Anette Hagan (editor) - Spotlights on Incunabula (Library of the Written Word - Library of the Written Word - the Handpress World, 118)-Brill Academic Pub (2023)

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Spotlights on Incunabula
Library of the Written Word
volume 118
The Handpress World
Editor-in-Chief
Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews)
Arthur der Weduwen (University of St Andrews)
Editorial Board
Ann Blair (Harvard University)
Falk Eisermann (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preuβischer Kulturbesitz)
Shanti Graheli (University of Glasgow)
Earle Havens ( Johns Hopkins University)
Ian Maclean (All Souls College, Oxford)
Alicia Montoya (Radboud University)
Angela Nuovo (University of Milan)
Helen Smith (University of York)
Mark Towsey (University of Liverpool)
Malcolm Walsby (ENSSIB, Lyon)
volume 96
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lww
http://brill.com/lww
Spotlights on Incunabula
Edited by
Anette I. Hagan
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1874-4834
isbn 978-90-04-68136-1 (hardback with dustjacket)
isbn 978-90-04-68137-8 (e-book)
doi 10.1163/9789004681378
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Cover illustration: The work of an English incunable artist in Audley’s copy of Flavius Blondus, 
Roma instaurata (Verona, 1481–82). Lincoln College K.8.10, leaf a1v.
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Abbreviations ix
Notes on Contributors xi
 Introduction 1
Anette I. Hagan
Part 1
Continental Case Studies
1 Early Printing along the IJssel: Contextualising Deventer’s Success as a 
Centre of Incunabula Production 11
Laura Cooijmans-Keizer
2 Jacques Le Forestier, Thomas Le Forestier and Early Medical Printing 
in Rouen 31
Elma Brenner
3 The Quaderneto of Padua: A 1480 List of Incunabula for Sale 50
Ester Camilla Peric
Part 2
Incunabula as Objects
4 Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period 79
Andrea Vilcsek
5 Bindings and Provenance: Evidence from Contemporary Oxford 
Bindings on the Early Printed Books of the Last Monks of Durham 103
Sheila Hingley
6 ‘An Imperfect Copy’: Avicenna’s Canon de medicinae in the University 
of Aberdeen 122
Jane Pirie
vi Contents
Part 3
Collecting
7 Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation to Lincoln College, 
Oxford: Reconstructing a Private Library and Its Afterlife 143
Sarah Cusk
8 The Place of Incunabula in Early Modern Scottish Libraries 164
Elizabeth Henderson
9 Augustus De Morgan’s Incunabula 194
Karen Attar
10 An Astronomer’s Incunabula: The Library of Edmond Herbert 
Grove-Hills 212
Sian Prosser
11 The National Library of Scotland’s Acquisitions of Incunabula during 
World War II 228
Robert L. Betteridge
Figure Credits 243
Cumulative Bibliography 244
Index 270
Figures
1.1 Map of places mentioned in the text (Low Countries) 14
1.2 Colophon of the Liber bibliae moralis by Petrus Berchorius, the earliest book 
printed by Pafraet 19
1.3 The printing device of Jacob van Breda, (c.1515) containing the text ‘Prelu[m] 
Jacobi’, ‘Jacob’s press’ 21
2.1 Photograph of the Portail des Libraires of Rouen Cathedral by Médéric 
Mieusement, 1886 35
2.2 Thomas Le Forestier, Le Regime contre epidimie et pestilence (Rouen: Jacques 
Le Forestier, 21 October 1495), longer version, leaf a1r (title page, with woodcut 
image of a man seated at his desk) 44
2.3 Thomas Le Forestier, Le Regime contre epidimie et pestilence (Rouen: Jacques 
Le Forestier, 21 October 1495), shorter version, leaf a1r (title page, with uninked 
imprint of woodcut image of a man seated at his desk) 45
2.4 Sixteenth-century inscription ‘De cabourg’ in Thomas Le Forestier, Le regime 
contre epidimie et pestilence (Rouen: Jacques Le Forestier, 21 October 1495), 
longer version, leaf a1v 46
2.5 Late fifteenth- or sixteenth-century marginal note ‘Medicus sit | Astronomus’ in 
