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Hebrew incunabula amount to a rather modest, in terms of number, group of around 150 editions that were printed within the period from the late 60s of the 15th century to January 1, 1501 in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Turkey. Despite such a small number of Hebrew incunabula, the role they played in the history of the formation of European printing cannot be overlooked. Even less possible is to overestimate the importance of Hebrew incunabula for understanding Jewish spiritual life as it evolved in Europe during the Renaissance.Russian depositories house 43 editions of Hebrew incunabula, in 113 copies and fragments. The latter are distributed as following: the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences — 67 items stored; the Russian State Library — 38 items; the National Library of Russia — 7 items; the Jewish Religious Community of Saint Petersburg — 1 item. The majority of these books came in public depositories at the late 19th — first half of the 20th century from private collections of St. Petersburg collectors: Moses Friedland (1826—1899), Daniel Chwolson (1819—1911) and David Günzburg (1857—1910). This article looks into the circumstances of how exactly these incunabula were acquired by the depositories. For the first time there are analysed publications of Russian scholars that either include descriptions of Hebrew incunabula (inventories, catalogues, lists) or related to various aspects of Hebrew incunabula studies. The article presents the first annotated bibliography of all domestic publications that are in any way connected with Hebrew incunabula, covering the period from 1893 (the first publication) to the present. In private collections, there was paid special attention to the formation of incunabula collections. It was expressed in the allocation of incunabula as a separate group of books in printed catalogues and the publication of research works on incunabula studies, which belonged to the pen of collectors themselves and haven’t lost their scientific relevance today.

Book Review

This contribution discusses the hitherto overlooked ownership of the earliest printed books (incunabula) by Netherlandish female religious communities of tertiaries and canonesses regular connected to the religious reform movement of the Devotio moderna. Studies of book ownership and book collections in these communities have tended to focus on manuscripts. From the last decades of the fifteenth century onwards, however, these religious women increasingly came in contact with printed books, even though the involvement of the Devotio moderna with the printing press was limited. The discussion focuses on the channels via which tertiaries and canonesses acquired books produced by commercially operating printers, the ways in which incunabula affected what these (semi-)religious women read, as well as the ratio between printed books in Latin and the vernacular, and their function(s) within these communities. Thus the essay intends to sketch a preliminary image of the role of incunabula in female convents, and advocates a more inclusive approach of female religious book ownership.

The University of Southern California (USC) Libraries’ collection of Illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Incunabula, and Rare Books includes 16 unique and invaluable illuminated medieval manuscripts, as well as 12 other medieval manuscripts (with pen-flourished initials or borders) originating in Europe. A substantial number of those manuscripts and rare books were acquired in the early to mid-20th century by Ralph Tyler Flewelling who joined USC in fall 1917. He became the first director of the School of Philosophy when it was established in 1929 with the completion of the Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Memorial Hall of Philosophy building. That growing collection of books, known as the James Harmon Hoose Library of Philosophy Collection, was cataloged according to the Dewey Decimal Classification. Hoose was the first head of the Philosophy Department, originally housed in the university’s administration building. In the latter part of the 20th century, this rare collection was relocated to the Special Collections Department in the Doheny Memorial Library.

The signifi cance of the printed book for the development of early modern Europe can hardly be overestimated. Some 30,000 editions of incunabula survive today, in some 450,000 surviving copies, located in about 4,000 different public libraries, mostly in Europe and North America. During the last century, cataloguing of incunabula in libraries all around the world has progressed notably, but the printed and on-line inventories available describe the books in various degrees of detail and, what is more disappointing, remain separate entities, which renders any kind of all-encompassing survey exceedingly lengthy, if not impossible. To overcome such hindrances the Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) database has been set up. It integrates existing provenance records as well as providing a space for cataloguing incunabula, which have not been catalogued yet. The database, although far from completion, already enables to start reconstructing dispersed book collections. Cristina Dondi illustrated this with the example of three incunabula she found in libraries in Oxford, Yale, and Harvard, which until the early 19th century belonged to the library of the Franciscan convent of San Cerbone in Lucca. Thanks to the data provided by MEI, it is now possible to connect the descriptions of these three incunabula with the main part of the San Cerbone collection, now kept at the Provincial Library of the Franciscans in Florence.

