nurimberg: Johannes Guldenmundt, 1536. Almost all the books in the volume had already been catalogued in Newton: the three later editions had been correctly identified, but the descriptions of late 15th- or early 16th-century editions, many of which with woodcut illustrations, were either incomplete, incorrect, or missing altogether, as it was the case of an edition of Brigitta’s Orationes and a copy of the Divisione decem nationum. As I set to put things in order I realised that their identification was in fact proving rather challenging. Hence my appeal for help !

Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 6:

The sixth booklet in the volume, Orationes sanctae Brigittae cum oratione sancti Augustini, was the only one described by Oates in his catalogue of the 15th-century books in the University Library (Oates 1571; for all publications mentioned in the post, see bibliography below). Oates identified it with an edition that is generally assigned to Eucharius Silber in Rome around 1495 (but 1498 by Vera Sack in the Freiburg catalogue, no. 695): see ISTC ib00679200. Images of a copy held in the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm, provided by the online version of GW 4370, confirmed the identification, and therefore I had no problem in creating a new record for this edition in Newton, Dd.5.60.G, item no. 6. [Images: leaves [a1] recto, [a1] verso, [a5] verso, [a6] recto and [a7] verso.  For better resolution, please click on each image].

The other early editions proved more difficult, though, as I found unconvincing some of the attributions that Oates provided for them within his description of Brigitta’s Orationes.

Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 4:

The first early edition to be found in the volume, i.e. its fourth item, is a copy of Andreas de Escobar, Modus confitendi. The book had been previously identified by Oates with one of the editions printed in Rome by Johann Besicken after 1500 [Images: leaves [a1] recto, [a1] verso and [b4] recto].

Indeed, our booklet shows the same number of leaves and lines, i.e. 12 leaves with 23 lines to the page, as the editions of this text assigned to Besicken in ISTC. It also shows the same impronta or fingerprint (ieui oset abe* pcco) given for an edition attributed to Besicken around 1504 in the online version of the Censimento nazionale delle edizioni italiane del XVI secolo (EDIT16), the Italian national census of 16th-century printed books [EDIT 16 (2. ed.): CNCE 18284]. This and the other Besicken editions, however, seem to differ from our booklet in the leaf signatures [with the only exception of the edition described in GW 1803 (ISTC ia00682000)], the typesettings of the initial captions, incipits, and explicits. Moreover, the Gothic type used in our edition, measuring 86 mm. per 20 lines, and with characteristic capital letters A, F, M and Q, among other features, can be identified with Eusebius Salber’s 92 G [P. 6] rather than Johann Besicken’s 87 G.a [P. 1], which is close but not identical (see BM 15th cent., IV, 103 and 138, and pls X* and XII*). This type was also used in an edition of the Translatio miraculosa ecclesiae Beatae Virginis Mariae de Loreto, a copy of which is Cambridge University Library (or CUL) Inc.7.B.2.27[3651], which has been attributed to Silber in most catalogues, including Oates’s, and dated to around 1500 in Sander 4292, and to after 1500 in Oates 1566, ISTC it00426500, GW M17565, and EDIT 16 (2. ed.), and CNCE 64630. Finally, the iconography of the initial woodcut in the Modus confitendi booklet seems to matches only that in the edition described in GW 1800 (ISTC ia00680000; Sander 363). After careful comparison of our text and woodcut with the descriptions of early 16th-century editions of Escobar’s work in GW and Sander, I tentatively identified our booklet (see Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 4) with an edition attributed to Eucharius Silber and dated to around 1498 by Sander but after 1500 in GW (GW 179510N), of which only one other exemplar seemingly survives. This other copy was described by Giuseppe Martini of Lugano in one of his catalogues [Cat. 28 (1938), no. 35] and afterwards by H. P. Kraus of New York [Cat. 83 (1957), no. 6]. I was however unable to find the present whereabouts of the Martini/Krauss copy and could not therefore confirm the identification.

Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 5:

The fifth item in our Sammelband is an edition of [Andreas de Escobar], Interrogationes et doctrinae, also attributed by Oates (Oates 1571) to Besicken after 1500 [Images: leaves [a1] recto and [a10] recto]. Comparing our copy with editions of the work in ISTC and GW and with the annals of the Roman press of Eucharius and Marcellus Silber published by Alberto Tinto in 1968, I came to the conclusion that the booklet should perhaps be assigned to the Sibler press rather than Johann Besicken and could possibly be identified with the edition printed by Marcellus Silber around 1515 ( see Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 5). A second copy of the edition held in the library, F150.e.2.7, had previously been identified with [Rome : Eucharius Silber, ca. 1495].

Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 7:

Item no. 7 is a copy of the Divisiones decem nationum totius Christianitatis and had not been catalogued in Newton before. The brief Oates’s note assigned it to Besicken and dated to after 1500 [Images: leaves [a1] recto and [a4] recto]. Indeed its textual features and impronta agree with those found in an edition attributed to Johann Besicken around 1505 in the online version of EDIT16 [EDIT 16 (2. ed.): CNCE 17304]. However, the type used, which measures 86 mm. per 20 lines, is once again closer to Eucharius Silber’s 92 G [P. 6] rather than to any of the different states of Johann Besicken’s 87 G.a [P. 1] as represented in CUL and British Library copies of the editions discussed by Paolo Veneziani and Martin Davies in their articles on Besicken and his successor Etienne Guillery. Moreover, the setting of the text seems to match an edition attributed to Eucharius Silber around 1491-1495 in GW 857010N and ISTC id00288200, of which only one copy is known to survive in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. GW gives the type of the edition as 86 G [P. 6*], matching the measures of the type in our book. I would therefore be inclined to follow GW and ISTC and identify our booklet as another copy of this rare edition (see Dd.5.60.G, item no 7).

Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 8:

It seems to me that the same type was also used for the printing of the book that follows as item 8, a copy of [Petrus Georgii Tolomei], Translatio miraculosa ecclesiae Beatae Virginis Mariae de Loreto [Images: leaves [a1] recto, [a1] verso, and [a4] recto].

The edition was assigned by Oates to Besicken after 1500 and indeed the text setting and the woodcut of the Virgin and Child (surrounded by sun rays, the Virgin standing on the crescent, all within a decorated border made of eight blocks, at the four corners the Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel, and two prophets, with the “B” of Besicken’s and Martinus de Amsterdam’s device at centre of the lower border) are recorded by Sander 4296 in an edition attributed by him to Besicken and Martinus de Amsterdam and dated to after 1500. Indeed the impronta in our booklet (ura- eruo nao- tane) corresponds to that recorded in the online EDIT 16 (CNCE 36420) for an edition assigned to Besicken to around 1504. Moreover, the woodcut is identical to one used by Besicken and Martinus in an edition of the German translation of the (Mirabilia Romae vel potius) Historia et descriptio urbis Romae dated 1500 in ISTC and more precisely to not before 11 August 1500 in GW (see ISTC im00609700, with link to BSB-Ink I-160 as well, and GW M23630). The edition of the Translatio recorded by Sander has been variously assigned in the other repertories as follows: to [Rome: Eucharius Silber, ca. 1500?] in Goff T426 followed by ISTC it00426000, to [Johann Besicken, after 1500] in IGI V p. 208, and to [Johann Besicken, ca. 1504] in Floriano Grimaldi (ed.), Il libro lauretano : secoli XV-XVIII, Loreto, 1994, p. 75, no. 18, followed by the online EDIT 16 (CNCE 36420), whereas GW M17557 only vaguely assigned it to Rome. In the face of such uncertainty and on the basis of the use of the 86 G type, generally assigned to Silber, I decided, for the time being, to follow Goff and ISTC and assign the edition to Eucharius Silber and to around 1500 while I continue to assess the matter, see Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 8.

Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 9:

The ninth item, a copy of the Tabula christianae religionis, including at the end a short text entitled Decem praecepta legis, is the only booklet in the volume that was assigned to Eucharius Silber by Oates. Indeed the Roman type used for this edition is very close to Silber’s 84 R (P. 8), which was in use perhaps in 1493 and certainly in 1495-1500 (see BMC, IV, p. 103), and measures 85 mm. per 20 lines. This is the type recorded in GW M44694 for an edition assigned to Silber, which also shows the same text setting, number of leaves, leaf signatures, and number of lines to the page of our booklet. I would therefore be inclined to identify our edition with this rare Silber edition, of which GW records only one copy in the Staatsbibliothek of Berlin. The German catalogue, however, does not provide any indication or suggestion for the date of printing, and I would therefore be most grateful for any suggestion or further information (see Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 9). [Images: leaves A1 recto, B7 verso, B8 recto and B10 recto].