Thomas Le Forestier, Tractatus contra pestilentiam thenasmonem et dissinteriam 
(Rouen: Guillaume Le Talleur, after 18 December 1490), leaf f2r 47
3.1 Quaderneto de li libri lassati a Padoa in custodia de ser Domeneco da san 
Germano, ff. 1v–2r 53
3.2 Distribution by genre of the editions listed in the Quaderneto 59
3.3 Distribution by printing places of the editions listed in the Quaderneto 62
3.4 Comparison of prices between the Quaderneto and the Zornale for the editions 
shared by the two documents 64
3.5 Comparison of prices between the Quaderneto and the Zornale for the edition 
of Petri Mocenici imperatoris gesta (Venice, 1477) 65
3.6 Comparison of prices between the Quaderneto and the Zornale for different 
editions of the same text 67
4.1 The knotwork frame consists of straight and curved single tools; NSZL, 
Cod. Lat. 422. Then compound knotwork motif tools; NSZL Inc. 182b, Inc. 996 
and RMK III 161/3 81
4.2 A bookbinding from a workshop in Werden; NSZL, Inc. 502 83
4.3 A bookbinding from a workshop in Florence; NSZL, Cod. Lat. 415 84
4.4 A bookbinding from a workshop in Košice; NSZL Inc. 1344 87
4.5 A bookbinding from a workshop in Levoča; NSZL Inc. 558c 89
4.6 A leather corvina binding from the royal workshop in Buda; NSZL, 
Cod. Lat. 370 91
viii Figures
4.7 A bookbinding from a workshop in Bratislava; NSZL Inc. 558a/4 95
4.8 A bookbinding from a workshop in Buda; NSZL Inc. 995 99
5.1 Fig. Rood and Hunt bindery. Back cover overlaid on new binding decorated 
with Gibson tools 44–51. One of the very few smaller format Priory books 
surviving. Ushaw XVIII.A.4.1 109
5.2 A characteristic long-fingered manicule usually associated with the Durham 
monk John Manby Ushaw XVIII.A.4.1 110
5.3 Half-stamp binder. Front cover overlaid over new binding showing marks of 
clasps and the lamb and flag, pelican in piety, pointing finger and fleur-de-lys 
stamps as well as flambeau and floral stamps. Ushaw XVII.E.4.1 115
5.4 Ownership inscription on flyleaf for monk Nicholas Marley dateable to before 
1539 when Durham Priory was dissolved. Ushaw XVII.E.4.1 116
6.1 Fols. 178v–179r 128
6.2 Fol. 94r (Artist A) 130
6.3a Fol. 217r (Artist B) 131
6.3b Fol. 200r (Artist B) 132
6.4 Fol. 256r (Artist B*) 133
6.5 Fol. 510r (Artist C) 134
6.6 Fols. 538v–539r. Incipit page of Book V showing major initial excision 136
7.1 The Audley ex dono inscription in Nicolaus de Lyra, Postilla super totam Bibliam 
(Cologne, not after 1483). Lincoln College K.8.13 leaf aiiir 147
7.2 An Audley volume bound by the Octagonal Rose Binder. Lincoln College K.8.26, 
upper board 151
7.3 The work of an English incunable artist in Audley’s copy of Flavius Blondus, 
Roma instaurata (Verona, 1481–82). Lincoln College K.8.10, leaf a1v 153
7.4 The Lincoln College election register from 1543. Lincoln College LC/R/1 
leaf 22r 157
7.5 Johannes de Bromyard, Summa praedicantium (Nuremberg, 1485) rebound for 
Lincoln College by Roger Barnes. Lincoln College K.10.1, upper board 160
8.1 Guild’s Rolewinck, with the manuscript Scottish chronicle added below the 
printed text, and annotations on the text with manicula. SAUL 
Typ GC.A79.GR 176
8.2 Wedderburn’s copy of Valesco de Tarenta, showing the John Chambre 
inscription and the recipe for Dr Steven’s Water. SAUL Typ FL.A90HT 189
10.1 Bookplate of the Grove-Hills collection 223the production and dissemination of the 
written word in the Northern Netherlands became strongly influenced by the 
so-called Modern Devotion. Emerging from widespread societal desires to 
return to the values of the early Church, the movement sparked a series of reli-
gious reforms that would eventually affect sizeable parts of Western Europe.69 
Deventer played an important role in the spread of this spiritual revival, espe-
cially as its founder, Geert Grote (1340–1384), used the city as a base from which 
