From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media 1450 to 1500 Timeline

Printed newsletters begin circulating in Europe.

The Göttingen Model Book, preserved at Niedersächische Staats- und Universitäts Bibliothek Göttingen,

 "is a painting book for the drawing of leaves, initials and patterned backgrounds in different color combinations; even the composition of the colors is described in detail. The book decorations described in this manuscript can be found in the earliest period of printing in several Gutenberg Bibles, including the Göttingen copy of the B42" (http://www.gutenbergdigital.de/gudi/eframes/texte/framere/mubu_1.htm, accessed 08-12-2009).

The manuscript arrived in Göttingen in 1770 with the bequest of the library of Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile at this link: http://www.gutenbergdigital.de/gudi/eframes/index.htm. accessed 01-17-2010).

Venetian monk Fra Mauro completes the Fra Mauro map, a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame, about two meters in diameter.

The map was discovered in the monastery of San Michel in Isola, Murano, where the Camaldolese cartographer had his studio. It is preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice.

"The Fra Mauro map is unusual, but typical of Fra Mauro's portolan charts, in that its orientation is with the south at the top, one of the usual conventions of Muslim maps, in contrast with the Ptolemy map which has the north at the top.

"Fra Mauro was aware of the Ptolemy map, and commented that it was insufficient for many parts of the world:

"I do not think it derogatory to Ptolemy if I do not follow his Cosmografia, because, to have observed his meridians or parallels or degrees, it would be necessary in respect to the setting out of the known parts of this circumference, to leave out many provinces not mentioned by Ptolemy. But principally in latitude, that is from south to north, he has much 'terra incognita', because in his time it was unknown." (Text from Fra Mauro map)

"He recognized however the extent of the East given by Ptolemy, thereby suppressing the central position that Jerusalem had held on previous maps:

"Jerusalem is indeed the center of the inhabited world latitudinally, though longitudinally it is somewhat to the west, but since the western portion is more thickly populated by reason of Europe, therefore Jerusalem is also the center longitudinally if we regard not empty space but the density of population." (Text from Fra Mauro map)

"Fra Mauro regarded the world as a sphere, although he used the convention of describing the continents surrounded by water within the shape of a disc, but had no certainty about the size of the Earth:

"Likewise I have found various opinions regarding this circumference, but it is not possible to verify them. It is said to be 22,500 or 24,000 miglia or more, or less according to various considerations and opinions, but they are not of much authenticity, since they have not been tested." (Text from Fra Mauro map)

"The depiction of inhabited places and mountains, the map's chorography, is also an important feature. Castles and cities are identified by pictorial glyphs representing turreted castles or walled towns, distinguished in order of their importance."

"Fra Mauro also probably relied on Arab sources. This is suggested by the North-South inversion of the map, an Arab tradition examplified by the 12th century maps of Muhammad al-Idrisi, and the detailed information on the southeastern coast of Africa, which was brought by an Ethiopian embassy to Rome in the 1430s" (Wikipedia article on Fra Mauro map, accessed 01-12-2009).

A critical edition of the map was published by Piero Falchetta in 2006.

The Voynich manuscript, a mysterious illustrated book written in an indecipherable text, has been the subject of much research and speculation for centuries. However, its author, script and language remain unknown, and it is possible that the manuscript is intentionally meaningless.

"Over its recorded existence, the Voynich manuscript has been the object of intense study by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including some top American and British codebreakers of World War II fame (all of whom failed to decrypt a single word). This string of failures has turned the Voynich manuscript into a famous subject of historical cryptology, but it has also given weight to the theory that the book is simply an elaborate hoax — a meaningless sequence of arbitrary symbols" (Wikipedia article on the Voynich Manuscript).

The book is named after the Polish-American book-dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912. It is preserved in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, having been donated by the American rare book and manuscript dealer, H.P. Kraus, in 1969.

The Sibyllenbuch fragment, also known as Fragment vom Weltgericht, a small portion of a leaf from an early printed medieval poem containing prophecies of the fate of the Holy Roman Empire, may be the earliest surviving remnant of any European book printed by movable type.  It is printed in an early state of the DK font later used in the 36-line Bible. This state of the type was assigned by George D. Painter to the press of Johannes Gutenberg prior to his partnership with Johann Fust.

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC no. is00492500) dates the Sibyllenbuch fragment to "about 1452-53," making it older than any other European document printed by moveable type.

"The Sibyllenbuch fragment consists of a partial paper leaf printed in German using Gothic letter. It is owned by the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. The fragment was discovered in 1892 in an old bookbinding in Mainz. The text on the fragment relates to the Last Judgment and therefore sometimes is also called “Das Weltgericht” (German for "Last Judgment"). The text is part of a fourteenth century poem of 1040 lines known as the 'Sibyllenbuch' (Book of the Sibyls) . . . . The British Library identifies the fragment as coming from a quarto volume, which is a book composed of sheets of paper on which four pages were printed on each side, which were then folded twice to form groups of four leaves or eight pages. From analysis of the location of the watermark on the fragment and the known length of the entire poem, it has been estimated that the complete work contained 37 leaves (74 pages) with 28 lines per page.

"The type face used in the Sibyllenbuch is the same as that used in other early fragments attributed to Gutenberg, an Ars minor by Donatus (a Latin grammar used for centuries in schools) and several leaves of a pamphlet called the Turkish Calendar for 1455 (likely printed in late 1454), and has been called the DK type after its use in the Donatus and Kalendar. Scholars have identified several different states of this type face, a later version of which was used in about 1459-60 to print the so-called 36-line Bible. For this reason, the various states of this type have collectively been called the '36-line Bible type.'

"Due to the 'less finished state of the [DK] font', scholars have concluded it was 'plausibly earlier than 1454', the approximate date of the publication of Gutenberg’s Bible. Although at one time some believed it dated to the 1440s, it is now believed to have been printed in the early 1450s. George D. Painter concluded that 'primitive imperfection' in the type face of the Sibyllenbuch indicated it was the earliest of the fragments printed in the DK type" (Wikipedia article on Sibyllenbuch fragment, accessed 07-10-2009). 

The so-called “Giant Bible of Mainz,” one of the most magnificent Middle-Rhenish manuscript books of the fifteenth century, is written out on parchment in gothic letters on leaves measuring 570 and 400mm. The identified scribe dated his work in various places in the manuscript. The manuscript is preserved in the Lessing Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress.

The similarity in format and calligraphic style between this manuscript and the typography of the Gutenberg Bible issued just two years later is striking, suggesting that this manuscript might be the model for the typography Gutenberg used in his 42-line Bible. There is also a striking similarity between the illumination of this manuscript and the illumination of the William H. Scheide copy of the Gutenberg Bible at Princeton University. In addition, both styles of illumination bear a strong relationship to the style of certain engraved designs by the Master of the Playing Cards, the first "major master" in the history of printmaking, and "the first personality in the history of engraving." In Gutenberg and the Master of the Playing Cards (1966) Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt suggested that the creators of these illuminations and the Master of the Playing Cards may have used a common model book which is now lost.

"Among the many roads and trails constructed in pre-Columbian South America, the Inca road system, or Qhapaq Ñan was the most extensive and highly advanced for its time. The network was based on two north-south roads. The eastern route ran high in the puna and mountain valleys from Quito, Ecuador to Mendoza, Argentina. The western route followed the coastal plain except in coastal deserts where it hugged the foothills. More than twenty routes ran over the western mountains, while others traversed the eastern cordilla in the montana and lowlands. Some of these roads reach heights of over 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) above sea level. The trails connected the regions of the Inca empire from the northern provincial capital in Quito, Ecuador past the modern city of Santiago, Chile in the south. The Inca road system linked together about 40,000 km of roadway and provided access to over three million km² of territory.

"These roads provided easy, reliable and quick routes for the Empire's civilian and military communications, personnel movement, and logistical support. The prime users were imperial soldiers, porters and llama caravans, along with the nobility and individuals on official duty. Permission was required before others could walk along the roads, and tolls were charged at some bridges. Although the Inca roads varied greatly in scale, construction and appearance, for the most part they varied between about one and four meters in width.

"Much of the system was the result of the Incas claiming exclusive right over numerous traditional routes, some of which had been built centuries earlier. Many new sections were built or upgraded substantially: through Chile's Atacama desert, and along the western margin of Lake Titicaca, as two examples.

"Spanish chroniclers frequently described lengthy journeys made by the Inca ruler, carried on a litter, and surrounded by thousands of soldiers and retainers, to various parts of his empire.

"Because the Incas did not make use of the wheel for transportation, and did not have horses until the arrival of the Spanish in Peru in the 16th century, the trails were used almost exclusively by people walking, sometimes accompanied by pack animals, usually the llama.

"Relay messengers, or chasqui, stationed at intervals of 6 to 9 km, carried both messages and objects such as fresh marine fish for the rulers in the sierra. Messages consisted of knotted-cord records known as quipu along with a spoken message. Chaskis could cover an estimated 240 km per day.

"There were at least 1,000 and perhaps 2,000 way stations or tambos, placed at even intervals along the trails. These structures were intended to lodge and provision itinerant state personnel.

"Various means were used to bridge water courses. Rafts were used to cross wide meandering rivers. Bridges built of stone or floating reeds were used in marshy highlands. Inca rope bridges provided access across narrow valleys. A bridge across the Apurimac River, west of Cuzco, spanned a distance of 45 meters. Ravines were sometimes crossed by hanging baskets, or oroya, which could span distances of over 50 meters. Bridges were sometimes built in pairs" (Wikipedia article on Inca Road System, accessed 07-24-2009).

Using European artillery experts and European artillery, a 70,000 man Ottoman Turkish army, under the leadership of Mehmed II (Mahomet II,) break Constantinople's fabled defensive walls, capture Constantinople and kill the Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos.

With the death of Constantine XI, the Byzantine Empire, which had lasted for one thousand years, came to an end. This completed the destruction of the Roman Empire.

As a result of the Fall of Constantinople, numerous Byzantine Greek scholars travelled westward to Europe, bringing with them Greek manuscripts of the highest cultural value—source material for Renaissance study of classical texts.

Johannes Gutenberg has printed at least part of the 42-line Bible (Gutenberg Bible) by this date.

It has been stated that printing by moveable type was the first major invention in Europe associated with the name of an individual inventor, though ironically no documents have survived proving that Gutenberg actually invented the process.

For centuries the Catholic church sold Indulgences as a method of raising funds. These sheets of parchment, and later paper, were reproduced by manuscript copying. After the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453, a new round of Indulgences were sold in order to finance a crusade against the Turks.

The earliest document with a fixed date printed by moveable type is a 31-line Letter of Indulgence, printed in the so-called DK type, issued at Erfurt on October 22. The year 1454 is printed; the month and day is filled in by hand. This Indulgence, of which the only surviving copy is preserved in the Scheide Library at Princeton, was probably printed by Johannes Gutenberg.

The earliest printed Indulgence in the British Library is dated 1455.

Johannes Gutenberg, working with merchant and money-lender Johann Fust and printer Peter Schöffer, completes printing the 42-line Bible (B42) (Gutenberg Bible), the first book printed in Europe from moveable type.

To accomplish this monumental task Gutenberg, previously a goldsmith,  invented a special kind of printing ink, a method of casting type, and a special kind of press derived from the wine press. This complex set of integrated technologies has been called the first invention in Europe attributed to a single individual. Printing books was also the first process of mass production—the process that centuries later became the model for the Industrial Revolution.

Yet the process of printing from moveable type, for centuries attributed to Gutenberg, without supporting documents on the technical aspects of the process, except for the surviving examples of his printing, seems to have evolved in stages from the early 1450s to the 1470s, and also seems to have involved other inventors besides Gutenberg. In 2002 physicist and software developer Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Paul Needham, Librarian of the Scheide Library at Princeton University, working on original editions in the Scheide Library, used high resolution scans of individual characters printed by Gutenberg, and image processing algorithms to locate and compare variants of the same characters printed by Gutenberg. From this research it appears that the method of producing moveable type attributed to Gutenberg developed in phases rather than as a complete system, and that Gutenberg's technique of type casting was a precursor to the definitive process developed in the 1470s.

"We may now surmise that the method of manufacture of type with steel punches and matrices, which became the standard for more than four centuries of typography, was introduced a few years later by Nicolas Jenson, who from early days on was praised as a co-inventor. Jenson's contribution was apparently based on the early part of his career at the Mint in Paris, where striking medals with elaborate lettering would have given him specialized expertise. Jenson became one of the most influential type designers of all ages —as well as an excellent printer —when he worked in the 1470s in Venice, but this may have been preceded by an interlude in Mainz, where he probably made a type, first used in 1459, which unlike Gutenberg's types, was able to withstand many years of intensive use" (Lotte Hellinga, "The Gutenberg Revolutions," Eliot & Rose (eds) A Companion to the History of the Book [2007] 208).

"The irregularities in Gutenberg's type, particularly in simple characters such as the hyphen, made it clear that the variations could not have come from either ink smear or from wear and damage on the pieces of metal on the types themselves. While some identical types are clearly used on other pages, other variations, subjected to detailed image analysis, made for only one conclusion: that they could not have been produced from the same matrix. Transmitted light pictures of the page also revealed substructures in the type that could not arise from punchcutting techniques. They [Agüera y Arcas and Needham] hypothesized that the method involved impressing simple shapes to create alphabets in "cuneiform" style in a mould like sand. Casting the type would destroy the mould, and the alphabet would need to be recreated to make additional type. This would explain the non-identical type, as well as the substructures observed in the printed type. Thus, they feel that 'the decisive factor for the birth of typography', the use of reusable moulds for casting type, might have been a more progressive process than was previously thought. They suggest that the additional step of using the punch to create a mould that could be reused many times was not taken until twenty years later, in the 1470s" (Wikipedia article on Johannes Gutenberg, accessed 02-08-2009).

References:

Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Paul Needham, "Computational analytical bibliography," Proceedings Bibliopolis Conference The future history of the book', The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, (November 2002).

Agüera y Arcas, "Temporary Matrices and Elemental Punches in Gutenberg's DK type", in: Jensen (ed) Incunabula and Their Readers. Printing , Selling, and Using Books in the Fifteenth Century (2003) 1-12.

ISTC no. ib00526000

It has been determined that there were three phases in the printing process of the B42:

1. The first sheets were rubricated by being passed twice through the printing press, using black and then red ink. This process was soon abandoned, with spaces left for rubrication to be added by hand.

2. Some time later, after more sheets had been printed, the number of lines per page was increased from 40 to 42, presumably to save paper. Therefore, pages 1 to 9 and pages 256 to 265, presumably the first ones printed, have 40 lines each. Page 10 has 41, and from there on the 42 lines appear. The increase in line number was achieved by decreasing the interline spacing, rather than increasing the printed area of the page.

3. The print run was increased, probably to 180 copies, necessitating resetting those pages which had already been printed. The new sheets were all reset to 42 lines per page. Consequently, there are two distinct settings in folios 1-32 and 129-158 of volume I and folios 1-16 and 162 of volume II. 

It is believed that  approximately 180 copies of the Bible were produced, 135 on paper and 45 on vellum. When illuminated, the vellum copies would have even more closely resembled traditional medieval manuscripts. 47 or 48 copies survived, but of these only 21 are complete. Others are missing leaves or whole volumes. The 48 copies include volumes in Trier and Indiana which seem to be two parts of one copy. There are a substantial number of fragments, including numerous individual leaves. Twelve vellum copies survived, of which four are complete, and one is the New Testament only.

♦ When I checked the ISTC in January 2010 there were four different digital facsimiles available online, from the British Library, Keio University, Niedersächische Staats- und Universitäts Bibliothek Göttingen, and the Library of Congress. The British Library site offers the opportunity to compare their copies printed on paper and on vellum.

♦ In 2008 Stephen Fry made an excellent 60 minute film on Guterberg's development of printing by moveable type for the BBC entitled The Machine that Made Us. For the film Fry's team reconstructed what may have been Gutenberg's original press, cut punches, made matrices, cast type, and even made paper, before printing a page on the press. In March 2010 you could watch the film at this link: http://www.dontpressme.com/video/gutenberg.html. The film did not take into account the recent discoveries at Princeton regarding the method that Gutenberg probably used to cast his type.

Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, reported that in Frankfurt the year before, "a marvelous man" had been promoting the sale of a printed Bible. Piccolomini stated that he saw parts of the book and that it had such clear, large lettering that one could read it without eye glasses. He also noted that every copy had been sold.

Johann Fust, a merchant and money-lender, files a lawsuit against Johannes Gutenberg to recover money that he had advanced to Gutenberg beginning in 1450. This is one of the few extant documents that may imply Gutenberg's place in the history of printing by moveable type, though nothing concerning printing is specifically mentioned in the document. It is also possible, according to Paul Needham, that the document may be Gutenberg's personal copy, endorsed in his hand.

Fust's total claim against Gutenberg was 2026 gulden with interest. As a result of the lawsuit Gutenberg most probably paid back Fust's investment plus interest. Whether Fust gained possession of Gutenberg’s press and equipment, used for what the document calls the "Work of the Books," is unclear. Gutenberg seems to have resumed printing before 1460.

The record of this lawsuit, preserved at the Niedersächische Staats- und Universitäts Bibliothek Göttingen, is formally known as the The Helmasperger Notarial Instrument.

"Ulrich Helmasperger, clerk of the Bishopric of Bamberg, royal notary and certified public recorder at the Court of the Archbishop of Mainz wrote the Instrument which bears his name. This is the only contemporary account of the business relations between Gutenberg and Fust and of Gutenberg's invention, the "Work of the Books". This account of the legal proceedings documents that the citizen of Mainz, Johannes Fust, swore the following under oath: He had lent Gutenberg the sum of 1550 guilders which he himself had had to borrow at an interest rate of 6%. In his view the money he lent Gutenberg which was not used for their mutual benefit for the Work of the Books was a loan and thus he demanded that the interest on this loan be refunded to him. The Instrument briefly discusses the first legal complaint - the demand for repayment of the money - and describes the judgement which was unfavorable for Gutenberg. The Instrument does not mention the final judgement - Fust's demand that the partnership with Gutenberg be dissolved and the consequences of this" (http://www.gutenbergdigital.de/gudi/eframes/index.htm, accessed 01-17-2010).

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of the document, in whole, and in enlarged parts with transliterations and English translations, from the Niedersächische Staats- und Universitäts Bibliothek Göttingen website at this link: http://www.gutenbergdigital.de/gudi/eframes/index.htm, accessed 01-17-2010).

Needham, The Invention and Early Spread of European Printing as Represented in the Scheide Library (2007) 8.

The Aderlasskalender for the year 1457, also known as the Laxierkalender, is issued in Mainz, printed in the type of the 36-line Bible, presumably in 1456. 

It survives in only one incomplete copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (ISTC No. ia00051700).

"Bleeding- and purgation-calendars, which gave details of the lucky and unlucky days on which to bleed or take medicine in a given year, were popular in the Middle Ages. They maintained their popularity with the coming of the printed book. According to Osler, 'forty-six of these bleeding-and purgation-calendars were printed before 1480; one hundred of them before 1501 have been collected. . . .' The Mainz Kalendar for 1457 is much more a purgation-than a bleeding-calendar" (Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing (1966) 13.

Pope Calixtus III promulgates the Bulla Turcorum, announcing the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, and seeking funding for another crusade against the Turks, who were advancing into the Balkans.

"A copy of the Bull reached Mainz and was printed by Johann Gutenberg; only the present copy in the Scheide Library survives. A German translation was also printed by Gutenberg. It too survives in only one copy, in the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. Although no surviving example of early European printing is signed by Johann Gutenberg, early evidences and reports converge to show that he was the inventor of European typography. In particular, the “DK” (Donatus and Kalendar) type appears to be his first printing type. It was used in part to print the 31-line Cyprus Indulgence, of which the earliest datable copy, executed in Erfurt on 22 October 1454, is in the Scheide Library: this is the first fixed date at which we know that printing was being carried out in Mainz. Several other DK-type fragments, such as the Sibyllenbuch partial leaf at the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, show a much less finished state of the font, and are plausibly earlier than 1454. In the late 1450s, the DK type was apparently sold to Bamberg, where it was used to print the 36-line Bible (not after 1461), and other books, some of which are signed by Albrecht Pfister. . . .

"Acquired by John H. Scheide from Maggs Bros., London, May 1939. The single gathering of 12 paper leaves was disbound from some unidentified volume; it appears that Maggs acquired the work from some European bookseller without knowing of its earlier survival context. On the first three pages of the two final blank leaves is a densely written tractate concerning crusades and crusading indulgences; it is signed at the end as from the Charterhouse of Erfurt. Unpublished research by Dr. Hope Mayo strongly suggests that the tractate was composed by the Erfurt Carthusian Johannes Indaginis, a prolific writer and determined ecclesiastical reformer. Presumably, therefore, this copy of the Calixtus Bull belonged to the Erfurt Charterhouse. Curiously, the unique Berlin copy of the German printing of the Bull likewise belonged to that convent" (http://diglib.princeton.edu/xquery?_xq=getCollection&_xsl=collection&_pid=whsS2.4-calixtus, accessed 07-10-2009).

ISTC no.ic00060000.

The Bulla Turcorum of Pope Calixtus III, announcing the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, and seeking funding for another crusade against the Turks, is translated into German by Heinrich Kalteisen and printed by Johannes Gutenberg in the DK type as Die Bulla widder die Turcken.

Like the Latin edition probably published only days earlier, only one copy survives, in the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

ISTC no. ic00060100.

Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, a scribe who adopted the new technology of printing, publish the Psalterium latinum at Mainz. The work is cited in the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue ip01036000 as Psalterium. With canticles, hymns, capitula, preces maiores and minores. There are two issues: "a) of 143 leaves b) of 175 leaves, the latter designed for use in the diocese of Mainz."
All known copies are printed on vellum.

This magnificent book was:

• The first printed book to include a colophon giving both the name of the printer and the date of printing.

• The first work to incorporate color printing, with initial letters printed in red, light purple, and blue (from an engraved metal plate).

• The first printed book to include music— two lines of music printed with a 4-line staff.

The colophon of the Mainz Psalter boasts of the new technology involved in its production. The colophon reads in translation:

“The present copy of the Psalms, adorned with beauty of capital letters, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing and stamping without any driving of the pen. . . .”

Ten copies survived, and according to the ISTC, nearly all surviving copies are either incomplete or fragmentary.

The only complete copy of the 175 leaf version is preserved in the Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. That copy is also the only one to include on its colophon leaf the first printer's mark: the two linked shields of Fust and Schöffer hanging from a branch, the first of which was inscribed with the Greek letter χ for Christ, the second inscribed with the Greek letter Λ (for logos = word).  None of the other extant copies of the 1457 psalter include this mark, and it is unclear whether it was originally published with only some of the edition, or might have been added to the colophon leaf of unsold sheets at some later date, after much of the edition had been distributed. (My thanks for Paul Needham for clarifying the problem of the printer's mark in the first Mainz Psalter.)

Johannes Mentelin, formerly a scribe and illuminator, decides to embrace the new technology, and sets up a printing press in Strasbourg, Germany.

Mentelin's was the second printing press known to have been established after the Gutenberg/Fust and Schöffer press in Mainz.

"The manuscript records of the French royal mint note that on 4 October 1458, Charles VII the king ordered the masters of his mints to find a well qualified agent to go to Mainz to learn the art of printing which had recently been invented and brought to light there by Johann Gutenberg a man adept at cutting punches and 'caractères'. Nicholas Jensen, for some time mint master at Tours was selected for the mission.

"This is the first contemporary reference acknowledging Gutenberg as the inventor of printing" (Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing [1966] 14).

 ♦ According to the 2002 research by Paul Needham and Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Gutenberg did not actually cut punches; this technology may well have been invented later by Nicolas Jensen.

Fust and Schöffer complete a revised edition of their 1457 Psalter with twenty-three lines per page as compared to twenty lines in the 1457 edition, using the same types and initials as the 1457 edition.

The first edition of 1457 was intended for use in non-monastic churches. In the second edition the material was arranged for use in monastic services. The British Museum Catalogue states that the psalter was printed "in accordance with the reformed Monastic Breviary of the Union of Bursfield, known also as the Observantia per Germaniam. 

"The colophon states that the book was printed 'to the glory of God and in honour of Saint James' which suggests that the psalter was commissioned by, or associated in some way with, the Benedictine monastery of Saint James in Mainz" (Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing [1966] 14).

Thirteen copies are known, all printed on vellum.

ISTC No.: ip01062000

Printers Fust and Schöffer complete their edition of Rationale divinorum officiorum by Guillelmus Duranti (Durandus)—a work explaining the meaning of the various services of the Catholic church and the ceremonies used in them. The folio volume has one large (thirteen-line) capital letter, and two smaller capitals printed in two colors— red and dull blue-gray, and a number of small capitals mostly printed in red, though some were omitted by the printer and put in by hand. All surviving copies are printed on vellum except for one on paper preserved at Munich.

The 1459 Durandus was the first book printed in type based on rounded script—less formal than the Gothic Textura or Textualis bookhand, on which Gutenberg and Schöffer based their first types.

"The type cut by Peter Schoeffer on the model of this hand is rounder and more open that Textura, the ascenders are more pronounced and give more white on the page, 'there is a greater differentiation of letters and therefore inscribed legibility'. The letter 'shares some characteristics of the Renaissance and others of the Middle Ages. Hence it has been called the Fere-humanistica or Gotico-antiqua. . . .The hand is gothic but with considerable roman tendencies' (A.F. Johnson Type Designs, 1959.) It was a letter much copied in Germany; less so outside. It was taken as a pattern by William Morris for his Troy and Chaucer types" (Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing [1966] 14).

ISTC  No.: id00403000.

It appears that no blockbooks (block books) in the literal sense were published in France in the 15th century. An example of an intermediate form between a collection of prints and a blockbook printed in France about 1465 was a collection of three woodcuts with text, printed on one side of three sheets, entitled Les neuf preux. This is known from a single copy preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 

"It consists of three sheets of paper, each of which contains an impression from a block containing three figures. They are printed by means of the frotton in light-coloured ink, and have been coloured by hand. The first sheet contains pictures of the three champions of classical times, Hector, Alexander, and Julius Caesar; the second the three champions of the Old Testament, Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeaeus; the third, the three champions of mediaeval history, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Boulogne. Under each picture is a stanza of six lines, all rhyming, cut in a body type.

"These leaves form part of the Armorial of Gilles le Bouvier, who was King-at-Arms to Charles VII of France; and as the manuscript was finished between 9th November 1454 and 22 September 1457, it is reasonable to suppose that the prints were executed in France, probably at Paris, before the latter date. The verses are, at any rate, the oldest printed specimen of the French language" (Duff, Early Printed Books (1893) 17-18).

Les neuf preux is described by Ursula Baurmeister in Catalogue des incunables de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (CIBN), Vol. 1, fascicule 1 (Xylographes) no. NN-1.

The Armorial of Gilles le Bouvier is BnF Ms. fr. 4985.

In "Prints in the Early Printing Shops," Parshall (ed) The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe (2009) 39-91 Paul Needham discusses publications related to Les neuf preux.

The Biblia Latina, printed by Johannes Mentelin by 1460 (ISTC No. b00528000), is the second edition of the Bible and first book printed in Strasbourg. Twenty-eight copies survive, all on paper. There is a copy in the Scheide Library at Princeton. "Until Scheide's purchase in 2001, no copy had been sold for more than 75 years."

An edition of the encyclopedic work by the 13th century Dominican of Genoa, Johannes Balbus, entitled the Summa grammaticalis quae vocatur Catholicon, is issued in Mainz by "the printer of the Catholicon", (ISTC No. ib00020000). It has been called the first work printed that was not entirely religious in content, though in this it was clearly preceded by the bloodletting calendar of 1456.

The colophon of this book reads in translation:

"This book was produced not with a reed, stylus, or quill, but by the admirable design, proportion, and adjustment of punches and matrices."

The means by which this book was printed continues to be the subject of research:

"As early as 1905 Gottfried Zedler recognized that the Catholicon edition dated Mainz 1460 exists in three impressions printed from a single setting of type but associated with three presses (with different pinhole patterns) and printed on three distinct paper stocks. In 1982 Paul Needham presented evidence that the three issues were printed at three different times, according to the datable use of their paper stocks: copies on Bull's Head paper (with which are classed the vellum copies) in 1460, copies on Galliziani paper ca. 1469, and copies on Crown and Tower papers ca. 1472. Moreover, Needham argued that the three impressions were produced, not from standing type, but from two-line 'slugs' cast from the type and capable of being reassembled for subsequent impressions. According to this theory, the first impression of the Catholicon was produced by Gutenberg himself in 1460; the 'slugs' then passed into the possession of Konrad Humery with Gutenberg's other typographic material after the latter's death in 1468 and were re-used by Humery, probably with the help of Peter Schoeffer, ca. 1469. In this view, which has aroused prolonged controversy among incunabulists, the 1460 Catholicon represents not only Gutenberg's last production but also his final achievement, the invention of an early form of stereotyping" (The Nakles Collection of Incunabula, Christie's New York, 17 April 2000, Lot 2).

"Three issues can be distinguished in spite of identical typesetting: a) printed on vellum or Bull's Head paper; b) on Galliziani paper; c) on Tower & Crown paper. This has given rise to the theory that issue a) was printed in 1460, issue b) in 1469 and issue c) about 1472; see P. Needham, in BSA 76 (1982) pp.395-456 and the articles "zur Catholicon-Forschung" in Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchgeschichte 13 (1988) pp.105-232. For an alternative theory that all three states were printed about 1469, see L. Hellinga in Gb Jb 1989 pp. 47-96 and in the Book Collector (Spring 1992) pp. 28-54" (http://istc.bl.uk/search/search.html?operation=record&rsid=220621&q=0, accessed 12-28-2009).

"Book illustration in printed books seems to have completed in one generation (ca. 1460—ca. 1490) a cycle which took about 1,000 years in manuscript illumination. In early blockbooks and in the typographically produced books of [Albrecht] Pfister, illustrations performed an almost separate function; they were not subservient to the text. (In the earliest extant illuminated manuscripts from the Vth—VIth century, as for example the Vienna Genesis, illustrations were similarly 'independent.) Beginning in the 1470's illustrations in printed books became more and more integrated into the text, achieving an aesthetic harmony of the two elements. (In illumination this development lasted from the IXth to the XIVth century). By the end of the XVth century illustrations in many printed books began to outgrow the text page; the artist freqeuently paid less attention to the character of the type, and the unity of type and illustration decreased. (This development is examplified in many Books of Hours where, outside the calendar illustration [which remained subjunct to the text], the pictorial aspect occupied an inordinately large place; in manuscripts we can observe this from the early XVth century on.). This dichotomy did not apply to incidental illustrations, used to adorn title pages or the text, nor to some of the finest XVIth-century illustrated books (like [Hans] Holbein's Dance of Death)" (Hirsch, Printing, Selling, Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 120; there are 3 footnotes in Hirsch's book, which I have incorporated into the quotation where indicated, using parentheses).

A 36-line Bible printed at Bamberg in 1461 or earlier in the so-called DK types, is thought to be the third printed edition of the Bible. ISTC No. ib00527000.

There is a copy in the Scheide Library at Princeton. "Only 14 copies survive, all on paper. Scheide's copy once belonged to the Benedictines of Würzburg, whose convent was dissolved in 1803, and to Earl Spencer. When Scheide bought it at an auction in November 1991, no copy had been on the market for 200 years."

Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg, who is characterized as "a church dignitary and amateur printer" issues a book of fables, Der Edelstein by Ulrich Boner, a Dominican monk. ISTC no. ib00974500

Containing 101 woodcuts, this was also the first book printed in German, and the first dated book with woodcut illustrations. "The woodcuts were impressed by hand in blanks left for the purpose in the printed text—much as though they had been rubber stamps" (Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication [1969] xi).