Incunabula are considered a particularly important part of the documentary heritage. 520 incunabula are preserved in eight different Lithuanian memory institutions. The engagement of Lithuanian libraries in the development of the international database of incunabula provenances, Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI: https://data.cerl.org/mei/_search), intensified research on incunabulistics, as it led to a closer examination of the marks of the former owners. The article presents the latest data on the distribution of incunabula in different Lithuanian memory institutions, as well as analyzes various book marks that were not recorded in Nojus Feigelmanas’ catalog of Lithuanian incunabula or was revised and supplemented, and evaluates their significance in the printed book culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The analysis is performed using the provenance method, however is not limited to property marks, but also includes margins – marks left by a reader on the pages of books, and other marks not related to property or reading, providing significant information on book history, culture and peculiarities of reading at that time. In the 15th century, there were no printing houses in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, so the main spread of books was by trade. The entries with prices identified in the incunabula reveal a relatively early time of purchase of the incunabula and testify that the books in the 16th-17th centuries were an expensive commodity. They usually mention groschen, the common currency in the territory of Lithuania-Poland, less often – florins or ducats. In this case, the large variety of prices does not allow to draw more specific conclusions on the prices of incunabula in the relevant period, but these data as a source of book history will serve in general when studying the value of the old books and the circumstances of their acquisition. Purchase records usually also provide information about a former owner of a book. The article focuses more on lesser-known owners on whom new information has been found or existing data have been updated, attention is also paid to female donators. The article also discusses the records left by the incunabula rubricators, which allows to determine the period of the book entry into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as well as to look at them as one of the first readers. Various inscriptions left by anonymous owners require the most effort. Entries of the 15th-16th centuries, mostly in Latin, many of which are abstracts of an existing book or notes on it, additions to the text, are still awaiting detailed reading and research. Identified Lithuanian words will be a valuable source of the language history for researchers of the old Lithuanian language. Various marginalia – reviews on a book, notes from everyday life, counting the year of the book, as well as graffiti, different drawings that can be seen as feather attempts, amateur illustrations, caricatures or even as an expression of reading boredom, will be an important material to describe a reader’s relationship to the book at the time, for which the incunabula, like books of other ages, were not only the object of study or research, but also a kind of notebook for important thoughts, synopses, everyday details.

At present, eight different libraries in Lithuania preserve 510 incunabula in their holdings. In the 15th century, Lithuania did not itself have printing houses, so books had to be imported. A majority of incunabula kept in Lithuania carry inscriptions which show that these books were brought to Lithuania as early as in the 16th or 17th century. However, extant book markings may also become a way of shedding light on historical events which influenced the fate of libraries, and, vice versa, a knowledge of historical events may fill in lacunae left by provenance marks in the history of a book.

The editions of legal texts are a major and important part of 15th-century book output, amounting to about 15% of the surviving extant editions. The category comprehends two types of work: (a) the collections of Roman and Canon Law, with their medieval supplements and commentaries; (b) acts and regulations produced by governments and by local authorities as part of their day-to-day activity. After a general overview, this article focuses on the first group of texts, which offers an opportunity to address some key questions related to the impact of printing in a particular cultural context, that of the university. A study of legal texts printed in the 15th century aims to provide a relevant contribution to a better understanding of the impact of printing by comparing elements of continuity and discontinuity with the manuscript and later printed tradition.

The late 15th century became a time of dramatic changes in the Hebrew book-making as well. The Hebraica team of the 15cBOOKTRADE project prepared a thorough description of the extant copies of the Hebrew incunabula kept in the libraries of Europe and Israel. Notes of ownership, deeds of sale, personal remarks, institutional stamps, signatures of censors – all of them provide a rich picture of the distribution and use of Hebrew printed books throughout Europe (and also their ways from Europe to North Africa and the Middle East). Among a few hundreds of the checked volumes some were printed in Italy and remained there all the centuries since then, others were printed in Portugal and soon made their way to the Ottoman lands and from there to Yemen or Persia. Although the survey is not complete yet, since some important collections such as Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana still need to be included in the MEI database, the main results can enrich our knowledge on certain rabbis and scholars or provide interesting evidence of communal life, literacy, trade, the role of women and of the books in private possession.