to advance it.70 Grote advocated a return to a simpler form of piety, emphasis-
ing personal devotion and charitable deeds over placid Mass attendance.71 As 
a result, a strong emphasis was placed on education, allowing the faithful to 
better devise their own path to salvation by grasping the theological tenets set 
out by the Church.72 This desire to educate manifested itself in various ways: 
during the decades following the rise of the Modern Devotion, many follow-
ers turned to the pen, disseminating their own theological reflections. Other 
endeavours included the institution of scriptural discussion groups (so-called 
collations), as well as the reproduction and distribution of considerable quan-
tities of written materials.73
As previously touched upon, the rise of this movement coincided with 
wider societal shifts of urbanisation and the professionalisation of trade, both 
67 See Cuijpers, Teksten als koopwaar, p. 30.
68 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 327.
69 See Delaissé, Dutch Manuscript Illumination, pp. 8–9; Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, 
pp. 263, 307.
70 See Mathilde van Dijk, ‘1350–1500: Nieuwe doelen en nieuwe doelgroepen’, in Suzan 
Folkerts and Garrelt Verhoeven (eds.), Deventer Boekenstad: Twaalf eeuwen boekcultuur 
aan de IJssel (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2018), pp. 37–38.
71 See Hoven van Genderen, ‘Toppunt’, p. 168; Delaissé, Dutch Manuscript Illumination, p. 9.
72 See Delaissé, Dutch Manuscript Illumination, p. 10.
73 See Nissen and Boer, ‘Middle Ages’, p. 126; Blockmans and Prevenier, Promised Lands, 
p. 226.
27Early Printing along the IJssel
of which contributed to an increase in literacy beyond the clergy and ruling 
classes. Meeting a growing local demand for education, Deventer’s chapter 
school, originally reserved for clerical training, now began to provide instruc-
tion to the sons of city burghers.74 By opening itself to secular students, the 
school would become one of the most prominent educational establishments 
in the Northern Netherlands, attracting applicants from far and wide.75 As the 
success of the Latin school was closely tied to the city’s early association with 
the Modern Devotion, its followers were actively involved in the educational 
and spiritual development of local students, albeit not in an official capacity. 
The so-called Brethren of the Common Life  – lay followers of the Modern 
Devotion organised into communal houses – provided boarding and offered 
tutoring and extracurricular discussion groups so as to enrich students’ formal 
studies.76 This cross-pollination between the school and the Modern Devotion 
culminated in the appointment of early humanist Alexander Hegius (c.1433–
1498) as headmaster in 1483.77 Sympathetic to the ideals of the movement, 
Hegius championed reform, opening the door to new bodies of thought.78 
Within the school, this led to the integration of novel teaching methods and 
the application of new texts for students to work with.79 As the introduction of 
moveable type had begun to make books more affordable, students were now 
able to own their copy of material taught at the school.80 The Deventer print-
ers Richard Pafraet and Jacob van Breda eagerly accommodated this increased 
demand, predominantly printing editions for use within the school, thereby 
securing their income.81 The school nurtured its ties to both printers, as evi-
dent from editions containing commentaries by its instructors, most notably 
schoolmasters Johannis Synthen and Hegius himself.82 These bonds between 
74 See Suzan Folkerts, ‘De Latijnse School’, in Suzan Folkerts and Garrelt Verhoeven (eds.), 
Deventer Boekenstad: Twaalf eeuwen boekcultuur aan de IJssel (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 
2018), p. 40.