Only one copy of the original printing survived. It is preserved in the Herzog August Bibliothek at Wolfenbüttel. A second edition issued by Pfister about 1462 contains 103 woodcuts. ISTC no. ib00974550.

Printing the Biblia pauperum, a kind of illustrated précis of highlights in the Bible— intended for laymen or lower clergy who could not afford a complete Bible— represented a major technical challenge in the integration of the relatively brief text with the numerous woodcuts on each page. In spite of these difficulties, the first printed edition may have employed moveable type.

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue lists ten editions of the Biblia pauperum printed during the 15th century. The earliest of these are three editions issued in Bamberg by Albrecht Pfister, two of which are estimated to have been printed in 1462, one in German and the other in Latin, and another Latin edition in 1463. ISTC  nos. ib00652700, ib00652750, ib00652800.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of ib00652750 at the  Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München website at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00026399/images/index.html?id=00026399&fip=67.164.64.97&no=3&seite=5, accessed 12-29-2009).

"The first woodcuts used to illustrate copies of the 'Biblia pauperum' printed with movable types were not produced in Mainz, where printing was first practised, but rather, using types from Mainz, in Bamberg in the printing workshop of Albrecht Pfister. Since 1460, Pfister had his printed editions illustrated with woodcuts. Initially, the integration of pictures in printed text proved to be a difficult task. . . . His edition of the 'Biblia pauperum' for the first time combined text and illustrations in one printing forme.

"Even after Pfister's edition was published, the 'Biblia pauperum' continued to be produced as a blockbook, which also allowed the combination of woodcuts with printed text. In the production of illustrated books for religious edification or for practical purposes which had previously been copied by hand, woodcuts successfully came to replace pen drawings. . . ." (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert [2009] no. 6).

Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer at Mainz issue the fourth printed Bible, and the first explicitly dated Bible, sometimes called the Biblia pulcra because of the new Gotico-Antiqua typeface which Schöffer developed specially for the edition. ISTC no. ib00529000.

After its colophon printed in red, the edition contains the first printer's mark ever used, also printed in red—two linked shields hanging from a branch, the first of which was inscribed with the Greek letter χ for Christ, the second inscribed with the Greek letter Λ (for logos = word). Fust and Schöffer's printer's mark first appeared in a single extant copy of the 1457 Mainz Psalter preserved in Vienna. The other 9 extant copies of that work do not contain the mark. The 1462 Bible is the work work to include the printer's mark in the entire edition.

"Printers' marks had no precedent in text manuscripts, though they had an affinity with notarial signets that had been in use for a long time in legal contracts and official documents. It may seem surprising that, in spite of these early examples, so many incunables were issued without the name of the printer, and often without place and/or date. Since it was not at all common for scribes to sign their names, printers presumably did not consider identification important until they saw in the complete imprint a detail which would increase their sale and satisfy their ego. E. von Kathen made a statisical survey of all the entries in volumes I-VII of the Gesamtkatalog and found in this sample (which covered ca 20% of the total XVth-century production) that up to the year 1480, 57.4% lacked indication of printer, 53% in the next decade, and 35.3% in the last decade of the XVth century" (Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 25).  

•The lack of printers' names, or even place or date of printing, in so many 15th century printed books created huge research challenges for historical bibliographers of early printing during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert (2009) no. 53. Clair, A Chronology of Printing (1969) 11.

A feud between Archbishop Adolf II von Nassau, named archbishop for Mainz by the Pope, and Archbishop Diether von Isenburg, who was supported by the people, caused Adolf II to send troops to raid the city of Mainz, plundering and killing 400 inhabitants. At a tribunal that followed, those who survived lost all their property, which was then divided among those who promised to follow Adolf II. Those who did not promise to follow Adolf II (among them printer Johannes Gutenberg) were driven out of the city or thrown into prison.

The new Archbishop denied Mainz its town rights and made the city an archepiscopal capital. This debacle stopped printing in Mainz for the next few years and contributed to the spread of printing:

"It wiped out commerce there, and the consequent lack of money led printers, who were established in a kind of industrial group, to scatter widely. This accounts for the German names we find among the earliest printers in other countries throughout Europe" (Updike).

Peter Schöffer issues the first publication with a  printed title page with his edition of Pope Pius II's Bulla Cruciatae contra Turcos.  Most probably the title page was an experiment as "the Aschaffenburg copy has a title-page in Psalter type; the Paris copy has a woodcut title; the Musée Condé copy has a title in MS" (ISTC no. ip00655750 citing two copies in France, three in Germany and one in Holland).

• The title page did not begin to come into widespread use until the end of the 15th century.

At the age of 80 Ottoman surgeon and physician Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu (Ottoman Turkish:شرف الدّین صابونجی اوغلی) publishes in manuscript Cerrahiyyetu'l-Haniyye (Imperial Surgery), an illustrated surgical atlas, the first medical textbook written in Turkish, probably the first atlas of pediatric surgery, and the first surgical atlas to show women surgeons. The atlas covers 191 topics in three chapters.

Three copies survived, all different, and all incomplete. One is preserved in Istanbul’s Fatih Millet Library, another at the Capa Medical History Department of Istanbul University, and a third in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 

The first book printed in Italy, an edition of Cicero’s De Oratore, is issued from the press of the German printers Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz at the monastery of Subiaco. ISTC no. ic00654000

This was also the first book printed in Roman type, and the first printed edition of any one of the Greek or Latin classics. The edition size has been estimated between 100 and 275 copies. 18 copies remain extant.

"The introduction of printing in Italy (Subiaco-Rome) was almost certainly arranged by highly placed persons in the entourage of Pope Paul II. This and other similar beginnings, especially common in Italy, i.e. the establishment of presses by invitation rather than upon printers' initiative, are nevertheless a sign that the importance of printing had been recognized" (Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 106).

In his preface to a corrected version of Aurelius Augustinus's (Augustine of Hippo's)  De arte praedicandi (Book IV of De doctrina christiana) printed in Strassburg by Johann Mentelin (ISTC no. ia01226000) an anonymous scholar described the value and difficulty of preparing as accurate a manuscript text as possible for printing, probably for the first time in any printed book:

"Nevertheless I have thought it by all means worthwhile that I should first expend much labour over what would be to the common utility of the Church: that I may have this most useful little book- worthy of all esteem - correct, in order that, after correction this way, I would be able to communicate it more usefully to all those wishing to have it. Therefore, as God is my witness, I have taken great pains in the correction of it, in such a way that I have sought out diligently all the copies which I have been able to discover for this purpose in any of the libraries in the school of Heidelberg, in Speyer and in Worms, and finally also in Strassburg. And since in the course of this I have learned by experience that that particular book of Augustine is rare to come by even in the great and well stocked libraries, and even rarer can it be had for copying from any of those same libraries; and also, what is worse, that when it can be found in there it is more rarely corrected or emended; on that account I have been moved to work most carefully to this end; that, according to my exemplar- now corrected at least by as much care and labour as I am capable of- the said little book can be multipled in this state, and in such a way that it may become rapidly and easily known in a short time, for the use of many and to the common advantage of the Church. On account of which, since I judged that this could not be done more expeditiously by any other method or means, I have persuaded by every means that discreet gentleman Johann Mentelin, inhabitant of Strassburg, master of the art of typography, to the end that the might see fit to undertake the responsibily and toil of multiplying this little book by means of printing, having my copy before his eyes. . . ." (M.B. Parkes, Introduction to Peter Ganz (ed) The Role of the Book in Medieval Culture [1986] 15-16).

Johann Mentelin of Strasbourg issues the first edition of the Bible in German—the first edition in any modern language. ISTC no. ib00624000.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of this book at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München website at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00036981/images/index.html?id=00036981&fip=67.164.64.97&no=3&seite=5, accessed 12-29-2009).

Before July 20 of this year Adolf Rusch, the "R" printer, of Strasbourg issues the first printed edition of De sermonum proprietate, seu de universo, written by Hrabanus Maurus (Rabanus Maurus), Archbishop of Mainz, in the first half of the ninth century. This was the first printed encyclopedia, and the first printed book to contain a chapter on medicine. That section may also be the first significant printed text on a scientific subject.

ISTC no. ir00001000:

"Dating is based on a MS. note in a copy at Paris BN (cf. CIBN). P. Needham in Christie's, Doheny 16, disputes the date, placing the types 1473-75 and regarding Mentelin in association with Rusch as responsible for the work of the R-printer."

Printers Sweynheym and Pannartz issue the first edition of St. Augustine, De civitate dei from their press at the monastery of Subiaco, Italy. It is thought that the monks at the monastery participated in printing the edition. 

The manuscript from which they based this text is preserved there in the Monastery of St. Scholastica:

"That the codex was used for the printing is clearly shown by the frequent editorial corrections, the inky fingerprints, and the scored marks in the margins to indicate the end of the text page. The texts of the printed pages correspond almost exactly to these markings" (Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle [1976] 34).

This may be the earliest printed book for which the printer's manuscript remains extant. ISTC no. ia01230000.

The first printed book with illustrations issued in Italy was an edition of the Meditationes seu Contemplationes devotissimae of the Spanish Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (Johannes de Turrecremata) issued in Rome by Ulrich Han (Udalricus Gallus).

The woodcuts, "though modeled after frescoes in Santa Maria di Minerva in Rome, were the work of a German artisan" (Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 120, footnote 25).

ISTC No. it00534800.

Humanist  Joannes Andrea Bussi, bishop of Aleria, and the chief editor for the printing house of  Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz after it moved from Subiaco to Rome, writes to Pope Paul II:

"In our time God gave Christendom a gift which enables even the pauper to acquire books. Prices of books have decreased by eighty percent" (Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 1).

Hirsch mentions in a footnote that this statement was printed by Sweynheim and Pannartz in their edition of St. Jerome, Epistolae, Rome, 1468 (ISTC no. ih00161000), but does not mention that Bussi edited that edition. 

"Bussi also produced for Sweynheym and Parnnatz editions of the Epistolae of Jerome (1468), the Historia naturalis of Pliny the Elder (1470), the complete works of Cyprian (1471), and the works of Aulus Gellius. Though his edition of Pliny [ISTC no. ip00787000] was not the first (a 1469 printing at Venice preceded it), nonetheless it was criticised by Niccolò Perotti in a letter to Francesco Guarneri, secretary of cardinal-nephew Marco Barbo. Perotti attacks Bussi's practice, then common, of adding one's own preface to an ancient text, and also the quality and accuracy of his editing.

"Bussi dedicated most of his editions to Pope Paul II, whom he served as the first papal librarian. In 1472 he requested assistance for Sweynheym and Pannartz from Pope Sixtus IV, since the printers, who typically published 275 copies in a single edition, had an enormous unsold stock" (Wikipedia article on Giovanni Andrea Bussi, accessed 01-04-2009).

That a cardinal and papal librarian served as chief editor for printers suggests a both a recognition of the importance of printing by the church and a close relationship between the printers and the Vatican, as confirmed by Bussi's request to the Pope for financial support for Sweynheym and Pannartz.  

Printers Sweynheym and Pannartz issue an edition of the Opera of Virgil at Rome (ISTC no. iv00149000), and printer Johannes Mentelin issues another edition at Strassburg (ISTC no. iv00151000).

These were the first printed editions of Virgil, and the ISTC estimates that the Mentelin edition appeared the year after the Sweynheym and Pannartz edition.

One of the most widely copied and read authors during the Middle Ages, Virgil was also one of the most frequently printed authors in the 15th century, with about 100 editions issued.

Though the names of the printers are not known, and the books are not dated, it is generally accepted that the six so-called "Rome incunabula" are the earliest books printed in Hebrew.

Printer Peter Schöffer issues a broadside offering for sale 21 printed books issued from 1458 to 1469. (ISTC no. is00320950).

"Sixteen of the items can be identied as products of Schöffer's own printing workshop in Mainz, while the rest probably were printed by Ulrich Zell in Cologne. All the works listed are in Latin, beginning with the edition of Bible co-produced by Fust and Schöffer in 1462, followed by theological, legal and humanist texts as well as a treatise dealing with merchants' contracts. The 13th book title, which has been cut off this copy, was certainly the Psalter edition of 1459, whose printing types are reproduced in a sample below the booklist. A note added by hand on the lower margin of the page indicates that the bookseller could be contacted in the in 'Zum wilden Mann', probably referring to a locality in Nuremberg.

"The advertisement is characteristic for the early phase of organised book trade. The intinerant bookseller — seldom the printer himself — travelled with an assortment of books wherever demand was to be found, leaving printed lists with a handwritten indication of where he was staying, for potential customers, the latter being mostly members of universities or monasteries, but also other citizens with some education. Such book lists contained no prices, since these were to be negotiated between the bookseller and the buyer" (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert (2009) no. 77).

Only a single copy of this broadside survived. It is preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München:

"It survived, albeit as binders waste cut in two halves and pasted printed side down on the inner cover of a manuscript (Clm 458) with astronomical-mantic texts which was owned by the well-known humanist of Nuremberg, Hartmann Schedel. At the end of the 19th century, it was discovered and removed from the book binding" (Wagner, op. cit.).

♦ You can download a digital facsimile of this broadside from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek website at this link: http://inkunabeln.digitale-sammlungen.de/Exemplar_S-207,1.html, accessed 01-03-2010.

The Venetian Senate grants the German printer Johannes de Spira (Speyer) a five-year monopoly on printing in the city.

This was the first monopoly on printing granted by a European government.

Speyer initiated printing in Venice in 1469, issuing Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares in an edition of 100 copies (ISTC no. ic00504000). "Four months" later he issued a second edition of 300 copies (ISTC no. c00505000). He also published the first edition of Pliny's Historia naturalis in a printing of 100 copies (ISTC no. ip00786000). From the text of the decree it appears that the Venetian Senate granted the monopoly to Speyer as a way of supporting his ongoing work, which they much admired.

The manuscript of the grant is preserved in the Venetian State Archives (ASV, NC, reg. 1, c.55r). It is reproduced in color and translated in  Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, from which I quote:

"The art of printing books has been introduced into our renowned state, and from day to day it has become more popular and common through the efforts, study and ingenuity of Master Johannes of Speyer, who chose our city over all the others. Here he lives with his wife, children and whole household; practices the said art of printing books; has just published, to universal acclaim, the Letters of Cicero and Pliny's noble work On Natural History, in the largest type and with the most beautiful letter-forms; and continues every day to print other famous volumes so that [this state] will be enriched by many, famous volumes, and for a low price, by the industry and fortitude of this man. Whereas such an innovation, unique and particular to our age and entirely unknown to those ancients, must be supported and nourished with all our goodwill and resources and [whereas] the same Master Johannes, who suffers under the great expense of his household and the wages of his craftsmen, must be provided with the means so that he may continue in better spirits and consider his art of printing something to be expanded rather than something to be abandoned, in the same manner as usual in other arts, even much smaller ones, the undersigned lords of the present Council, in response to the humble and reverent entreaty of the said Master Johannes, have determined and by determining decreed that over the next five years no one at all should have the desire, possibility, strength or daring to practice the said art of printing books in this the renowned state of Venice and its dominion, apart from Master Johannes himself. Every time that someone shall be found to have dared to practice this art and print books in defiance of this determination and decree, he must be fined and condemned to lose his equipment and the printed books. And, subject to the same penalty, no one is permitted or allowed to import here for the purpose of commerce such books, printed in other lands and places. . . ."

"Scholars and writers too went more readily to Venice than to any other city, in their search for publishers, attracted by the excellence of the local paper stock and typography as much as relatively liberal atmosphere in the city. In contrast to other early modern states where censorship and state regulation took on early to encourage and protect the nascent trade, in Venice, the trade was left virtually uncontrolled in the first years of its development. It was only in 1515 when Andrea Navagero was appointed for the task of the official revision of books that the state began to exercise a degree of control over what was printed. Even then, this literary censorship was primarily concerned with the quality of printed books to secure commercially successful correct editions. Thus the natural play of economic forces had left printers free to establish their printing enterprises and compete against each other in an open market. In other words, Venice was an ideal place from which to begin the 'printing revolution.'