From its foundation in 1980, the ISTC has been one of the most important international reference sources for incunabula studies. Based on a merger of F.R. Goff’s Incunabula in North American Libraries: A Third Census and the Indice Generale degli Incunaboli delle Biblioteche d’Italia, it aimed to be a comprehensive list both of 15th-century editions and of surviving copies of incunabula. While maintaining its original purpose, it has striven to take advantage of new partnerships and technical innovations to ensure its continued utility as a cornerstone of incunabula research. Managed by the British Library in London and hosted by CERL, the ISTC continues to rely on cooperation and partnership from holding institutions and researchers worldwide. Free since 2003, the ISTC can be used as a simple guide to editions and copies, but also as a dataset enabling researchers to look at 15th-century printing in new ways. After briefly looking at the ISTC’s history, this essay focuses on new developments made to the database, highlighting its continued relevance and potential to support traditional incunabula research as well as new projects, and its managers’ intention and flexibility to improve the file in response to its users’ feedback.

This article studies the role of the earliest books printed in the Dutch vernacular in the religious practice of lay individuals and the devout home. Many of the texts disseminated in these early printed books have received little attention and scholars have tended to view them within the sphere of the Modern Devotion, even though often there is no direct link to this religious reform movement. This article attempts to show that the first books printed in Dutch offer an interesting lens through which to study domestic devotion in the Low Countries in the last decades of the fifteenth century. It argues that these books bridged the gap between catechetical instruction and the private home, literally bringing home many of the ideals and instructions that the clergy would have offered in church and thus increasingly &lsquo, textualizing&rsquo, the lives of the late medieval laity. Printers such as Gerard Leeu and his contemporaries acquainted Christians to the use of printed books for personal and practical religious instruction and knowledge and thus paved the way for developments in the sixteenth century.

The authors report on the existence of three hitherto unknown copies of Hebrew incunabula printed in Soncino, provide a full description and discussion of a copy of an incunabulum from Leiria, and fragments of an incunabulum from Híjar, which they had previously identified, and offer an updated list of all the Hebrew incunabula extant in Spanish libraries and archives.

Although the Cobles de la Mort were printed with the Peregrinacio del Venturos Pelegri from the first complete extant edition (1635) until the twentieth century, several witnesses and data analyzed in this paper suggest the Cobles were published independently of the Peregrinacio in the first half of the sixteenth century. A record in the manuscript catalogues of the library of Hernando Colon confirms that in 1536 this bibliophile had already acquired a chapbook containing the Cobles. In addition, a fragment of the Libre de Senequa, an Occitan work of the thirteenth century, is cited in one of the paratexts included in a mid-sixteenth century manuscript copy of the Cobles. The presence of this Occitan source seems to relate the Cobles with the medieval tradition more than with the early modern literature. By comparing these elements with other sources, we deduce the existence of incunabula or postincunabula editions, currently missing, in which the Cobles were printed independently of the Peregrinacio. The...

The article is devoted to the printing Cyrillic South Slavic Biblical texts from the beginning (incunabula) until the early seventeenth century, along with the presentation and characteristics of the sources from Montenegro, Venice, Serbia, Wallachia and others. This history is referred to some Glagolitic sources and to the much better recognised history of Eastern Slavic paleotypy, both from the area of the First Republic of Poland, as well as from typographical centres of the Russian Tsardom.

From 1963 to 1996 Sister Lucie M. Gimbrere restored 446 books in the Onze Lieve Vrouwe abbey in Oosterhout, for various clients. Most of these books were very valuable manuscripts, incunabula and post-incunabula. Indeed, some of the absolute gems among the books in Dutch collections passed through her hands. Sister Lucie always adhered to the same principles: following the French binding tradition and working in the footsteps of the medieval bookbinder. She was guided by the book itself, academic literature and her commissioners, and not significantly by the code of ethics for restorers. Furthermore, she kept well away from chemical experiments and modern techniques. Precisely this approach made her business a success. Because of her concern for history, the attention she gave to the smallest archaeological leads and her practice of careful documentation, Sister Lucie emerged as an important pioneer in the history of medieval book restoration in the Netherlands.

This article discusses the library of John Veysy (d.1492), an Oxford-educated rector of the London parish church of St. James Garlickhythe, documented for its date unusually fully in the owner's will and probate inventory (printed in an appendix). It uses the second folios cited in these documents, in their detail an unusual survival from this period, to identify the likely imprints of the incunabula in the collection, and to suggest a possible chronology for the library's acquisition.