75 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 312.
76 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 319.
77 See Ad Tervoort, ‘“Pro inchoacione librarie”. A Close Look at Two Late-Medieval 
Schoolmasters and Their Books’, in Koen Goudriaan et al. (eds.), Education and Learning 
in the Netherlands, 1400–1600. Essays in Honour of Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (Leiden: Brill, 
2004), p. 150. Slechte noted that cross-pollination between humanism and the Modern 
Devotion resulted in the two movements being so intertwined within the Deventer Latin 
school as to be near-indistinguishable. See Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 314.
78 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 317.
79 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 272.
80 See Cuijpers, Teksten als koopwaar, p. 45.
81 See P. Franssen, ‘Introduction’, in Marieke van Delft and Clemens de Wolf (eds.), 
Bibliopolis. History of the Printed Book in the Netherlands (Zwolle: Waanders, 2003), p. 47.
82 See Tervoort, ‘Late-Medieval Schoolmasters’, p. 143; Heijting, ‘Relationship’, p. 27.
28 Cooijmans-Keizer
school and printers were easily upheld: Van Breda’s workshop abutted the 
institution, and Pafraet provided lodgings for Hegius in his own house.83
The influence of the Modern Devotion can be further attested by the sober 
appearance of most of the printers’ outputs. Incunabula from Deventer (espe-
cially those printed after Pafraet’s first phase) can be perceived as relatively 
plain, containing few pictorial elements such as woodcuts.84 This sobriety had 
been present in manuscript production in the IJssel-region before the advent 
of printing, especially in books supplied by the Brethren of the Common Life.85 
In line with their devotional practices, they distanced themselves from splen-
dour and materialism in producing their books, favouring austerity over opu-
lence.86 As such, between the manuscript and printing traditions of Deventer, 
both of which coexisted until well into the sixteenth century, it is possible to 
perceive a continuity in the simple and subdued appearance of their respec-
tive outputs.87 As Deventer and the surrounding IJssel-region represented 
principal markets for Van Breda and Pafraet, their adherence to the aesthetic 
preferences of their target audience would have represented an economically 
sound strategy. Likewise, as plain editions would have been more cost-effective 
to print, Deventer’s printers were able to reach higher levels of productivity 
than their counterparts in regions favouring more abundant aesthetics.88
7 Conclusion
According to the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, Deventer’s overall output 
between the establishment of its first press in 1477 and the close of the century 
amounts to 621 distinct editions. Incunabula printed by Pafraet and Van Breda 
have been distributed across more than 35 different countries, and are now 
found in more than 500 libraries, archives, museums and private collections 
the world over. Having considered the societal context of printing in Deventer 
during the final quarter of the fifteenth century, it is warranted to identify three 
causes underpinning its success: political stability, economic prosperity, and 
83 See Jan Bedaux, ‘1500–1600: Van hoogtepunt tot neergang’, in Suzan Folkerts and Garrelt 
Verhoeven (eds.), Deventer Boekenstad: Twaalf eeuwen boekcultuur aan de IJssel (Zutphen: 
Walburg Pers, 2018), p. 91; Hellinga-Querido and Hellinga, ‘Richard Pafraet’, p. 310.
84 See Webbink, ‘Deventer’, p. 112.
85 See Gumbert, Dutch and Their Books, p. 40.
86 See Blockmans and Prevenier, Promised Lands, p. 227; Delaissé, Dutch Manuscript Illumi-
nation, p. 2.
87 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 304.
88 See Cuijpers, Teksten als koopwaar, p. 47.
29EarlyPrinting along the IJssel
a favourable cultural climate. Together, these combined elements offered an 
optimum environment for local printing businesses to emerge and thrive in.