"The rapid expansion of the printing industry leaves no doubt that Venice was the first city in the world to feel the full impact of printing, and to experience the most important revolution in human communications, and a favourable territory in which the system of copyright could develop. This, however, did not make Venice into a champion of literary property. It would take a long time before the copyright holder was identified with the moral or aesthetic personality of the writer.

"The best-known explanation for the emergence of author's rights is a technological one, viewing the need to protect literary production as a consequence of the invention of printing. In a manuscript culture, texts were treated as common property, and copying another man's work was often considered more of a favour than an injury. . . .

"It is not so much printing as the existence of a market in books and ideas that introduced concepts of intellectual property. As the literary market increased in importance, authors, who might well be writing for a living and competing for recognition, began to stress the distinctiveness of their products, in other words their intellectual or literary originality. Printing encouraged the development of such a market and expanded the concept of a book as a commodity (selling object). However, the concept of a book as a particular category of commodity - the work of the mind - was slow to develop" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, accessed 07-24-2009).

Johann Mentelin of Strassburg issues the first printing of St. Augustine's Confessions. The edition is undated but is not later than 1470. 

ISTC no. ia01250000.

"The first press in Paris, which was established at the Sorbonne, has often and mistakenly been called the first university press. It would be better to call it the first private press, established at the Sorbonne by Heynlein von Stein and Guillaume Fichet, who called Gering, Friburger and Crantz to Paris, probably selected the texts, and presumably guaranteed any deficit; the texts produced by these printers were slanted largely towards persons interested in new learning, among them of course teachers and students of the university" (Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 51).

Heynlin and Fichet's first publication with this press, and the first book printed in France, was a collection of letters by the fifteenth century grammarian Gasparinus de Bergamo (Gasparin de Pergame, Gasparinus Barzizius). Barzizius's  Epistolae (1470) were intended to provide exemplars for students for the writing of artful and elegant Latin. ISTC no. ib00260500.

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue lists a total of 53 works from this press.

"Having attempted to define some features of the scribal culture that dominated that area of Europe which produced the printing press, I should like in conclusion to note three aspects of the book and its use that printing, for better or worse, drastically altered. . . . Print as an Agent of Change; its author [Elizabeth Eisenstein] curiously, does not treat these three aspects of change.

"(1) With the growth of print as the normal medium of the page, the main medieval vehicle for relating new thought to inherited tradition disappears— namely, the gloss and the practice of glossing. To be sure sure glossed books like the commentaries on the Decretum, the Liber sextus or Nicholas de Lyra on the scriptures are often printed; but the printed book is not itself an object in which one writes long glosses. Perusal of Chatelain, Paléographie des classiques latin (Paris, 1884-92), will uncover pages of Virgils, Lucans, Juvenals and Horaces, the set texts of the trivium, covered with interlinear and marginal glosses of all dates. The manuscript books had in fact been laid out to be glossed, namely, with the text in large letters down the center of the page, surrounded by white space. In contrast, one can think of only a handful of printed books in which the page has been set up in type to be glossed by hand. What effect this had on processes of thought, methods of instruction, and the structured comparison of new ideas to old, would be interesting to work out.

"(2) With the advent of print the book becomes a monolithic unit, compared to its handwritten predecessor. Medieval books, particularly those individualistic owner-produced volumes of the fifteenth century, are frequently made up of numerous pieces varying from one to several quires in length, which were initially kept in loose wrappers and were bound together by the institution which inherited the volume. A person interested in a given text could copy out what he wanted and no more: thus, of the two hundred manuscripts of the Lumen anime, only half can be classified accordng to one of three restructurings they represent, while the other half are all hybrids, adaptations to the needs and desires of the individual owner-producer. In contrast, although printed books are on occasion copied by hand or sections of them are copied out, the average printed-book library is comprised of whole books. Not until the advent of the Xerox machine were individuals again easily able to make up books in sections or produce tailor-made collections. It would be interesting to know what effect this had on patterns of reading.

"(3) Up to about 1450, the main vehicle par excellence for painting was the manuscript book: the monuments of medieval painting are in Gospel books, Psalters, Pontificals, Breviaries and Books of Hours. The advent of printing forces painting out of the book. It is a desperate wrench. Owners of incunabula have them filled with beautiful miniatures, printers hire illuminators to adorn books with initials and frontispieces, or to water-color woodcuts printed in Books of Hours, but it is a losing battle. By 1500-1520, the Book of Hours as the fifteenth century knew it is in the death throes of mannerism and sterility. With the excepiton of the producers of woodcuts—Holbein, Duerer, Pieter Breughel, all of whom also painted—not a single major artist  thereafter did his major work in the medium of the printed book. While panel painting as an art form clearly antedates the invention of printing, the transition to the printed page must have encouraged the growth of the new medium which was so important to Netherlandish art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries" (Rouse & Rouse, "Backgrounds to Print: Aspects of the Manuscript Book in Northern Europe of the Fifteenth Century," Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts [1991] 465-66).

Typefounder, typographer, printer and publisher Nicolas Jenson prints in Venice an edition of Eusebius Caesariensis, De evangelica praeparatione, translated by Georgius Trapezuntius (Georgios Trapezuntios),  with additions by Antonio Cornazzano.

This was the first book in which Jenson used the Roman typeface he designed. Jenson's Roman type was

"the first to be designed in accordance with typographical criteria, free of the conventions of written models. Jenson sought to create ideal individual letters, which by means of subtleties of fit and alignment would combine harmoniously on a page. He largely succeeded, and his books live to the claim made from them in an advertisement put out by Jenson's partners in about 1482: that they 'do not hinder one's eyes, but rather help them and do them good' " (Berry & Poole, Annals of Printing [1966] 21).

ISTC no. ie00118000.

Italian humanist and grammarian Niccolò Perotti, Archibishop of Sipponto, incensed by the number of errors in Giovanni Andrea Bussi's edition of Pliny's Historia naturalis issued in Rome by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, writes to the Pope asking him to set up a board of learned correctors, such as himself, who would scrutinize, every text before it could be printed. This has been described as the first call for press censorship.

"The power of the press to impose a measure of uniformity was felt from the beginning to be doubled-edged. The hasty correction which a hard-pressed editor such as Giovanni Andrea Bussi was obliged to carry out, very often on the first manuscript that came to hand, permitted corrupt texts to be put into wide circulation. Even worse, an already corrupt text could become the vehicle of wilful emendation on the part of the editor. It was precisely this that provoked another papal curialist, Niccolò Perotti, Archbishop of Spiponto, attack Bussi's editing as early as 1471 and to call for centralized overseeing of texts issued at Rome. He says that he had thought the advent of printing was an inestimable boon to mankind until he set eyes on Bussi's 1470 edition of Pliny and realized the men of slight learning were now in a position to publish whatever they liked in hundreds of copies, without any sort of editorial responsibility or control. He proposes as a remedy that the pope should appoint a competent scholar (he thinks of himself) to supervise texts printed at Rome.

"Perotti himself, when Bussi ceased working for Sweynheym and Pannartz to be come the papal librarian, got the chance to turn his hand to preparing editions for the same firm in 1473: his own work found no kindlier reception with a number of fellow humanists than Bussi's had with him. His Utopian scheme for control of the press came to nothing, but it did point a troublesome aspect of the new invention" Davies, "Humanism in Script and Print," Kraye (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism [1996] 57).

ISTC no. ip00787000 for the Sweynheym and Pannartz 1470 edition of Pliny.

Printer Johannes Nicolai de Verona issues from Verona, Italy, the first printed edition of Roberto Valturio's (Valturius's) De re militari, a work which first circulated in manuscript in 1455. This was the first printed book on technology, with the first scientific or technological illustrations— in this case woodcuts of war machines. In Prints and Visual Communication (1953; 32) William Ivins pointed out that these woodcuts were the first dated set of book illustrations made for "informational" rather than decorative or religious purposes.

Valturio's work may frequently be confused with the Epitoma rei militaris (also referred to as De re militari) by the late 4th century-early 5th century Roman writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, the first edition of which was published in print in Utrecht, probably one or two years after the first edition of Valturius's work, in 1473 or 1474. Vegetius's work is noticed in this database.

"A secretary to Pope Eugene IV, then adviser to Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, humanist Roberto Valturio is chiefly known for his treatise on warfare, De re militari, of 1455. The work celebrates the military prowess of Malatesta, who sent copies to Mathias Corvinus, Francesco Sforza, Sultan Mohammed II, and perhaps also King Louis XI of France and Lorenzo de Medici. The illustrations are probably the work of Matteo de Pasti, who built the church of San Francesco in Rimini on the model prescribed by Leon Battista Alberti. Matteo also often drew inspiration from the treatises of Guido da Vigevano, Conrad Kyeser, and Taccola" (website of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, where you can also watch a brief video about Valturio in Italian, accessed 01-15-2009).

ISTC no. iv00088000.

On February 13, 1483 printer Boninus de Boninis, de Ragusia of Verona issued a second edition of Valturio's De re militari in Latin (ISTC no. iv00089000), followed 4 days later by his Opera dell' arte militare, translated into Italian by Paolo Ramusio on February 17, 1483 (ISTC no. iv00090000).  The Italian translation is the first illustrated book on technology published in a vernacular.   

Italian physician Paolo Bagellardo (d. 1494) has his treatise on pediatrics, De infantium aegritudinibus et remediis, printed in Padua at the press of Bartholomaeus de Valdezoccho and Martinus de Septem Arboribus. 

This was the first medical treatise, and probably also the first scientific treatise, to make its original appearance in printed form rather than having prior circulation in manuscript.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine, 1991) no. 102. ISTC no. ib00010000.

Scribes in Genoa, Italy petition the city council to restrain "strangers who print volumes" and to enjoin German printers from producing breviaries, missals, books of hours, and grammars, all of which are specialties of the scriptorium of Bartolomeo Lupoto in that city.

Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 (1967) 28.

Gunther Zainer of Augsburg, Germany, issues the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville. A medieval encyclopedia written in the seventh century, it contains a simple diagramatic world map in the so-called "T-O" style. This woodcut has been called the first map included in a printed book.

ISTC no. ii00181000.

At Bruges, Belgium, English merchant, diplomat, writer, and printer William Caxton issues with scribe, bookseller and printer, Colard Mansion, the first book printed in English. It is Caxton's translation of Raoul Lefèvre's The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye. ISTC no.  il00117000.

It is thought that Caxton learned the art of printing from Mansion.

The so-called "Printer of Augustinus De fide" (Goiswin Gops or Johann Schilling?) issues the first printed edition of Richard de Bury's Philobiblon, a work on the love of books and book collecting, written in 1343.

ISTC no. ir00191000.

The earliest printed music, after the single line of music published in the 1457 Mainz Psalter, appears in the Missale Speciale Constantiense  (sometimes called simply Missale Speciale) perhaps issued in Basel by Johann Meister (Koch)?, or possibly issued in Mainz, probably about 1473. Much scholarship has been devoted to trying to determine the correct printing date, the printer, and the printing location of this exceptionally rare publication. Nearly all known copies are incomplete. The copy in the Morgan Library and Museum is the closest to complete in the United States, lacking only one leaf.

ISTC no. im00732500.

The first printed book to be issued with pagination rather than foliation is Werner Rolewinck's Fasciculus temporum published by Nicholaus Götz, probably in Cologne. ISTC no. ir00253000.

"Pagination began in England in the XIIIth century, making its way slowly from there to the continent where it was used, with very few exceptions, only in the northern parts of Europe and as far south as the middle and upper Rhine valley. Its first appearance in a printed book (Rolewinck's Fasciculus temporum , ca. 1474-4; H. 6917)) was in Cologne, one of many examples of the influence of regional characteristics of manuscripts on printed books. In retrospect it seems surprising that the advantages of foliation, pagination and alphabetical indexing were realized so late, but the reasons are quite clear. A manuscript, being unique, served one or few readers, the printed book many. When texts were produced by printing, all copies were identical and care was taken regularly to number folios or pages and to prepare careful tables of contents and indexes. During the manuscript period citations were cumbersome, since they had to refer to chapters or other clearly defined parts of texts. Accurate citations developed as the direct result of printing, when it became clear that references by edition and folio (or page) were the simplest and most accurate form. This occurred first in the text, then in marginal notations and ultimately in footnotes" (Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 6).

Printer Günther Zainer of Augsburg, Germany, issues Vocabularius, with text in both Latin and German. ISTC no. iv00322000.

Vocabularius rerum was the first technical dictionary, and after the Vocabularius ex quo (1467), the first bi-lingual dictionary, of which one copy is recorded (ISTC no. v00361700).  The work was "devoted entirely to technical terms, each with its own section, of medicine (four sections), culinary and medicinal herbs and food plants, zoology, mining and mineralogy, navigation, architecture, textiles, tanning and leather work, musical instruments, books and book production, cooking and kitchen utensils, baking, wine and viticulture, gambling, carpentry, horses and carriages, etc.

"Some of the words are highly technical, lexicographical rarities. In the section on scribes and book production we find definitions not only of the traditional scribal tools (calamus, stilus, graphius, pugillaris, etc.), but also of such specialist words as antipira (= the scribe's eye-shade, for protection against the fire or candle-light), corrosorium (= the mill or grinder to reduce chalk to a powder for the preparation of vellum), and epicausterium (= the table-cloth on which the parchment is laid for ease of writing). None of these last words occurs, for example, in Karen Gould's "Terms for Book Production in a Fifteenth-Century Latin-English Nominale", The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 79 (1985), pp. 75-99. There is also an entry on the distinction between the words liber, volumen, and codex; likewise between exemplar and exemplum.' (Nicholas Poole-Wilson). . . ." (W. P. Watson Antiquarian Books, online description, accessed 08-09-2009).

"Possessed of a knowledge of names rather than of things, the mediaeval student had one urgent need - a dictionary. New words began to pour in—in Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew, and Greek—whose meanings he sought to know; and, for the medical student, there were new drugs, the composition and uses of which were essential to his practice. It is not surprising then to find books of the dictionary class among the first to be printed. . . . The Vocabularius . . . has four sections devoted to medicine: (1) De homine et de diversis membris, in which the parts of the body are defined in order, with the German equivalents; brief references to authors are given. (2) De nominibus balneatorum etc., containing all the terms relating to bathing, bleeding, and cupping. (3) De medicis et eorum que pertinent ad medicine artes. The definitions here are most interesting... Siringa is described as a metallic instrument with which a surgeon injects resolving medicines into the Virile member in order to dissolve calculi in the bladder. (4) De nominibus quorundam egritudinum, contains seven and a half folios of definitions of diseases." (Osler, Incunabula medica).

According to its colophon, Werner Rolevinck (Rolewinck), compiler of the Fasciculus temporum, the earliest chronological world history to be printed, provided the Cologne printer Arnold ther Hoernen with a manuscript-layout for his use. In translation the colophon of the printed edition reads, "following the first exemplar which this venerable author himself wrote by hand completely."

The ISTC catalogue describes this edition as no. ir00254000.

This is some of the earliest evidence of the collaboration between author and printer in the design and production of printed books. A few contemporary manuscripts that have survived, such as those for the Nuremberg Chronicle, are similar to the complex typography and woodcuts of the printed edition, but none have been demonstrated to be the author's exemplar for the printer.

Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle [1976] 38-41.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of this edition from the website of the Universität zu Köln at this link: http://inkunabeln.ub.uni-koeln.de/vdib-cgi/kleioc/0010/exec/pagemed/%22enne53_druck3%3d0001.jpg%22, accessed 01-01-2010).

Peter Schöffer of Mainz issues the first edition of the Codex Justinianus with the commentary of Franciscus Accursius. ISTC no. ij00574000. This is the first part of the Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) originally issued from 529-534 by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I.

"Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis was lost in the West, where it was scarcely needed in the primitive conditions that followed the collapse of Odoacer's sub-Roman kingdom. Historians disagree on the precise way it was recovered in Northern Italy about 1070: perhaps it was waiting unneeded and unnoticed in a library until the legal studies that were undertaken on behalf of papal authority that was central to the Gregorian Reform of Pope Gregory VII led to its accidental rediscovery. Aside from the Littera Florentina, a 6th-century codex of the Pandects that was jealously preserved at Pisa, since 1406 at Florence, there may have been other manuscript sources for the text that began to be taught at Bologna, by Pepo and then by Irnerius, whose technique was to read a passage aloud, which permitted his students to copy it, then to deliver an excursus explaining and illuminating Justinian's text, in the form of glosses. Irmerius' pupils, the "Four Doctors" were among the first of the "Glossators" who established the curriculum of Roman law."

"The merchant classes of Italian communes required law with a concept of equity and which covered situations inherent in urban life better than the primitive Germanic oral traditions. The provenance of the Code appealed to scholars who saw in the Holy Roman Empire a revival of venerable precedents from the classical heritage. The new class of lawyers staffed the bureaucracies that were beginning to be required by the princes of Europe. The University of Bologna, where Justinian's Code was first taught, remained the dominant center for the study of law through the High Middle Ages."

Abraham ben Garton prints the first dated book in Hebrew at Reggio di Calabria, Italy. It is a commentary on the Torah by Rabbi Shlomo Rashi.

"Although Garton's book is the first dated printed edition, the work is neither the first edition of Rashi's commentary, nor the first book to be printed in Hebrew. Between 1469 and 1472 three brothers, Obadiah, Menasseh, and Benjamin of Rome, were active as the first Hebrew typographers. Six works are positively known to have come off their press, among which was the first, albeit undated edition of Rashi's commentary. Nonetheless, [in] the 1475 edition Abraham Garton created and employed, for the first time, a typeface based on a Sephardic semicursive hand. It was this same style of typeface that a few years later, when commentary and text were incorporated onto one page, would be used to distinguish Rabbinic commentary from the text proper. Ultimately, this typeface would be known as Rashi script" (Wikipedia article on Abraham Garton, accessed 07-25-2009).

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue no. is00625180 cites only two incomplete copies: Parma "Pal" (imperfect), and New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America (2 leaves).

Claudius Ptolemaeus's (Ptolemy's) Cosmographia or Geographia, translated from Greek into Latin by humanist Giacomo d'Angelo da Scarperia (Jacopo d’Angelo (Jacopus Angelus) da Scarperia )and edited by Angelius Vadius and Barnabas Picardus, is first published as a printed book in Vicenza, Italy by Hermannus Liechtenstein, without any maps.

ISTC no. ip01081000.

Printer Johann Bämler of Augsburg issues the first edition of Konrad von Megenberg's Buch der Natur.

This was the first natural history written in German, and the series of woodcuts in the first edition were the first natural history book illustrations. There were two woodcuts of plants—the first botanical woodcuts in a printed book.

"The work has 8 chapters

" * the nature of man

" * sky, 7 planets, astronomy and meteorology

" * zoology

" * ordinary and aromatic trees

" * plants and vegetables

" * invaluable and semi-precious stones

" * 10 kinds of metals

" * water and rivers" (Wikipedia article on Konrad of Megenburg, accessed 06-13-2009).

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of this work (ISTC no. ic00842000) at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek website at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00029636/images/index.html?id=00029636&fip=67.164.64.97&no=8&seite=10, accessed 01-06-2010.

♦ A digital facsimile of an illustrated fifteenth century manuscript of von Megenberg's work,  Cod. Pal. germ. 300 Konrad von Megenberg Das Buch der Natur Hagenau - Werkstatt Diebold Lauber, um 1442-1448?,  is available from Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, at this link, accessed 06-13-2009).

Blunt & Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal (1979) 112-13.

Erhard Ratdolt Bernhard Maler (Pictor), and Peter Löslein issue the Kalendario of Johannes Müller (Regiomontanus). ISTC no. ir00103000.

This was the first book in which the title and place, date, and printer's name appeared on a separate title page—an innovation that did not come into common use until the early 16th century. This book and a Latin version that Ratdolt, Maler and Löslein also issued in 1476 (ISTC ir00093000) were also the first books to be dated with Arabic rather than Roman numerals. Prior to this date, and throughout the remainder of the 15th century, the title, place, and date of printing, as well as the printer's name were usually printed on the colophon leaf at the end of books, in the manner of medieval manuscripts.

♦ You can download a digital facsimile of this work from the Universität Wien at this link: http://www.univie.ac.at/hwastro/rare/1476_Regiomontanus.htm, accessed 01-01-2010.

In Milan, Diogini da Paravicino (Dionysius Parvisinus) issues the first book printed entirely in Greek type— the Greek grammar of Constantine Lascaris, Erotemata. ISTC no. il00065000.

The font is thought to have been designed and produced by the Cretan, Demetrius Damilas, who printed the Opera of Homer in Greek in 1488-89.

Barker, Aldus Manutius and the Development of Greek Script & Type in the Fifteenth Century (1992) 30-31.

Having learned the printer's art in Venice, Guillaume LeRoy sets up a press in Lyons, France, at the expense of his financial backer, Bartholomieu Buyer. They locate the press in Buyer's house.

There LeRoy printed Jean de Vigne's (de Vignay's) La légende dorée, Jean de Vigne's (de Vignay's) French translation of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea sanctorum, sive Lombardica historia edited by Jean Battalier. This was the first book printed in French. 

ISTC no. ij00151700 cites only three copies in England and three in France, of which two are incomplete.

Guillaume LeRoy  became the first printer in Europe to specialize in printing books in the vernacular.

Drees, The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal 1300-1500 (2001) 286.

Printer William Caxton’s name is entered on the account role for having paid a year’s rent in advance for the premises in which he will set up his press at Westminster Abbey in London.

Wiliam Caxton prints A Letter of Indulgence by John Sant, Abbot of Abingdon, at Westminster, for promoting the war against the Turks. ISTC is00163100 cites one copy printed on vellum, imperfect, in London at the National Archives, noting "The copy known was issued to Henry and Katherine Langley on 13 Dec. 1476."

"The form is set in William Caxton's types—his second and third. Caxton's first types he had previously used in Bruges. Caxton was employed in Bruges as late as 1475,and probably moved to England in the middle of the following year: his tenancy of a house in Westminster began at Michaelmas 1476. The first of his books dated at Westminster was finished by 18 November 1477. No other printer worked in England until 1478.

"This form, therefore, ranks as the first recorded piece of printing done in England. Its existence in the Public Records was noticed in 1928" (Printing and the Mind of Man. Catalogue of the Exhibitions at the British Museum and at Earls Court, London [1963] no. 2.)

The first illustrated edition of Ptolemy's Cosmographia, translated by humanist Giacomo d'Angelo da Scarperia (Jacopo d’Angelo (Jacopus Angelus da Scarperia) and edited by  Philippus Beroaldus and others, containing 26 copperplate maps, is published in Bologna by Dominicus de Lapis, but with the erroneous colophon date of 23 June 1462.

For a long time this colophon date was thought to have been a misprint for 1482, but manuscripts found in Bologna set the publication date in 1477. "It thus becomes the first book with engraved maps, and also the first book with the maps by a known artist, the plates having been engraved by Taddeo Crevilli of Ferrara" (Lone, Some Noteworthy Firsts in Europe during the Fifteenth Century [1930]) 41).

ISTC no. ip01082000.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of Hartmann Schedel's copy of this work from the Bayersiche Staatsbibliothek, München, at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00032959/images/index.html?id=00032959&fip=67.164.64.97&no=39&seite=135, accessed 01-01-2010.

Printer Arnaldus de Bruxella in Naples issues the first printed edition of the hexameter poem, De viribus herbarum carmen attributed to Macer Floridus (or Aemilius Macer), possibly a pseudonym of Odo of Meung (Odo de Meung, Odo Magdunensis).

Macer's unillustrated text describes the medicinal properties of 77 herbs and is written in Latin hexameter, a poetic verse form that was most likely employed as a mnemonic device for physicians, apothecaries and others.

"The text titled De Viribus Herbarum (On properties of plants) has been traditionally attributed to Odo de Meung (Odo Magdunensis), who is believed to have lived during the first half of the 11th century and was from Meung on the Loire. Recent research has shown, however, that the De Viribus Herbarum was probably written in an earlier version, perhaps during the tenth century in Germany. The text was further expanded, including new data from the translation of Arabic texts into Latin in Salerno from the end of the 11th century onward. If this is the case, this text is good evidence of the continuity of scientific activity in the Middle Ages: its most ancient parts come from a period when there was a revival of interest in botany and a recovery of the classical tradition, while the most recent additions integrate the contribution of the Arabic world" (http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu/HIBD/Exhibitions/OrderFromChaos/OFC-Pages/01Pre-Linnaean%20botany/birth.shtml, accessed 06-13-2009).

ISTC no. im00001000.

The first edition of this work illustrated with woodcuts appears to be a Geneva edition printed circa 1500: ISTC No.: im00005000.

William Caxton completes at Westminister Abbey the first dated book printed in England— The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres.

The work was translated from the French of Guillaume de Tignonville by Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, brother-in-law of King Edward IV.

ISTC no. id00272000.

While under the patronage of the Medici, Leonardo da Vinci designs a programmable, mechanical automaton.

Leonardo's drawing for this invention was understood until 1975 when Leonardo scholar Carlo Pedretti recognized that Leonardo's so-called automobile in the Codex Atlanticus is an automaton. The automaton  features front wheel drive and rack and pinion control.

The first printed book on wine, Von Bewahrung und Bereitung der Weine, by Catalan physician Arnald of Villanova, was translated from the Latin by Wilhelm von Hirnkofen, and printed in Esslingen, Germany by Konrad Fyner. (ISTC no. ia01080000. It discusses the value of wine in diet and as a medication.

In 1943 medical historian Henry Sigerist issued a facsimile of the first edition, with an English translation and introduction, entitled The Earliest Printed Book on Wine.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of this work at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, website at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00035103/images/index.html?id=00035103&fip=67.164.64.97&no=9&seite=7, accessed 01-06-2010.

The anonymous Arte dell’Abbaco . . . on the operation of the abacus, printed in Treviso, Italy, probably by Gerardus de Lisa, de Flandria, is the first dated book on arithmetic. It is possible that some undated pamphlets on Algorithmus may predate this work.

"Frank J. Swetz translated the complete work using Smith's notes in 1987 in his Capitalism & Arithmetic: The New Math of the 15th Century. Swetz used a copy of the Treviso housed in the Manuscript Library at Columbia University. The volume found its way to this collection via a curious route. Maffeo Pinelli (1785), an Italian bibliophile, is the first known owner. After his death his library was purchased by a London book dealer and sold at auction on February 6, 1790. The book was obtained for three shillings by Mr. [Michael] Wodhull. About 100 years later the Arithmetic appeared in the library of Brayton Ives, a New York lawyer. When Ives sold the collection of books at auction, George [Arthur] Plimpton, a New York publisher, acquired the Treviso and made it an acquisition to his extensive collection of early scientific [i.e. mathematics] texts. Plimpton donated his library to Columbia University in 1936. Original copies of the Treviso Arithmetic are extremely rare" (Wikipedia article Treviso Arithmetic, accessed 01-10-2009).

ISTC no. ia01141000.

The earliest portrait of an author in a printed book, and the earliest woodcut illustration printed in Milan, is that of humanist  Paulus Attavanti (Paulus Florentinus) in the edition of his Breviarium totius juris canonici, sive Decretorum breviarium printed by Leonardus Pachel and Ulrich Scinzenzeler. The woodcut shows the author in profile, writing in his library.

Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 (1967) 49, 60.  ISTC no. ip00178000.

Printing has spread throughout the continent of Europe and England. Up to this date a typical print run of a book is between 100 and 300 copies.

Printer and typographer Nicolas Jenson dies in Venice. His detailed will makes provisions for the continuation of his printing business, and is therefore significant for the history of printing.

Among Jensen's bequests were his punches and matrices for casting type fonts. His will is the first concrete reference in a document of the existence of matrices for casting type fonts, as there were no manuals on printing published until the seventeenth century. The relevant section reads, in English translation:

"Item: the said testator does declare and certify, that if his company, Zan of Cologne and Nicolas Jenson, will choose to take over all the furniture, the clothing, the bed coverings and the household stuff as well as the tools, the presses, and all else pertaining to the art of book printing, and the material on hand, and likewise all else belonging to the said testator that is mentioned in the bond of partnership of the prior company and which at his decease shall be, and be found, in his dwelling, all of these things shall be appraised and at this worth the said company, Zan of Cologne and Nicolas Jenson, shall take and hold all these properties, with this provided, that they shall be held to pay of this price for these goods and chattels, to the heir of the testator, five hundred ducats out of hand and the remainder shall be set in the account owed to the testator which he does carry with the firm, Nicolas Jenson and Company.

"The said testator has declared and does declare that in all and each of the above premises naught shall be read or understood to include the punches with which the matrices are stamped, from which matrices the letters are in turn wrought and fabricated, for he did and does except completely these punches and did and does will that Messer Peter Ugelleymer, his dearest friend, shall have them, and he does devise and bequeath them to the said Messer Peter. And Messer Peter cannot be held to give or pay aught for these same punches unless it shall so please him of his generosity.

"Yet if this Company does not choose to accept these goods and chattels at the worth aforesaid, then Messer Peter shall be held and bound to receive and take these goods and chattels at one hundred ducats less than the price aforesaid, and Messer Peter shall pay the moneys thus, to wit: four hundred ducats of gold out of hand to the heir of said testator, the remainder to go and be computed in the deduction, or in part thereof, which the testator shall make to the company aforesaid, Nicolas Jenson and Company, with this provision, that if Messer Peter likewise will not choose to take these goods and chattels, as aforesaid, then neither shall he have the testator's punches."

Quotations from the Will of Nicolas Jenson, translated into English by Pierce Butler of the Newberry Library in November, 1928. Ludlow printed the will and sent it out customers as a promotional piece, including the statement "[Set] in a trial font of sixteen point Nicolas Jenson, a new type designed by Ernst Detterer, interpreting as faithfully as possible the original roman type of Jenson, and printed in a limited edition on Rives paper by the Ludlow Typograph Company of Chicago in the month of November, 1928." (http://www.pbtweb.com/eusebius/appendix/njwill.html, accessed 02-08-2208).

♦ Jenson's presses were purchased by Andrea dei Toressani, d'Asola (Andreas Torresanus, de Asula),  father-in-law of Aldus Manutius.

The first printed herbal with illustrations was an illustrated edition of the Herbarium Apulei by Apuleius Platonicus or Pseudo-Apuleius, originally compiled circa 400 CE or earlier, and issued in Rome by the printer and diplomat Johannes Philippus de Lignamine in 1481 or 1482. The earliest surviving manuscript of this text dates from the sixth century, and is noticed in this database.

In his dedicatory letter Lignamine states that he based his edition on a manuscript found in the Abbey of Monte Cassino. In the 1930s F.W.T. Hunger identified a 9th century manuscript as Lignamine's source (codex Casinensis 97 saec.IX). This he published in facsimile as The Herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius (1935). Regrettably the manuscript was destroyed in the bombardment of Monte Casino in 1944. 

The first printed edition of Herbarium Apulei contains in addition to its text, a title within a woodcut wreath and 131 woodcuts of plants, including repeats.  It gives a multitude of prescriptions, and to make the work more useful, lists synonyms for each plant in Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and other languages, illustrating each with a stylized woodcut. These are the earliest series of printed botanical illustrations, and probably the first formal series of illustrations on a scientific subject, though they were preceded by the technological woodcuts in Valturio's De re militari, 1472.  As a practical and instructive reinforcement of the value of particular plants snakes, scorpions, and other venomous animals are depicted in the woodcuts of plants that provide relevant antedotes.

Lignamine sought patronage of his editions through the rich and powerful. As a result, two variant issues of the first edition exist with no priority established:

• one with a dedicatory letter to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga

• another with a dedication to Giuliano della Rovere, future Pope Julius II.