The oldest Polish bookplate known today and imprinted directly from a woodcut block on book pages is one attributed to Wojciech Strzałkowski, a notary from Gniezno (dated to 1519–1520). It can be found in an incunabulum from the collection of the Cathedral Library in the Archdiocesan Archives in Gniezno (Formularium instrumentorum ad usum Curiae Romanae [Hagenau: Heinrich Gran, before 17 August 1492], in 4o, no. Inc. 37). In the article the author demonstrates that the sign in fact belonged to Jan Żdżarowski (–1551), a public notary as well as canon of Poznań, Włocławek and Kraków. In his notarial admission (of 26 January 1519) Żdżarowski used a woodcut block to make his notarial sign (at that time notaries usually drew their signs). He used the same block to make a bookplate. An analysis of the state of preservation of both prints demonstrates that the block used to make them originated around 1517–1518, certainly before 26 January 1519, perhaps in Kraków. This is the oldest known case of a block being used to make a notarial sign by a notary from Poland and, at the same time, the first case of the same tool being used also to make a bookplate. The annex features an edition of the text of Jan Żdżarowski’s admission. Ekslibris przypisywany w literaturze Wojciechowi Strzałkowskiemu, najstarszy tego rodzaju polski księgoznak odbijany za pomocą klocka drzeworytniczego na kartach książkowych, rzeczywiście należał do Jana Żdżarowskiego. Pierwotnie Żdżarowski używał klocka do wykonywania znaku notarialnego — to najstarszy taki przypadek z terenów Polski. Narzędzie wykonano około 1517–1518 roku, na pewno przed 26 stycznia 1519 roku. 63 29 42 2 Roczniki Biblioteczne

espanolEste trabajo presenta los incunables de autores latinos (hasta el s.II d.C.) de la Biblioteca Historica “Marques de Valdecilla”, que tiene su origen en las primitivas adquisiciones del Cardenal Cisneros para la formacion de la biblioteca de su proyecto academico. Tras una descripcion de la biblioteca y el origen de los fondos, se ofrece informacion detallada sobre los incunables estudiados, y se presta atencion a la procedencia y antiguos poseedores, los impresores, y a algunos ejemplares destacados. La informacion completa se ofrece en unas tablas que se adjuntan en Anexo. EnglishThe aim of this paper is to present the incunabula by Latin authors (up to the 2nd century) kept in the “Marques de Valdecilla” Historical Library, created with Cardinal Cisneros’s first acquisitions to develop his academic project. After a brief description of the library and the origin of its collection, detailed information of its incunabula, its origins, previous owners and printers will be offered, with an emphasis on some notable copies. All the information is then condensed in the tables which can be found in the Annex.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries circulated freely two Bibles in Europe: the Vulgate, a Bible in Latin and the BibliaPauperum, an illustrated edition with short text for those who could not read; one of the first illustrated incunabula printed in Europe of anonymous authorship and date of appearance estimated around 1460. This book was printed by hand in the art of woodcut. Great popularizer of Christian Doctrine in the Middle Ages, copies remained preserved until today. Our object of study is the page of Epiphany is this Bible., Nos séculos XIV e XV circulavam livremente duas Bíblias na Europa: a Vulgata, uma bíblia em Latim e aBíblia Pauperum, uma edição ilustrada, com pouco texto, destinada aos que não sabiam ler; um dos primeiros incunábulos ilustrados impressos na Europa, de autoria anônima e data de aparecimento estimada por volta de 1460. Este livro foi impresso artesanalmente na técnica da Xilogravura. Grande divulgador da Doutrina Cristã na Idade Média, cópias permaneceram conservadas até a atualidade. Nosso objeto de estudo é a página da Epifania que se encontra nessa Bíblia.&nbsp

The kept collection of incunabula is not uniform in terms of their origins. Although this is a small collection, in many ways it is interesting concerning both authors, areas of their knowledge, notes of origin or their binding. The library has in total twelve bibliographical positions in ten volumes. They are the work of workshops located in four urban centres: Venice, Cologne, Strasbourg and Augsburg. All of the collection of books are concentrated around four major groups: Scripture, Theology, law and philosophy. The authors of those works were the most prominent representatives of medieval science. Part of the incunabula’s cover are from the period of the book’s print (turn of fifteenth and sixteenth century), part of them are from the later period.