:

:

Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 10:

The last booklet in the volume, a copy of Bernardus de Granollachs’s Lunarium from 1504 to 1550, is apparently even rarer [Images: leaves [a1] recto, [a1] verso, [a2] recto, [a2] verso, and c8 verso]

It was attributed to [Rome : Johannes Besicken, 1504] in Adams, vol. I, p. 499, no.  G 1000, and simply to [Rome : 1504] by Oates.  Being an early 16th-century book, this edition is ignored by both ISTC and GW.  The woodcut on leaf [a1] recto is identical to the one that first appeared in an edition of the Lunarium for the years 1494-1550 attributed to [Rome: Johann Besicken, 1493-94] by ISTC ig00343500, to [Rome: Johann Sigismund Besicken, ca. 1494] by Sander 3228, and to [Rome: Johann Sigismund Besicken and Mayr, 1494] by BSB-Ink G-242 (with electronic facsimile). The same woodcut was also used to illustrate four editions of the Lunarium for the years 1497-1550, most of which were attributed to Plannk by Sander (see Sander 3232-3235). Searching the web, as one does now-a-days, I found an edition of the Lunarium from 1504 to 1550 listed as no. 249 in a Bernard Quaritch’s catalogue, A Catalogue of Early Printed Books Illustrated with Woodcuts …, London, no. 353, May 1919, p. 54, no. 249, pl. 79 (offered for sale at £ 6.10.0).  The two booklets were printed with similar types but with a slightly different setting, as clearly shown by the reproductions of their title pages (in the Quaritch edition, the conjunction “et” is spelled out and the word “Littera” begins with a capital). The two books are therefore either two different issues of the same edition or two different editions altogether. The Quaritch catalogue suggested a Venetian origin for its Granollachs edition. The Gothic type used in our book measures 64 mm. per 20 lines and is similar but not identical to type 60 G [P. 2] used by Johann Besicken (cfr. BM 15th cent., IV, 138). It does not match the Gothic type G 66 used by Eucharius Silber in the edition of [Alfonso de Soto. Glossa in Regulas Cancellarie Innocentii VIII, cum textu] dated 6 June 1504 and reproduced in Tinto, p. II, either. In fact, it does not resemble any of the types recorded in BM 15th century for Besicken, Silber, or Plannk (the latter published at least 8 editions of Granollach’s Lunarium between 1487 and 1500). In addition, the impronta in our book (i.n- E.is .Gis Iuxx, if I am not mistaken), differs from that registered for an edition of the Lunarium attributed to Besicken in 1504 in online EDIT 16 (CNCE 21579, for which the impronta is given as: s.do s.is s.us Iuma): this edition survives in two copies, respectively in the Biblioteca comunale Ariostea at Ferrara and the Biblioteca universitaria at Pisa.  It should be noted that the only reference provided by EDIT 16 is Adams, no. G1000, i.e. our booklet, which makes me wonder whether the compiler of EDIT 16 ever bothered to compare their copies with ours!  All these conflicting factors leave me with many unanswered questions and I have therefore provisionally attributed this last small booklet to [Rome ? : ca. 1504] (see Dd*.5.60(G), item no. 10), following, in fact, what Oates said in the first instance !

Working on this volume faced me with some difficult questions of attribution. It also brought to my mind many other questions regarding how to convey bibliographical information in the most effective way in our catalogue despite the constraints of the international rules for cataloguing rare books. The rules, for instance, discourage “diplomatic” transcription of texts; it was only through the comparison of the diplomatic transcriptions of the initial captions in other repertories, however, that I could separate and identify the different editions of the texts gathered in our sammelbound. The natural conclusion is that any online cataloguing project relating to rare books should aim to include the digitisation of the material when not already digitised elsewhere or unique, and link the bibliographical descriptions to a few relevant images (incipits, explicits, woodcut decoration, hand decoration and binding).  As Paul Needham put it, “Lengthy … narratives rarely provide usable information … good reproductions always do” !

Bibliography:

H. M. Adams, Catalogue of books printed on the Continent of Europe, 1501-1600 in Cambridge Libraries, 2 vols, London, 1967.

Catalogue of books printed in the XVth century now in the British Museum [British Library], 13 parts, London, 1963-2007.

Martin C. Davies, “Besicken and Guillery”, in The Italian book 1465-1800, Studies presented to Dennis E. Rhodes on his 70th birthday, edited by Denis V. Reidy, London, 1993, 35-54.

Paul Needham, “Copy Description in Incunable Catalogues”, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 95 (2001), 173-239.

Paul Needham, “The Bodleian Library Incunables”, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 101.3 (2007), 345-395.

J.C.T. Oates, A catalogue of the fifteenth-century printed books in the University Library Cambridge, Cambridge, 1954.

Vera Sack, Die Inkunabeln der Universitätsbibliothek und anderer öffentlicher Sammlungen in Freiburg im Breisgau und Umgebung, 3 vols, Wiesbaden, 1985.