Blunt & Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal (1979) 113-14. Christie's, N.Y., Important Botanical Books from a Former Private Collection, 24 June 2009, lot 15. ISTC no. ih00058000.

Erhard Ratdolt of Venice issues the first printed edition (editio princeps) of Euclid's Elements—Praeclarissimus liber elementorum Euclidis in artem geometriae.

Ratdolt's text was based upon a translation from Arabic to Latin, presumably made by Abelard of Bath in the 12th century, edited and annotated by Giovanni Compano (Campanus of Novara) in the 13th century. The first printed edition of Euclid was the first substantial book to contain geometrical figures, of which it included over 400.

Ratdolt printed several copies with a dedicatory epistle in gold letters, including a dedication copy to the Doge of Venice. Of these, seven copies are preserved. To accomplish this technical feat:

"Ratdolt developed an innovative technique derived from the methods used by bookbinders to stamp gold on leather. This involved strewing a powdered bonding agent (either resin or dried albumen) on the page and probably heating the metal types so that the gold-leaf would stick to the paper. For his 1488 edition of the 'Chronica Hungarorum', Ratdolt employed a simpler method using golden printing ink. His technique of printing in golden letters was first copied in 1499 by the Venetian printer Zacharias Kallierges" (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Inkunabeln aus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München [2009] no. 20).

In order to print the unusually large number of complex geometrical diagrams, usually containing type, in the margins Ratdolt used printer's "rules," i.e. thin strips of metal, type high, which he bent and cut and adjusted and set into a substance that would both hold them (and pieces of type) in place, and could itself be incised with the design as a guide to modelling and assembly.

Renzo Baldasso, "La stampa dell'editio princeps degli Elementi di Euclide (Venezia, Erhard Ratdolt, 1482)", The Books of Venice/Il libro veneziano, ed. Lisa Pon and Craig Kallendorf (2009) 61-100.

There are two distinct states of the first edition. The second state has leaves a1-a9 set differently from the first state: the heading on a1v is in two lines rather than three and is set in the same type as the text rather than heading type; the three-sided woodcut border and woodcut initial P are added to a2r; the headline in red on a2r begins "Preclarissimus liber elementorum"; and headlines do not begin until a10r. "The two outer pages of sheet c1 also differ, having been evidently reprinted owing to errors in the text and the diagram. . . of the 12th proposition of the 4th book" (B.M.C. vol. 5, 285-286.). See Horblit, One Hundred Books Famous in Science (1964) no. 27. for a detailed illustrated comparison of the two states. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 729.

♦ Characterized as the most famous textbook ever published, Euclid's Elements was one of the most widely printed and studied texts for the next 500 years. It is also considered to the most widely printed text after the Bible, with more than 1000 editions issued.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of one of the copies with the dedication printed in gold from the website of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00037426/images/index.html?id=00037426&fip=67.164.64.97&no=4&seite=6, accessed 04-24-2010.

Based on the unusually large number of surviving copies, Ratdolt printed an edition considerably larger than the 300 copies considered average for a 15th century print run. You can view the long list of institutions which hold a copy at ISTC no. ie00113000.

The earliest medical work printed in English is Treatise on the pestilence published without printer's name or date, but attributed to the press of William Machlinia, in London. "Although often attributed in incunable editions to Benedictus Kamisius, Kamintus, Canutus or Kanuti (i.e. Bengt Knutsson, bishop of Västerâs), the author is probably Johannes Jacobi (i.e. Jean Jasme or Jacme) (Wickersheimer)" (ISTC no.  ij00013200).

J. F. Payne, "The Earliest Medical Work Printed in English", British Medical Journal v.1 [1480]; May 11, 1889, 1085-86.

German printer Erhard Ratdolt working in Venice publishes Tabulae Alphonsinae or the Alphonsine Tables, a compilation of astronomical data tabulating the positions and movements of the planets.

The Alphonsine Tables were among the first mathematical tables printed. The tables were computed at Toledo, Spain, from 1262 to 1272 by about 50 astronomers (human computers) assembled for the purpose by King Alfonso X of Castile and León, known as el Sabio, "the learned."  They were a revision and improvement of the Tables of the Cordoban mathematician/astronomer Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī, retaining the Ptolemaic system for explaining celestial motion. The original Spanish version was lost, and the tables became known through Latin translation.

ISTC no. ia00534000.

Erhard Ratdolt's edition of Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicon issued from Venice records an entry for the year 1457 added by the editor, Johannes Lucilius Santritter,  crediting Johann Gutenberg, "to whom literature will always be indebted," with the invention of "an ingenious way of printing books." This is one of the earliest acknowledgments in print of Gutenberg's invention.

ISTC no. ie00117000.

By decree of Sultan Bayezid II Turks are prohibited from operating a printing press.

During three or four periods in his life Leonardo da Vinci made over 750 anatomical drawings of all the principal organs of the human body. He also produced some drawings of animal anatomy to contrast it with its human counterparts. Leonardo began recording the results of his private dissections in Milan around 1485. These primarily concerned the organs of the senses, especially the eye, a subject that would have been of special concern to an artist. In 1499 Leonardo returned to Florence where he appears to have access to bodies from the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. In a note from about 1505 Leonardo states that he had dissected at least ten bodies. During a second period of anatomical work in Milan there is evidence that Leonardo might have collaborated with a young anatomist Marcantonio della Torre Marc Antonio della Torre), who taught at the Pavia medical school. It is possible that Leonardo intended to produce an illustrated anatomical textbook with della Torre; however this project would have been cut short by Torre’s death from the plague in 1511. The drawings from Leonardo’s second anatomical period in Milan concentrated on the anatomical basis of movement—what might also be called bio-engineering—typically recording the anatomy from various different perspectives. In his final Italian period, in Rome from 1513 to 1516, Leonardo had access to the Hospital of the Santo Spirito, where he continued to study anatomy, paying particular attention to the heart. Eventually, responding to complaints from another artist, the Pope excluded Leonardo from the hospital, and ended Leonardo’s anatomical studies.

Like the rest of his drawings and notebooks on a wide variety of science and invention, Leonardo seems to have prepared these drawings for his private use--not publication. His habit of recording his notes in mirror-writing shows that contrary to having his ideas disseminated, he wanted to prevent his notes being read by others. Though the anatomical drawings and their interrelated notes record numerous discoveries, we have no documentation that Leonardo allowed any anatomist, except possibly della Torre, to view them. We do know, however, that Albrecht Dürer viewed some of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings on one of his Italian journeys, as he copied one of Leonardo’s illustrations of the upper limb in his Dresden Sketchbook, the basis for Dürer’s treatise on human proportion (1528). In addition it is probable that Leonardo’s contemporary, the anatomist Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, may have seen some of Leonardo’s drawings since Berengario appears to have incorporated into three of the woodcuts of the Isagoge Breves Leonardo’s innovation of showing views of anatomical parts from different perspectives.

After Leonardo’s death his anatomical drawings passed through many hands. They disappeared completely for a century or more until the later part of the eighteenth century when they were discovered in England in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle by the physician, connoisseur, and collector William Hunter (1718-83). Hunter wrote to Albrecht Haller about the drawings, and published a note about them in his last, posthumous book on the history of anatomy: Two Introductory Lectures, Delivered by William Hunter, To his Last Course of Anatomical Lectures . . . . (1784) . However, for the most part the drawings remained unknown to scholars.

Until the advent of sophisticated photographic facsimile techniques at the turn of the twentieth century Leonardo’s anatomical notebooks, with their mutually dependent text and illustrations, could not be accurately reproduced. Thus appreciation of Leonardo’s contributions to anatomy and physiology is primarily a 20th-century phenomenon. The immense task of editing Leonardo’s anatomical notebooks was originally undertaken by G. Piumati, who prepared both literal and critical transcriptions of Leonardo’s text, and Mathias-Duval, professor of anatomy at the École Nationale des Beaux Arts and the Parisian Faculty of Medicine, who provided a French translation as well as a scholarly introduction. Sabachnikoff, who sponsored this project, planned to publish all of the Windsor Castle anatomical drawings in this fashion, but was not able to complete his plan, issuing only reproductions of 61 sheets in Fogli A and Fogli B in 1898 and 1901. A decade later the remaining anatomical drawings (approximately 700) were edited and published by Norwegian scholars under the auspices of the Anatomical Institute of the University of Christiania [Oslo] in an edition limited to 250 sets as Quaderni d'anatomia, I-VI; Fogli della Royal Library di Windsor, pubblicati da C.L. Vangensten, A.Fonahn, H.Hopstock. 6 volumes, Christiana, J.Dybwad, 1911-1916. The plates were reproduced in color, with numbered keys on transparent overlays, and Leonardo’s Italian text was transcribed along with translations in both English and German.  Later Kenneth D. Keele and Carlo Pedretti re-edited and republished the entire  collection of Leonardo's anatomical drawings as Corpus of the Anatomical Studies in the Collection of her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle. This was issued in a magnificent edition by Johnson Reprint Corporation of New York in 1980.

Keele,  Leonardo da Vinci’s Elements of the Science of Man (1983). Roberts & Tomlinson, The Fabric of the Body (1992) ch. 4.

An unidentified printer, known as the "Schoolmaster Printer," issues the Book of Hawking, Hunting, and Heraldry from the town of St. Albans, England.

This work on hawking, hunting, and heraldry was the earliest book printed in England to include color printing. It is also the first English book on heraldry and sports and among the earliest, if not the earliest printed book written by a woman, whose name is variously given as Juliana Berners. Little is known about the authoress; some of the most basic information about her is given in the second edition of this work issued by Wynkyn de Worde from his press at Westminister in 1496. She is said to have been prioress of Sopwell nunnery near St Albans, and daughter of Sir James Berners, who was beheaded in 1388.

ISTC no. ib01030000.

Printer Eucharius Silber issues the editio princeps of Vitruvius, De architectura in Rome between 1486 and August 16, 1490. It was edited by  the Italian Renaissance humanist and rhetorician Fra Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli (Johannes Sulpitius Verulanus). 

"In 1486 Sulpizio prepared the first printed edition of Vitruvius' De Architectura for the press; the work had long circulated in manuscripts, some of them corrupt. The volume, which also includes the text of Frontinus' De aquaeductu describing the aqueducts of Rome, was dedicated to Cardinal Riario, an enthusiastic supporter of the ideals of the Pomponian sodalitas; the dedicatory epistle urges Riario to complete the recovery of classical Roman buildings with a theatre. In his preface Sulpizio urges readers to send him emendations of the notoriously crabbed and difficult text. With Vitruvius' text in hand, Sulpizio directed the erection of a reproduction open-air Roman theater in front of Palazzo Riario in Campo dei Fiori, Rome; there, in 1486 or 1488 his students mounted the first production of a Roman tragedy that had been seen since Antiquity, in the presence of Pope Innocent VIII. The play they chose was Seneca's Phaedra, which they knew as Hippolytus" (Wikipedia article on Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli, accessed 01-04-2010).

Regarding Vitruvius's text and its manuscript transmission, see the entry in this database for Vitruvius circa 800 CE. For the earliest illustrated editions see the Vitruvius entries for 1511 and 1521.

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 26.  ISTC no.  iv00306000

Joshua Solomon ben Israel Nathan Soncino, in Soncino, Italy, issues the first printed edition of the German-rite Haggadah together with a small Roman-rite mahzor prayer book which he calls, in Judeo-Italian, Sidorello. Each work had a separate colophon and decorated woodcut initials but no illustrations. Only two copies survived, one in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the other in the British Library. ISTC no. ih00002700.

Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History. A Panorama in Facsimile and Five Centuries of the Printed Haggadah from the Collections of of Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Philadelphia (1975) 19-20, plate 2.

Bernhard von Breydenbach, a wealthy canon of Mainz Cathedral, issues an extensively illustrated travel book, describing his pilgramage to Jerusalem entitled Peregrinatio in terram sanctam or Sanctae peregrinationes.

Von Breydenbach made the pilgrimage in 1483-4, taking with him, as the book explains, "Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht", a 'skillful artist', to make drawings of the sights. As the book relates, Reuwich also printed the first Latin edition of the book in his own house in Mainz, and it is also very probable that because Reuwich was the printer he took the opportunity to identify himself as the artist, since the creators of book illustrations were rarely identified at this time.

"Leaving in April 1483 and arriving back in January 1484, they travelled first to Venice, where they stayed for three weeks. They then took ship for Corfu, Modon and Rhodes - all still Venetian possessions. After Jerusalem and Bethlehem and other sights of the Holy Land, they went to Mount Sinai and Cairo. After taking a boat down the Nile to Rosetta, they took ship back to Venice."

"The Sanctae Peregrinationes, or the Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, was the first illustrated travel-book, and marked a leap forward for book illustration generally. It featured five large fold-out woodcuts, the first ever seen in the West, including a spectacular five-foot-long (1600 x 300 mm) woodcut panoramic view of Venice, where the pilgrims had stayed for three weeks. The book also contained a three-block map of Palestine and Egypt, centred on a large view of Jerusalem, and panoramas of five other cities: Iraklion, Modon, Rhodes, Corfu and Parenzo. There were also studies of Near Eastern costume, and an Arabic alphabet—also the first in print. Pictures of animals seen on the journey, including a crocodile, camel, and unicorn, were also included.

"The colophon of the book is a lively coat-of-arms of the current Archbishop of Mainz, which includes the first cross-hatching in woodcut.

"The book was a bestseller, reprinted thirteen times over the next three decades, including printings in France and Spain, for which the illustration blocks were shipped out to the local printers. The first edition in German was published within a year of the Latin one, and it was also translated into French, Dutch and Spanish before 1500. Additional text-only editions and various abridged editions were also published.

"The illustrations were later adapted by Michael Wolgemut for the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, and much copied by various other publishers" (Wikipedia article on Erhard Reuwich, accessed 12-01-2008).

ISTC no. ib01189000.

From his press in Venice, German printer Erhard Ratdolt issues what is probably the earliest known type specimen. 

The only surviving copy of this broadside is preserved in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. You can download a digital facsimile from their website at this link: http://inkunabeln.digitale-sammlungen.de/Exemplar_R-14,1.html, accessed 01-02-2010.

". . . having successfully run his printing workshop in Venice for more than ten years, Erhard Ratdolt began taking steps towards returning to Augsburg. In April 1485, while still in Venice, he published a breviary for the city of Augsburg (BSB-Ink B-844) which showed the high quality of the products of his printing workshop. A year later, Radolt accepted the invitation of the bishop of Augsburg Johannes of Werdenberg (1469-1486) and his successor Friedrich of Zollern (1486-1505) and returned to his home town to set up a press there. The change of location brought with it a change in the profile of his publications. Whereas in Venice Ratdolt had published numerous scientific and historical books, he now specialised more and more in printing liturgical works for hwich church commissions assured him a solid market.

"From Venice, Ratdolt brought various innovations to Augsburg which he had developed himself or adopted form others. With this broadside, Ratdolt advertised the diversity of fronts available in his printing house. The print, preserved only in the copy shown, is dated to 1 April 1486 and may have been produced while Ratdolt was still in Venice. It contains samples of 14 different fonts, of which ten use gothic letters, three humanist Roman and one Greek script, in a range of sizes. Among the gothic fonts, the Italian rotunda was used mainly for printing liturgical works. Besides advertising his well-equipped press, Ratdolt took the opportunity to praise himself amply as a man of great-ability (vir solertissimus) famous in Venice for his great talent and amazing skill (preclaro ingenio et mirifica arte. . .celbratissimus), who was now ready to publish books of examplary quality in the imperial city of Augsburg" (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert (2009) no. 40).

ISTC no. ir00029840

The Venetian Senate grants a privilege to the humanist Marco Antonio Sabellico for the printing of his Decades rerum Venetarum.

This document, preserved in the Venetian State Archives (ASV, NC, reg. 11, c.55r) was the first recorded privilege granted to an author, recognizing the right of Sabellico to authorize the publication of his work, and to secure protection against unauthorized printings. This has been called the first known author's copyright.