Zusammenfassung: Im Rahmen des BMBF-geförderten Projekts KALLIMACHOS an der Universität Würzburg soll unter anderem die Textgrundlage für digitale Editionen per OCR gewonnen werden. Das Bearbeitungskorpus besteht aus deutschen, französischen und lateinischen Inkunabeln. Dieser Artikel zeigt, wie man mit bereits heute existierenden Methoden und Programmen den Problemen bei der OCR von Inkunabeln entgegentreten kann. Hierzu wurde an der Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg ein Verfahren erprobt, mit dem auf ausgewählten Werken einer Druckerwerkstatt bereits Zeichengenauigkeiten von bis zu 95 Prozent und Wortgenauigkeiten von bis zu 73 Prozent erzielt werden.

For more than a century, librarians and bibliographers have supposedly identified and cataloged gothic types using the Proctor-Haebler system and many incunabula collections have been described using it. It is now widely accepted that the Proctor-Haebler system's nomenclature and techniques are uniform and consistent for cataloging rare books and that it is informative about types. This article explains that although the Proctor-Haebler system may help us to identify a printer or a printing office, it confounds different typographic concepts (typeface, font, and type), uses contradictory methods, is based on weak or arguable assumptions, and does not inform us about “types.”

The first original illustrated herbal in the post-incunabula period after 1501 was Knieha lekarska by the Bohemian physician Jan Černý (c.1456–1530), written in Czech but printed in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1517. This work is missing in nearly all histories of illustrated herbals and, if mentioned, it is never systematically evaluated. The present paper introduces the author and analyses his work with respect to the tradition of early herbals, questioning the opinion that no remarkable herbal was produced in the first two decades of the sixteenth century.

The manuscript collection Sir George Grey donated to Auckland is not a ‘mirror’ of the one he presented to Cape Town. Grey’s Cape Town library was assembled for his own use and enjoyment, particularly for the scholarly retirement he was then envisaging for his later life. His Auckland library was collected from the outset with the intention of donating it to his fellow citizens. Market forces and Grey’s distance from European salerooms, generally regarded as having restricted his acquisition of manuscripts, had significantly more effect on his acquisition of incunabula. Consideration of his incunabula, particularly his interest in early English printers, brings into sharp relief the absence of Middle English manuscripts from both of his collections, despite his personal and ideological attachment to Chaucer and his contemporaries.

The word “incunabula” derives from the Latin word meaning “cradle.” Incunabula are books from the “cradle” of modern printing, that is, those printed with movable metal type in the fifty years from the invention of movable type to January 1, 1501. These books are the focus of special interest in the study of the history of books, and are designated with this special term. The development of printing during those years, and the search for, discovery, and analysis of books printed during that period are discussed in this entry

This article provides an introduction to, and an English translation of, the Latin funeral oration written by Nikolaus, the bishop of Modruš (or Nicholas de Korto), on the occasion of Cardinal Pietro Riario’s death in January 1474. The article opens with a contextualizing introduction to the oration, its author, and its subject, as well as the contemporary late-fifteenth-century trend in publishing funeral orations. Following this introduction is an English translation from, and comparison with, Neven Jovanović’s openaccess, peer-reviewed Latin transcription (Croatiae Auctores Latini) and the British Library’s copy of the oration (ISTC No. in000488000), which was first printed in Rome in 1474 by Antonio and Raffaele Volterrano.

Biographies of medieval English doctors are uncommon and fragmentary. The two best-known English medieval physicians were Gilbertus Anglicus and John of Gaddesden. This paper brings together the known details of their lives, compiled from extant biographies and from internal references in their texts. The primary records of their writings exist in handwritten texts and thereafter in incunabula from the time of the invention of printing in 1476. The record of the lives of these two medieval physicians can be expanded, as here, by the general perspective of the life and times in which they lived. Gilbertus Anglicus, an often-quoted physician-teacher at Montpellier, wrote a seven-folio Compendium medicinae in 1271. He described pioneering procedures used later in the emergent disciplines of anaesthetics, cosmetic medicine and travel medicine. Gilbertus’ texts, used extensively in European medical schools, passed in handwritten copies from student to student and eventually were printed in 1510. John of Gaddesden, an Oxford graduate in Arts, Medicine and Theology, wrote Rosa Anglica, published circa 1314. Its detailed text is an exemplar of the mixture of received Hippocratic and Galenic lore compounded by medieval astronomy and religious injunction, which mixture was the essence of medieval medicine. The writings of both these medieval English physicians formed part of the core curriculum that underpinned the practice of medicine for the next 400 years.