Max Sander, Le Livre a Figures Italien depuis 1467 jusqu’a 1530, 6 vols, Milan, [1942-43]; with Supplement by Carlo Enrico Rava, Milano, 1969.

Alberto Tinto, Gli annali tipografici di Eucario e Marcello Silber (1501-1527), Firenze, 1968 (Bibli.oteca di bibliografia italiana, 55).

Paolo Veneziani, “Besicken e il metodo degli incunabolisti”, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 2005, 77-99.

Comments Off on Donations and rarities

By Laura Nuvoloni, 19 May 2011 10:42 am

One of the very first books to be donated to the University of Cambridge bears a very personal note.  The book is a copy of Bartolus de Saxoferrato, Super secunda parte Digesti novi, printed in Venice by Vindelinus de Spira in 1473, Inc.1.B.3.1b[1341]. As testified by the inscription “… My lord chawnceler” in the lower right corner of leaf [a1] recto, it was previously in the possession of Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England. The book has some marginal annotations that may be attributed to Rotherham himself. Particularly intriguing is a note beside a passage relating to unlawful killing on leaf [x5] recto: the note records the name “Ricardus grey” and it seems to refer to the execution of Richard Grey, the half-brother of King Edward V, carried out on the orders of King Richard III at Pontefract Castle on 25 June 1483. The note must therefore be nearly contemporary to the event, as the bishop donated the book to the University around 1484.

With the same donation came a companion volume of Bartolus’s commentary, i.e. Vindelino’s princeps of the commentary Super Secunda parte Digesti veteris, now Inc.1.B.3.1b[1340]. This imperfect copy of the book is the only one to be found in Britain among the eleven exemplars of the edition listed in ISTC (ISTC ib00225900).

Many other incunable books that are rare or unique, i.e. the only recorded surviving copy of a specific edition, can be found among the library holdings.  This is the case for Columella’s De re rustica, Liber X, De cultu hortorum, attributed to the Printer of the Silius Italicus in Rome around 1471, Inc.5.B.2.5[1147]. Bought of the London dealer Uriah Maggs in 1894, the book bears extensive marginal and interlinear manuscript notes written by an Italian owner in humanistic cursive hand on the first two leaves, [a1] recto – [a2] recto in the late 15th century.

Some of these rare books are beautifully illustrated by woodcuts.

A recent addition to the online catalogue is an incomplete copy of a rare edition of the Mirabilia Romae vel potius Historia et descriptio urbis Romae published in Rome by Stephan Plannck on 7 September 1500, now Inc.7.B.2.26[1270]. The incipit on leaf [A3] recto is illustrated with one woodcut initial and a half-page vignette with the imperial, papal and Roman arms, tiara and crowns: the papal arms are those of Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503). The book bears nine other full-page woodcuts with decorated borders including the fourth device of Johannes Besicken “I.H.I.S.” (see Sander 4550). The full-page woodcuts represent: Rea Silvia and the Capitoline wolf with Romolus and Remus on leaf [A2] verso; the Veronica on leaf B8 verso; St John on leaf C2 verso; St Peter on leaf C5 verso; St Paul on leaf C7 verso; Virgin and Child on leaf D1 recto; St Laurence on leaf D2 verso; St Sebastian on leaf D3 verso; and the Crucifixion on leaf D5 verso. Only one other copy of the edition is known to survive in the Ambrosiana Library of Milano. The book was given to the library by Charles Fairfax Murray, artist and art connoisseur, in September 1918. An early 16th-century inscription on leaf [A3] recto reads “Fr[ater] Archa[n]gelus de Creme [?] o[rdinis] S[ancti] franciscj”. We have been unable to identify Frate Arcangelo da Crema and therefore any further information on the identity of this Franciscan friar would be gratefully received.

Equally unidentified are the two 16th-century English owners of a copy of Johannes Marchesinus, Mammotrectus super Bibliam, published in Venice by Nicolaus Jenson on 23 September 1479, now Inc.5.B.3.2[1363].  John Peers and John Webbe inscribed their names in 16th-century cursive script on the parchment upper endleaf, one under the other. The book is still bound in brown calf over wooden boards, with blind-tooling, traces of leather straps and metal catches at fore edges, and original parchment endpapers. This is one of the many medieval and renaissance bindings that can be found in the library incunable collection. It is datable to the late 15th century and was possibly produced in Cambridge. It came to the library as part of the Richard Holdsworth Bequest, which was adjudged to Cambridge University in 1664, and bears both the old university shelfmark “E-5-50” and armorial bookplate on leaf a1 recto.