"Sabellico's privilege set the precedent for the custom of granting privileges not just to the printers but also directly to the authors. Such privileges are best understood as an extension of the traditional patronage system and as a form of reward rather than ownership. Sabellico's privilege was an exceptional arrangement in the sense that it was a form of reward for a literary work which promoted the public interest, rather than an assertion of the inherent rights of the author" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, which also reproduces an image of the document, an English translation, and commentary).

Sabellico's work was first published in print in Venice the following year by Andreas Torresanus, de Asula. ISTC no. is00005000.

According to Vasari,  when he was twelve or thirteen Michelangelo painted a version of The Torment of St. Anthony based on an engraving by Martin Schongauer. This was one of only four known easel paintings by Michelangelo. For centuries art historians debated the existence of such a painting.

In 2008 a painting of The Torment of St. Anthony from a private collection was sold at Sotheby's London, with an attribution from the workshop of Ghirlandaio, to whom Michelangelo was apprenticed. Adam Williams, a New York dealer, bought the painting, believing that it was by Michelangelo. Williams took it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for cleaning and study. In 2009 Williams sold it to the Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.

" 'I had never seen it before,” Mr. Christiansen said. “I looked at it and said this is self-evidently Michelangelo. There’s a section of the rocks with cross-hatching. Nobody else did this kind of emphatic cross-hatching.”

"Michael Gallagher, conservator of paintings at the Metropolitan, cleaned and studied the painting.

" 'It was incredibly dirty,' he said. 'But once the centuries of varnish were removed, its true quality was evident.'

"Claire M. Barry, the Kimbell’s chief curator, heard about the work and came to the Met to see it. She then contacted Mr. Lee, who also inspected it and persuaded his board to buy it. Although no one will disclose the price, experts in the field say they believe the figure was more than $6 million.

"For centuries, art historians have known that Michelangelo copied an engraving of St. Anthony by the 15th-century German master Martin Schongauer for a painting. Michelangelo’s biographer and former student, Ascanio Condivi, said the young Michelangelo told him that while he was working on the painting, he had visited a local market to learn how to depict fish scales, a feature not found in the engraving.

"A painting of St. Anthony is also mentioned in Giorgio Vasari’s chronicle of Michelangelo’s life, although Vasari at first ascribed the original engraving to Dürer. But after Michelangelo complained, Vasari changed his account, naming Schongauer.

"Measuring 18 ½ inches by 13 1/4 inches, 'The Torment of St. Anthony' is at least one-third larger than the engraving. It is also not an exact copy; Michelangelo took liberties. In addition to adding the fish scales, he depicted St. Anthony holding his head more erect and with an expression more detached than sad.

"He also added a landscape to the bottom of the composition, and created monsters that are more dramatic than those in the engraving.

"Mr. Christiansen said studying 'The Torment of St. Anthony' with infrared reflectography had exposed layers of pentimenti, or under drawing, revealing what he called the master’s hand at work. And once the centuries of varnish were removed, the colors suddenly came alive. There is eggplant, lavender, apple green and even a brilliant salmon, which was used to depict the scales of the spiny demons. The palette, Mr. Christiansen said, is a prelude to the colors chosen for the Sistine Chapel’s vault" (Vogel, "By the Hand of a Very Young Master?," NY Times, May 12, 2009).

The first separately printed treatise on diet, De particularibus diaetis, was written by the Egyptian-Jewish physician and philosopher Isaac Judaeus who lived from circa 832 to 932 CE. He was also known as Isaac Israeli and Abu Ya'qub Ishaq Sulayman al-Israili. The Latin edition was a translation made from the Arabic, circa 1070, by Constantine the African, and first printed in Padua by Matthaeus Cerdonis.

De particularibus diaetis  was a portion of " 'Kitab al-Adwiyah al-Mufradah wa'l-Aghdhiyah,' a work in four sections on remedies and aliments. The first section, consisting of twenty chapters, was translated into Latin by Constantine under the title 'Diætæ Universales,' and into Hebrew by an anonymous translator under the title 'Ṭib'e ha-Mezonot.' The other three parts of the work are entitled in the Latin translation 'Diætæ Particulares'; and it seems that a Hebrew translation, entitled 'Sefer ha-Mis'adim' or 'Sefer ha-Ma'akalim,' was made from the Latin" (Wikipedia article on Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, accessed 06-08-2009).

A more complete printed edition of the text appeared in Basel in 1570.

J. Norman (ed.) Morton's Medical Bibliography, 5th ed. (1991) no. 1961. Campbell, Arabic Medicine and its Influence on the Middle Ages I (1926) 73.

ISTC no. ii00176000.

German Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger publish Malleus maleficarum  (English: The Hammer of Witches). This was "without question the most important and most sinister work on demonology ever written.  It crystallized into a fiercely stringent code previous folklore about black magic with church dogma on heresy, and, if any one work could, opened the floodgates of the inquisitorial hysteria" (Robbins, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology [1959] 337).

Malleus maleficarum became a best-seller, with six editions in the 15th century, thirty-six editions published during the witchcraft hysteria up to 1669, and it is thought that its widespread distribution, made possible by printing, contributed to the spread of the witchcraft delusion.

The work owed its authority to three factors:

1. The scholastic reputation of its two authors, the German Inquisitors Sprenger and Kramer.

2. The papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus of December 5, 1484, which Kramer solicited from Pope Innocent VIII in order to silence the opposition to witch persecution. ISTC no. ii00101500.

3. The detailed procedures for witchcraft trials set forth in the book's third and final part, written for the benefit of civil and ecclesiastical judges. As the leading handbook for witch-hunters, and the first encyclopedia of witchcraft, the Hammer of Witches maintained a pre-eminent position of authority for nearly 200 years, providing both foundation and inspiration for all later European treatises on witch-theory and persecution.

ISTC no. ii00163000.

In response to the rapid spread of print technology, Pope Innocent VIII issues the first Papal Bull concerned with printing: Bulla S.D.N. Innocentii "Inter multiplices nostrae sollicitudinis curas" contra impressores librorum reprobatorum.

The bull was printed in Rome by Eucharius Silber, and issued after November 17, 1487. ISTC no. ii00110000 cites only two surviving copies, one in Germany and one in the United States.

From this date the Holy Inquisition instituted prepublication censorship.

The first printed edition (editio princeps) of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer appears in Florence in two volumes.

This was the first printed edition of any major Greek work in its original language. The book was edited by the Greek scholar Demetrius Chalcondyles and printed by Bartolommeo di Libri at the expense of the brothers Nerli.

"The type used was that of Demetrius Damilas, whose 'labor and skill' . . . is acknowledged in the colophon" (Barker, Aldus Manutius and the Development of Greek Script & Type in the Fifteenth Century [1992] 37).

ISTC no. ih00300000.

At Soncino, Italy, Abraham ben Hayyim prints for Joshua Solomon Soncino Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim, the first complete printed Hebrew Bible.

It is thought that 200-300 copies were issued and at a high price. In 1492 German humanist and Greek and Hebrew scholar Johannes Reuchlin purchased a copy in Rome for 6 gold coins, supposedly a year's salary for a government clerk at the time.

ISTC no. ib00525500.

Printer Gershom ben Moses Soncino, in Soncino, Italy, issues his first book, the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol by Moses ben Jacob de Coucy.

On the end flyleaf of a copy in The Library of Congress there is an autograph bill of sale in Hebrew signed by Gershom Soncino translated as:

" 'Gershom, the son of Moshe Soncino (of blessed memory), Printer,' and issued to one Moshe ben Shmuel Diena, stipulating that the buyer might not resell the volume for a period of two years. The bill of sale is dated 'the 25th day of Tevet, (5)249 [ = December 29, 1488, here in the city of Soncino' ten days after the printed date of publication. Arthur Z. Schwarz, who first brought this to the attention of the scholarly world, suggested that this volume may well be one of the first, if not the first off the press. The colophon date is the day of the 'completion of the work,' i.e. the printing. Some days may have passed before it was ready for distribution. Soncino's signature is his only Hebrew autograph to have survived" (Jewish Virtual Library.org, accessed 12-10-2008).

ISTC no. im00866240. 

Rabbi Eliezer Toledano establishes the first press at Lisbon, Portugal, to print books in Hebrew. His first book is Moses ben Nahman's Hiddushe ha-Torah (Commentary on the Pentateuch) . This was the second book printed in Lisbon.

ISTC no. im00866160.

Les Basses danses de Marguerite d'Autriche, a fifteenth-century manuscript source for the basse danse, a Burgundian court dance, consists of twenty-five parchment leaves on black paper with gold rules and calligraphic initials in silver. Seventeen folios contain specific music and choreographies in the earliest known dance notation.  The original manuscript is preserved in the Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, Bruxelles, (Ms. 9085).  You can page through a virtual copy of the manuscript at the Library of Congress website at this link, accessed 04-05-2009).

The Macclesfield Alphabet Book, a medieval alphabetic pattern book in the library of the Earls of Macclesfield since about 1750, is the most complete set of pattern designs for manuscript decoration that survived from medieval Britain. It contains 14 different types of decorative alphabets.

"These include an alphabet of decorative initials with faces; foliate alphabets; a zoomorphic alphabet of initials, and alphabets in Gothic script. In addition there are large coloured anthropomorphic initials modelled after fifteenth-century woodcuts or engravings, as well as two sets of different types of borders, some of which are fully illuminated in colours and gold.

"This manuscript is thought to have been used as a pattern book for an artist's workshop for the transmission of ideas to assistants, or as a 'sample' book to show to potential customers.

"Only a handful of these books survive and as a result, the discovery of the Macclesfield Alphabet Book, filled with designs for different types of script, letters, initials, and borders is of outstanding significance and will contribute to a greater understanding of how these books were produced and used in the Middle Ages, as well as aid the study of material culture and art history.

"The Macclesfield Alphabet Book sheds light on how such tomes were produced. They did not always rely on the creative expertise of the artist, since alphabets and illustrations similar to some of the Macclesfield examples have been found in earlier books and woodcuts"(http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2009/07/macclesfield-alphabet-book-bought-by.html, accessed 08-03-2009).

The acquisition of the manuscript was completed by the British Library in July 2009 at a cost of £600,000, against an offer from the J. Paul Getty Museum for the same amount.

Venetian printers Giovanni and Gregorio Gregoriis, de Forlivio,  issue the first printed edition of Fasciculus medicinae under the authorship of Johannes de Ketham. This collection of short medical treatises, some dating as far back as the thirteenth century, circulated widely in manuscript prior to printing. The printers may have attributed the collection to the former owner of the manuscript they printed: Johannes von Kirchheim, a professor of medicine in Vienna circa 1460. "Ketham" is a plausible Italian corruption of "Kirchheim."

The first edition was the first printed medical book to have anatomical illustrations of any kind. It was followed by an Italian translation issued by the same printers in Venice 1493/94, which added Mondino's Anathomia to the collection; for this Italian edition, all but one of the illustrations were redrawn and four new outline wood-engravings added, showing scenes of medical practice in fifteenth-century Venice. The dramatically improved and more realistic illustrations, which were reproduced in the numerous later editions, are by an unknown artist, probably from the school of Giovanni Bellini.

In the woodcuts prepared for the Italian edition we see the first evidence of the transition from medieval to modern anatomical illustration. In the 1491 edition, the woodcut of the female viscera—like those of the Zodiac Man, Bloodletting Man, Wound-Man, etc.—was derived from the traditional non-representational squatting figure found in medieval medical manuscripts. However, the illustrations for the Italian edition "included an entirely redesigned figure showing female anatomy. . . . The scholastic figure from 1491 must have irritated the eyes of the artistic Venetians to such a degree that they immediately abandoned it. After this the female figure actually sits in an armchair, so that the traditional [squatting] position corresponds to a real situation" (Herrlinger, History of Anatomical Illustration, 66). 

Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomical Illustration (1920) 115-122.  Herrlinger  28-29; 65-66. J. Norman (ed) Morton's Medical Bibliography 5th ed (1991) no. 363.  Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1211 (1495 edition). ISTC no. ik00013000.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile from the website of Harvard University Libraries at this link: http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7622337?n=8&imagesize=1200&jp2Res=.125, accessed 01-02-2009.

The Spanish Army defeats Muslim forces in Granada, the last remaining territory in Spain under Muslim control, thus restoring the whole of Spain to Christian rule.

Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon promulgate the Alhambra Decree,  ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories and possessions by July 31 of this year.

"In the same month in which their Majesties [Ferdinand and Isabella] issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month they gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of discovery to the Indies." So begins Christopher Columbus's diary.

The expulsion to which Columbus refers was almost as important in Jewish history as the Voyage of Columbus was in American history. Following the terms of the Edict of Expulsion, or Alhambra Decree, on July 31 those Jews who did not convert to Christianity were expelled from Spain. Estimates of the number of Jews expelled range from 130,000 to 800,000. It is thought that Jews represented at least 10% of the population of Spain before the expulsion.  Some of the expelled Jews were accepted in Holland, and some in Italy, but most settled in the Ottoman Empire or in Africa.

"On the evening of August 3, 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships; one larger carrack, Santa María, nicknamed Gallega (the Galician), and two smaller caravels, Pinta (the Painted) and Santa Clara, nicknamed Niña after her owner Juan Niño of Moguer. They were property of Juan de la Cosa and the Pinzón brothers (Martín Alonso and Vicente Yáñez), but the monarchs forced the Palos inhabitants to contribute to the expedition. Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands, which were owned by Castile, where he restocked the provisions and made repairs. On September 6, he departed San Sebastián de la Gomera for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean.

"Land was sighted at 2 a.m. on October 12, 1492, by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodríguez Bermejo) aboard Pinta" (Wikipedia article on Christopher Columbus, accessed 01-10-2008).

In response to the Alhambra Decree, expelling the Jews from Spain by July 31, 1492,  Sultan Bayezid II sent the Ottoman navy under the command of Kemal Reis to Spain in order to save Jews who were expelled.

"He sent out proclamations throughout the empire that the refugees were to be welcomed. He granted the refugees the permission to settle in the Ottoman Empire and become Ottoman citizens. He ridiculed the conduct of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in expelling a class of people so useful to their subjects. 'You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler,' he said to his courtiers — 'he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!' Bajazet addressed a firman to all the governors of his European provinces, ordering them not only to refrain from repelling the Spanish refugees, but to give them a friendly and welcome reception. He threatened with death all those who treated the Jews harshly or refused them admission into the empire. Moses Capsali, [Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire], who probably helped to arouse the sultan's friendship for the Jews, was most energetic in his assistance to the exiles. He made a tour of the communities, and was instrumental in imposing a tax upon the rich, to ransom the Jewish victims of the persecutions then prevalent" (Wikipedia article on Bayezid II, accessed 09-12-2009).

Aboard the caravel Niña, sailing back from the New World, Christopher Columbus wrote an open letter to the monarchs of Spain, describing his monumental discoveries. When he docked in Lisbon, Portugal on March 14 Columbus added a postscript and sent the letter to the Escribano de Racion, Luis de Santangel, finance minister to Ferdinand II and the high steward or comptroller of the king's household expenditures. Santagel had convinced  Isabella I to back Columbus's voyage eight months earlier, and Santagel was the first convey the news of Columbus's success to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.

Santagel turned over the text of Columbus's letter to printer Pedro Posa in Barcelona, and as early as April 1, 1493, Posa issued a 4-page pamphlet in small folio entitled Epistola de insulis nuper inventis (Letter on Newly Discovered Islands). Only one copy of the original printing survives. It was discovered in Spain in 1889, and passed through the hands of antiquarian bookseller Maisonneuve in Paris before reaching antiquarian bookseller Bernard Quaritch in 1890. In 1892 Quaritch sold it to the Lenox Library founded by James Lenox. This library later merged with the New York Public Library where the pamphlet is preserved today. ISTC no. ic00756000.

Columbus's letter was the first eyewitness news account to become a bestseller. The second edition, published in Spanish in Valladolid, also survives only in a single copy. ISTC no. ic00756500.