This article is primarily concerned with the question of what kind of text Gezhi aolue 格致奧略 (Outline of the mystery [revealed through] natural science), a unique ms. copy (1820) from the Zikawei Library in Shanghai and published for the first time in 1996, precisely is. Gezhi aolue appears to be older than 1820 (dating to before 1723), and to be a summary of one of the “Manila incunabula” (as Van der Loon called them), viz. Gewu qiongli bianlan 格物窮理便覽 (Handy compendium for investigating things and extending knowledge, 1607) composed by the Dominican friar Tomas Mayor for the Minnan-speaking Chinese in Manila, which in turn is based on Luis de Granada’s Introduccion del Simbolo de la Fe (1583). The article further concentrates on the biblical chronology ( Vulgata ) embedded in a scheme of six “world ages” (from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Salomo, and Zerubbabel to Christ) that Gewu qiongli bianlan presents (a chronology not found in the Introduccion ). Due to the absence, at that time, of a Chinese translation of the Bible and especially of the Old Testament, Gezhi aolue (as well as the ms. Renlei yuanliu 人類源流 (The origin of mankind) that seems to be based on Mayor’s text too) that was not compiled by Western missionaries reproduces for quite a number of less well-known names in the genealogy from Adam to Christ the Minnan or Hokkien ‘transliterations’ used in Gewu qiongli bianlan . The article concludes with two appendices: 1) a survey of which biblical chronology Chinese Christian texts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries use: the Vulgata chronology (the world was created some 4000 years before Christ), or the Septuagint chronology (the world was created some 5200 years before Christ); and 2) a reproduction of the genealogy of Christ (in Chinese and, of course, not using Minnan transliterations) that Carlo di Orazio da Castorano, a Franciscan missionary in Shandong, had printed in 1704 (the only known copy is preserved in the Vatican Library, see frontispiece and additional file under "Supplements" at the end of the table of contents).

The cataloguing device known in the middle ages as the secundo folio , being the opening words of the second leaf of a book, was a means by which a medieval book could be matched to its record in a list. First used in the early thirteenth century, it came to be universally employed in England and elsewhere, and continued to be used until the early sixteenth century, for printed books as well as for manuscripts without discrimination. While the secundo folio has long had a meaning and usefulness to modern manuscript cataloguers, for whom it has been a means of matching a surviving book to its medieval institutional home, its usefulness has escaped the attention of incunabulists. While it is true that the diagnostic cannot be used to identify an individual printed book as it can an individual manuscript, it can be used to identify the edition (or editions), and thereby offers a new source of evidence for the acquisition and ownership of incunabula at an early date, making a contribution to studies on the development and reach of the early booktrade.

In this article, the author details the history of the Research Library in Olomouc since its founding in 1566 through 2010. It is the second oldest library in the Czech Republic and also one of the major libraries in Central Europe. Later, the author describes the library's most important collections, focusing on manuscripts, incunabula, and the historical collection up to 1800.

Pen flourishing has been an important tool in localising and dating fifteenth-century medieval manuscripts from the northern Netherlands. As this type of decoration is also to be found in incunabula, the evidence from printed books may contribute towards a more precise dating of the penwork in manuscripts. It cannot, however, help in localising the flourishing. Upon completion, copies of printed books were often sold unadorned, to be rubricated and decorated elsewhere. A large-scale study of their pen flourishing could however offer more information about trade circuits, clients and the reception of incunabula.

This contribution demonstrates the methodological impact of the studies in book history by Jos Hermans, reflecting the book market in the Hanseatic city of Greifswald in the late medieval period. Referring to the contemporary libraries in the communities of the black and grey friars and in the parish church of St Mary’s, surviving codices, archival sources, book binding and provenance history are evaluated. The intention of this study is to exemplify the characteristics of the book trade and library organisation during the incunabula period in a town totally dependent on book import in the absence of printing shops.