The third edition, in Latin, was published in Rome by Stephen Plannck, probably in early May 1493. ISTC no. ic00757000.

The first illustrated edition, with woodcuts supposedly copied from drawings by Columbus, was issued by Michael Furter, for Johann Bergmann, de Olpe, in Basel, Switzerland, probably in May, 1493. ISTC no. ic00760000.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of the Basel edition from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00026585/images/index.html?id=00026585&fip=67.164.64.97&no=6&seite=8, accessed 01-02-2010.

Giuliano Dati translated the letter into Italian verse for publication in Rome June 15, 1493. ISTC no. id00045890. Dati's version was reprinted in Florence and Brescia in 1493. Of each printing of Dati's version only one copy survived.

Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 35.

Printer Anton Koberger of Nuremberg publishes the Liber chronicarum written by the physician Hartmann Schedel.

A large-folio compendium of history, geography and natural wonders, the Liber chronicarum contained 298 printed leaves, including 1,809 illustrations from 645 woodcuts by or after painter and woodengraver Michael Wohlgemut (Wohlgemuth), his stepson Wilhelm Plydenwurff, and possibly some by Koberger's godson, the young Albrecht Dürer, who was apprenticed to Wohlgemut until 1490. Certain woodcuts were reproduced more than once, sometimes for the depiction of different people or cities. The images include a full-sheet map of Europe, a Ptolemaean world map, large and small city views, biblical and historical scenes, and portraits.

♦ You can view a black & white digital facsimile of the Latin edition from the Biblioteca de Andalucía at this link:  http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/cultura/bibliotecavirtualandalucia/catalogo_imagenes/grupo.cmd?path=10150, accessed 01-02-2010.

Koberger also issued a German translation by Georg Alt, entiled Das Buch der Croniken und Geschichten on December 23 of the same year.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, Weimar at this link: http://ora-web.swkk.de/digimo_online/digimo.entry?source=digimo.Digitalisat_anzeigen&a_id=4218, accessed 01-02-2010.

Though the information in the Nuremberg Chronicle was rapidly superceded, it remained famous for its extraordinary graphic design, its printing, its woodcuts and descriptions of cities. One of the woodcuts depicts the paper mill established in Nuremberg by Ulman Stromer in 1390.

Probably because it was such a large and impressive volume, the work was a great commercial success, with an unusually large printings for a fifteenth century book:

"The Latin edition was printed in at least 1400 copies, of which more than 1200 still exist today" (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert [2009] no. 11 (describing the annotated copy of the author, Hartmann Schedel, which is preserved at the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, Munich).

Most probably fewer copies of the German edition were printed, as it remains rarer on the market. Between roughly 1980 and 2009 there were 188 auction sales recorded for the Latin edition and 35 sales of the German edition, some sales presumably representing the same copies being resold.

Remarkably, the original manuscript exemplars showing the exact arrangement of the text and illustrations for both the Latin and German editions, as well has other original documents pertaining to the publication of these works, were preserved. The exemplar for the Latin edition is in the Stadbibliothek Nürnberg. The exemplar for the German edition is in the Nuremberg City Library. Adrian Wilson, a book designer and historian of book design from San Francisco, issued an outstanding book in which he showed the relationship between these manuscript exemplars and the printed editions: The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976).

ISTC no. is00307000 (Latin). ISTC no. is00309000 (German).

After their explusion from Spain David and Samuel ibn Nahmias travelled to Constantinople as a result of Sultan Bayezid II's offer of refuge. There they established the first Hebrew printing press in the Ottoman Empire. The first book the Nahmias brothers printed was Jacob ben Asher's fourteenth century Arbaah Turim (Four Orders of the Code of Law) completed on 4 Tevet 5254 (13 December 1493). This was the first book printed in the Ottoman Empire, not only in Hebrew but in any language.

Previously the Nahmias brothers had attempted to set up a printing shop in Naples. The type they used in Constantinople is similar to Hebrew type used in Spain and Italy. The paper on which their edition of ben Asher was printed in Constantinople is of northern Italian origin.

As Jews, the Nahmias brothers were allowed to practice the printing trade forbidden to Muslims. Jacob ben Asher's work was the only book that the Nahmias brothers issued in Hebrew from Constantinople during the 15th century.

Lehrstuhl für Türkische Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur, Universität Bamberg, The Beginnings of Printing in the Near and Middle East: Jews, Christians and Muslims (2001) 9. ISTC no. ij00000300.

In his treatise De laude scriptorum (In Praise of Scribes) probably written in reaction to the information revolution caused by printing, Benedictine abbot Johannes Trithemius (Tritheim) advocated preserving the medieval tradition of manuscript copying even though he was well aware of the advantages of printing for information distribution, since thirty printed editions of his own writings appeared during the 15th century. Tritheim also questioned the durability of media used in long term information storage when he compared the known long-term durability of information written on traditional parchment , examples of which had already lasted over 700 years, with that written or printed on the newer and less proven medium of paper. He also pointed out that

"the entire written heritage could never be completely published in print or collected in a single library. Therefore, the preservation of less well-known works was to be the task of monks who could choose the texts to be copied without economic considerations and, working manually, reproduced them in higher quality than that of printed productions which often neglected the orthography and other decorative elements (ceteros librorum ornatus) — a not unjustified criticism of the hasty methods of mass production" (Wagner, Als die Lettern laufen lernten. Medienwandel im 15. Jahrhundert [2009] no. 32).

Perhaps not surprisingly, Tritheim's retrograde treatise which took issue with the new technology was not a best-seller. It underwent only one printed edition during the 15th century. ISTC no. it00442000.

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of this work at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek website at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0003/bsb00037424/images/index.html?id=00037424&fip=67.164.64.97&no=3&seite=3, accessed 01-02-2010.

Responding to the challenges of organizing the rapidly growing body of information caused by the development of printing, Johannes Trithemius (Tritheim( wrote and had printed the earliest subject bibliography, Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (A Book on Ecclesiastical Writings). It was the first bibliography compiled as a practical reference work. The work appeared in Basel at the press of Johann Amerbach.

The work " lists in chronological order 982 authors with about 7,000 titles, the nubmer of chapters in each work and the incipit when known. An alphabetical list, arranged according to the authors' first names, serves as an index. The title of the book is somewhat misleading since the work is not restricted to ecclesiastical writers but also includes authors such as Dante, Poggio, and Sebastian Brant" (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History & Development [1984] no. 7).

ISTC no. it00452000.

Sebastian Brant publishes Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools) in Basel, Switzerland at the press of Johann Bergmann, de Olpe. Some of the woodcuts illustrating this work are by the young Albrecht Dürer.

Brandt's satire became a great bestseller. It included a characterization and woodcut illustration of the "book fool" who enjoyed owning many books but read few of them. That book-collecting had become a topic for satire by this time is a reflection of the proliferation of books since the invention of printing by moveable type.

The popularity of Brandt's satire was in itself a reflection of the proliferation of books. Twenty-six different editions appeared in the 15th century. Brandt authorized six editions in German during his lifetime and there were at least six other unauthorized editions published. The work was translated into Latin by Jacob Locher in 1497 (Stultifera Navis), into French by Paul Riviere in 1497 and by Jehan Droyn in 1498. An English verse translation by Alexander Barclay appeared in London in 1509, and again in 1570; one in prose by Henry Watson in London, 1509; and again 1517. It was also rendered into Dutch and Low German.

ISTC no. ib01080000.

Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli publishes at the press of Paganinus de Paganinis in Venice Summa de arithmetica geometria, proporzioni et proporzionalita.

This was “the first great general work on mathematics printed” (Smith, Rara arithmetica, 56).

“[The Summa] contains a general treatise on theoretical and practical arithmetic; the elements of algebra; a table of moneys, weights and measures used in the various Italian states; a treatise on double-entry bookkeeping; and a summary of Euclid’s geometry. . . . Although it lacked originality, the Summa was widely circulated and studied by the mathematicians of the sixteenth century. Cardano, while devoting a chapter of his Practica arithmetice (1539) to correcting the errors in the Summa, acknowledged his debt to Pacioli. Tartaglia’s General trattato de’ numeri et misure (1556-1560) was styled on Pacioli’s Summa. In the introduction to his Algebra, Bombelli says that Pacioli was the first mathematician after Leonardo Fibonacci to have thrown light on the science of algebra. . . . Pacioli’s treatise on bookkeeping, ‘De computis et scripturis,’ contained in the Summa, was the first printed work setting out the ‘method of Venice,’ that is, double-entry bookkeeping. [Richard] Brown has said [in his History of Accounting and Accountants, 1905] that ‘The history of bookkeeping during the next century consists of little else than registering the progress of the De computis through the various countries of Europe” (Dictionary of Scientific Biography).

ISTC no. il00315000.

English printer Wynkyn de Worde, successor to William Caxton, prints at Westminister an edition of the encyclopedic work by Bartholomaeus Anglicus,  De proprietatibus rerum, in the English translation of John Trevisa, illustrated with woodcuts, mostly derived from the numerous earlier editions. This work was the first book printed in England on paper made at the first English paper mill, operated by John Tate from around 1495 till his death in 1507.

Remarkably, the original unillustrated manuscript, substantially marked up by the compositors, for a portion of this work, is preserved in the Plimpton Collection at Columbia University Library. Plimpton

"purchased it from Quaritch who had bought it when Lord Middleton's library was sold at auction in 1925. The large and beautiful codex was made for Sir Thomas Chaworth of Wiverton, Notts., about 1440; it apparently soon became the property of the Willoughby family, neighbors and kin of the Chaworths, in whose possession it remained until the sale of Lord Middleton's books in 1925. (Thomas Willoughby was created Baron Middleton 1 January 1711/12). Throughout the nearly 500 years in which the MS. was in private hands it was all but unknown to scholars" (Three Lions cited below, 18).

Wynkyn de Worde's printed text deviates substantially from the manuscript. A second manuscript source, no longer extant, was also a source for the edition. 

♦ Three Lions and the Cross of Lorraine: Bartholomaeus Anglicus, John of Trevisa, John Tate, Wynkyn de Worde and De Proprietatibus Reum. A Leaf Book with Essays by Howell Heaney, Dr. Lotte Hellinga, Dr. Richard Hills. Newton, PA: Bird & Bull Press (1992) details my role in supplying the very incomplete copy of the Wynkyn de Worde printing, containing 138 leaves, which became the basis for the edition, and determined the number of copies printed.

"Worde is generally credited for moving English printing away from its late-Medieval beginnings and toward a modern model of functioning. Caxton had depended on noble patrons to sustain his enterprise; while de Worde enjoyed the support of patrons too (principally Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII), he shifted his emphasis to the creation of relatively inexpensive books for a commercial audience and the beginnings of a mass market. Where Caxton had used paper imported from the Low Countries, de Worde exploited the product of John Tate, the first English papermaker. De Worde published more than 400 books in over 800 editions (though some are extant only in single copies and many others are extremely rare). His greatest success, in terms of volume, was the Latin grammar of Robert Whittington, which he issued in 155 editions. Religious works dominated his output, in keeping with the tenor of the time; but de Worde also printed volumes ranging from romantic novels to poetry (he published the work of John Skelton and Stephen Hawes), and from children's books to volumes on household practice and animal husbandry. He innovated in the use of illustrations: while only about 20 of Caxton's editions contained woodcuts, 500 of de Worde's editions were illustrated.

"He moved his firm from Caxton's location in Westminster to London; he was the first printer to set up a site on Fleet Street (1500), which for centuries became synonymous with printing. He was also the first man to build a book stall in St. Paul's Churchyard, which soon became a center of the book trade in London.

"De Worde was the first to use italic type (1528) and Hebrew and Arabic characters (1524) in English books; and his 1495 version of Polychronicon by Ranulf Higdon was the first English work to use movable type to print music" (Wikipedia article on Wynkyn de Worde, accessed 01-10-2008).

Dard Hunter, The Literature of Papermaking 1390-1800 (1925) 13. ISTC no. ib00143000.

Johannes Trithemius (Tritheim) publishes Catalogus illustrium virorum Germaniae in Mainz at the press of Peter von Friedberg. 

A selective bibliography of German authors, listing 2000 works by 300 writers, including Trithemius himself, this was probably the first printed bibliography on secular subjects. 

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 9.

ISTC no. it00432800.

Scholar printer, Aldus Manutius of Venice, issues the Idyllia of Theocritus in Greek along with other works in Greek and Latin, including the writings of Hesiod. (ISTC no. it00144000).

"We must not ask of Aldine editions what they cannot give, a balanced critical recension which even in our own day has hardly been achieved for many Greek authors. The aims of textual purity and correctness were often trumpeted in early editions, long before Aldus, indeed, but with special emphasis in his prefaces. But these aims, no doubt genuinely held, all too frequently succumbed to the messy pressures of the printing house, as the number of errata pages attached to his editions attest. Something is better than nothing, Aldus says in the preface to Theocritus in 1496, and a text once printed can at least find many correctors where a manuscript can only receive occasional emendation. This of course is true in the long run, but sidesteps the whole problem of corrupt texts being fixed in hundreds of copies by the printing press" (Davies, Aldus Manutius, Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice [1999] 23).

The Venetian Senate grants Ottaviano Petrucci a twenty-year patent for the double-impression technique of printing polyphonic music for voices, organ, and lute using moveable type.

This was the "first known record of a privilege granted for music printing. It is also one of the early records of patents for invention and improvement in the mechanism of printing, showing that there was no legal distinction between books and printed music or other works of art produced through the press" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, reproducing an image of the document, and providing a translation and an extremely detailed, and thoroughly documented commentary).

A product for the royal court of France, the "Hours of Henry VIII" illuminated by Jean Poyet, and preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library, is one of the most splendid manuscript Books of Hours from this period. This magnificently illustrated lay book of daily devotions and prayers contains fifty-five exquisitely hand-painted images.

♦ Even as the reach of printing expanded, the practice of commissioning luxury manuscript books of hours by wealthy patrons continued well through the sixteenth century. From the seventeenth century onward it noticeably declined. Production of these luxury manuscripts, in which the emphasis was on the illustrations, continued to provide employment for a declining number of scribes and illuminators, some of whom found employment in the printing trades or as the illustrators of printed books. The work of manuscript illuminators who worked with the new technology may also be seen in certain hand-colored deluxe copies of illustrated printed books produced during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The first illustration of a printing press and printing office in a printed book appears in La grât danse macabre, published in Lyons by Mathias Huss. The image shows death visiting a printing office and a bookseller's shop.

Huss's book was one of numerous editions of The Dance of Death, or Danse macabre. 

"The first known illustration of a printing press was certainly not drawn to enlighten future generations as to its characteristics. It appears in an edition of the Danse Macabre, published in Lyons by Mathias Huss in 1499. Death is depicted carrying off a printer and a bookseller, and, such as it is, we may take it that the cut illustrates a French fifteenth-century printing office. Unfortunately, although the general construction of press can be made out, the very aspect which would have been of most interest—the way in which the platen was hung—is obscured by the struggling figure of the pressman. However, the illustration does show clearly the supports, or stays, between the top of the top of the press and the ceiling, which were found to be necessary to keep the press stable; a course wooden screw, and a straight pole or bar. Particularly interesting is the plank held up by a stay and on which there is a box, to which we may presume a tympan is hinged by what look like leather straps. No winding mechanism is visible and it may be conjectured that the box was pushed under the platen by hand at this date. The other pressman (or 'beater') is holding an ink-ball, which hardly changed in appearance until it was replaced by a roller some three hundred and fity years later. Two ink-balls were used to ink the forme. They were made of untanned leather or sheepskin, stuffed with wool or hair, and nailed around a wooden handle or stock. Ink was spread out on to a slab and rubbed out thinly with a wooden device known as a brayer.

"The little rest, or gallows, give additional credence of the idea that there was a tympan to be thrown back on it when the forme was being inked. The unusual position of the pressman, who usually stood next to his companion, is probably the result of the artist's license as he wanted to show the figure of Death full face" (Kinsman, The Darker Vision of the Renaissance: Beyond  the Fields of Reason [1974] 25).