Research into the provenance of medieval manuscripts and incunabula has generally focused on individual and institutional owners in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Who were these books made for, and why? How were they used? What was the composition of the collections of which they were part? The traces of former owners in extant works are an important source of information on these matters. The histories of several incunabula from the collection of Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum in The Hague illustrate the importance of systematic research on the development of the collection of which they are part, and of using archival and printed sources (as well as other evidence) to reconstruct the eventful histories of individual works and the changes that were made to them over the years. Such research should also be conducted on past collections. Like genealogists, book historians should start from the present and progress backward in time.

Lietuvos nacionalinė Martyno Mažvydo biblioteka Gedimino pr. 51, LT-01504 Vilnius, Lietuva El. pastas: viktorija.vait@gmail.com Straipsnyje nagrinėjami Lietuvos nacionalinės Martyno Mažvydo bibliotekos Retų knygų ir rankrascių skyriaus paleotipai: jų leidimo vieta, spaustuvininkai, tematika bei proveniencijos, dėmesį telkiant į retesnius, Lietuvos knygos kultūrai svarbesnius leidinius. Is siame skyriuje saugomų daugiau kaip 800 paleotipų analizuojama tik dalis jų, nes daugiau negu 200 knygų teturi kortelinį bibliografinį aprasą ir issamiai juos istirti siuo metu neįmanoma. Dalies sių paleotipų analizė papildo jau esamus tyrimus, praplecia senosios knygos kultūros vaizdą. Reiksminiai žodžiai: knygotyra, paleotipai, retos knygos, spaustuvininkai, proveniencijos. THE COLLECTION OF POST-INCUNABULA IN THE MARTYNAS MAŽVYDAS NATIONAL LIBRARY OF LITHUANIA Viktorija VAITKEVICIŪTĖ Abstract Post-incunabula or the books printed in the first half of the 16th century (from January 1, 1501 to January 1, 1551), along with incunabula, are considered to be the oldest and most valuable publications in the world. Due to their likeness to incunabula and publishing specifics, post-incunabula are considered to be historical treasures and monuments of culture. The Rare Book and Manuscript Department of the National Library of Lithuania has in its holdings more than 800 post-incunabula, not including the ones kept at the Department of the National Archival Fund of Published Documents. The exact number is still unknown, since not all the books have been included into the electronic catalogue: more than 200 of them have only a card catalogue description and are awaiting a more detailed study. This article analyses specific features of part of the post-incunabula collection in the NLL Rare Book and Manuscript Department: their place of publication, publishers, thematics and provenances. Principal attention is accorded to the books that are rarer, more interesting and more important for Lithuania’s culture and book culture in general. The most of the post-incunabula kept in the Rare Book and Manuscript Department were published in Germany, many in Switzerland, France and Italy. There also is a small number of post-incunabula published in Poland (Cracow). Of the publications produced by Cracow’s printers, the article discusses those by Jan Haller (ca. 1467–1525), Hieronim Wietor (ca. 1480–1546) and Florian Ungler (d. 1536). It is necessary to mention Aldines – the publications by one of the most famous European printers, Aldo Manuzio (Lat. Aldus Manutius; ca. 1450–1515) and by his descendants. The article also touches upon the work of such acclaimed French publishers as Henri Estienne (lat. Henricus Stephanus, ca. 1460–1520), founder of the famous dinasty of printers, and the Lyonese printer Sebastien Gryphius (ca. 1493–1556). The Rare Book and Manuscript Department also keeps quite a few post-incunabula published by Johannes Froben of Basel (1460–1537). As to the content aspect, the collection of post-incunabula in the department is versatile. For the most part, it is made up by religious literature: sermons, bibles, theological treatises, Church Fathers’ writings. There are many works by and commentaries on classical authors, of whom Cicero, at the time of the Renaissance viewed as the greatest authority on rhetoric, is the most famous one. The post-incunabula collection illuminates the emergence of the Reformations and the related spread of new ideas in the first half of the XVIth century. The Rare Book and Manuscript Department boasts a number of works by the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther (1483–1546) and by the most acclaimed humanist of the times, Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536). The provenances in the post-incunabula (manuscript inscriptions, stamps, bookplates) provide much interesting information. Most often found are ownership marks of the establishments that since the olden times had been preserving books: various monasteries, churches and priest seminaries,. The notable representative of the post-incunabulum culture is the Bernardine Order. According to the electronic catalogue, the Rare Book and Manuscript Department has in its holdings 21 post-incunabula formerly kept by the library of the Tytuvėnai Bernardine Monastery. Most provenance inscriptions are from Kaunas Priest Seminary, the library of the Samogitian Priest Seminary, the library of the Vilnius Seminary and Kražiai College. Of the XIXth century personal libraries, particularly noteworthy are the collections of Jonas Krizostomas Gintila (1788–1857), XIXth-century bibliophile, hebraist and administrator of the Samogitian Diocese, and of Friedrich August Gotthold (1778–1858), educator and music theorist. A separate, rather abundant group of provenance inscriptions consists of the books that formerly belonged to Konigsberg University. An in-depth study of all the post-incunabula kept in the NLL would significantly add to the existing research and broaden the understanding of old book culture.

Todavía en demasiadas ocasiones se ha dejado de lado el panorama hispánico en el contexto europeo. Por eso presento aquí un estudio de los ejemplares aristotélicos conservados en las bibliotecas catedralicias y universitarias del reino de Castilla. La revisión de los inventarios y catálogos de manuscritos e incunables proporciona un análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo del fondo aristotélico. El objetivo es proporcionar un corpus de los antecedentes necesarios para una mejor comprensión y estudio de la recepción de la moral aristotélica en la Castilla tardomedieval y renacentista.La cultura cortesana se sirve de la moral de Aristóteles para construir y difundir un discurso a favor de la monarquía. Una de las vías de acceso más importantes al texto aristotélico es la universitaria. A partir de ahí, resultarán especialmente interesantes las adaptaciones y transmisiones de la Ética en los contextos aristocráticos.La transmisión del texto de la Ética aristotélica en Castilla responde a factores europeos y a características propias del contexto hispánico. De esta manera, se podrán perfilar las peculiaridades del aristotelismo en la península ibérica, a la vez que completar el recorrido del aristotelismo en Europa. All too often, the Hispanic case in history has been neglected in European-wide studies. For this reason, we will study the works of Aristotle held in cathedral and university libraries in the kingdom of Castile. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the manuscripts and incunabula of Aristotelian writings by way of the inventories of Castilian universities will be undertaken in order to create a corpus of existing works and determine the reception of Aristotelian moral philosophy in late-medieval and Renaissance Castile.Courtly culture adopted Aristotelian moral theory to construct and transmit a discourse in favour of monarchy. The university is one of the most important centres where one could get access to Aristotelian texts. From this basis, we will study the adaptation and transmission of Aristotle’s Ethics in an aristocratic context.The transmission of the text of Aristotle’s Ethics in Castile responds to European factors as well as to characteristics derived from the particular Hispanic context. This study enhances our understanding of the characteristics of Aristotelianism in the Iberian Peninsula, and allows us to complete the wider picture in Europe.

How does a University library established in the late nineteenth century and donation-driven into the twentieth acquire a collection of incunabula? This article examines the growth of the incunabula collection at Senate House Library, University of London (formerly known as the University of London Library) from the twenty-two fifteenth-century books in the foundation collection of Augustus De Morgan, given in 1871, to the twenty-first century. It describes the influx of incunabula through the gifts of various named special collections, looking also at the role that incunabula played within those collections; through purchase; and through the demise of other institutional libraries. The article further details Senate House Library's treatment of its incunabula and shows how exploration of a small collection (134 of the Library's estimated 200,000 early printed books) sheds light on private and institutional library history.

Hartmann Schedel's Weltchronik (1493), also known as 'The Nuremberg Chronicle', contains 31 items on medieval jurists. These items are interesting because, through an intermediate source, they go for the larger part back to Caccialupi, the first serious historiographer of medieval jurisprudence (first edition 1472). This intermediate source, Jacobus Philippus Foresti of Bergamo (1434–1520), did more than passing on Caccialupi's knowledge, which was based essentially on manuscripts. Foresti, not formally trained in law, in particular used information about recently printed editions to update his own chronicle (first edition 1483). His role in legal historiography is more important than has been acknowledged so far.