Deventer existed along borders in more ways than one. Politically speak-
ing, the city was situated on an intersection of various overland routes and 
the River IJssel, the latter of which constituted a physical border between the 
Sticht and the Duchy of Guelders. Likewise, being located in the Oversticht, 
Deventer abided along the margins of the bishop of Utrecht’s authority, who 
was often unable to protect the city’s interests to any great degree. Furthermore, 
Deventer and its environs might be considered liminal to the consolidating 
powers of the Burgundian hegemony, situated further south and west, as well 
as the more politically fragmented territories to the east. Deventer also oper-
ated along economic boundaries: located between the county of Holland and 
the German hinterlands – and situated along the fringes of the Hanse’s sphere 
of influence – the city functioned as a trade hub for several distinct economic 
areas. Its position along these physical and intangible borders gave Deventer 
the autonomy to decide its own politico-economic path, allowing it to 
develop specific infrastructures to turn its liminal position to its advantage. As 
exchanges between the Netherlandish and German spheres had already pro-
vided scope for local cultural developments, the rise of the Modern Devotion 
and success of the Latin school allowed the city to develop into a cultural hub, 
wherein books and their printers played an integral role.
As mentioned, early printers were most successful in towns that functioned 
as centres of trade and education. Even though Deventer would not formally 
host a university until several centuries later, it did develop all the infrastructure 
associated with university towns by virtue of its renowned Latin school. Pafraet 
and Van Breda’s links to this establishment ensured them a steady income: not 
only was the growing presence of local educators and students able to justify 
a print run of several dozen copies, institutional links between the school and 
other centres of learning were actively fostered across the wider European 
continent.89 As the city’s annual markets continued to attract long-distance 
traders, the printers’ sales area further expanded. All of these factors com-
bined with relative political stability and few demands for aesthetically intri-
cate editions allowed Deventer’s printers to reach near-unparalleled levels of 
productivity. Thus, during the later fifteenth century, Deventer provided highly 
favourable conditions for local printing businesses. Pafraet and Van Breda’s 
choice to settle within a stone’s throw of the city’s most important centres 
of governance and education (i.e. town hall, Latin School, and St. Lebuinus 
church) reinforces the notion that these resident printers nurtured close ties 
89 See Cuijpers, Teksten als koopwaar, p. 30.
30 Cooijmans-Keizer
with those institutions, allowing them to take full advantage of existing local 
infrastructures.90
The conditions underpinning Deventer’s successful printing ventures would 
endure during the final quarter of the fifteenth century, after which it was eco-
nomically overtaken by cities towards the south and west that were able to 
support trading throughout the year without relying on seasonal markets.91 
Nevertheless, the glowing words by the Rev. Molhuijsen hold true. Despite los-
ing some of its lustre to Antwerpen from 1500, Deventer remained a highly pro-
ductive centre of printing well into the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, it is the 
preceding period, during which printers first established their local presses, 
that continues to be characterised as the city’s golden age.92
90 See Webbink, ‘Deventer’, p. 109.
91 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 327.
92 See Dijk, ‘Nieuwe doelen’, p. 43.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_004
Chapter 2
Jacques Le Forestier, Thomas Le Forestier and 
Early Medical Printing in Rouen
Elma Brenner
Jacques Le Forestier (d. c.1512) and Thomas Le Forestier (d. 1508) both made 
a distinctive mark in the print culture of late fifteenth-century North-western 
France. Jacques was a member of a bookselling dynasty at Rouen, the chief city 
of Normandy and an important cultural and ecclesiastical, as well as economic, 
centre. From the 1490s, he was one of the most active of Rouen’s early print-
ers, with his production including texts of local and national interest, saints’ 
lives, moral writings and other works, in both Latin and the French vernacular.1 
Thomas was a learned physician with a peripatetic career, who practised in 
Rouen and across the Channel in London before ending his career as a highly 
paid town physician in Rennes, Brittany.2 He is best known for authoring a 
treatise on the first outbreak of the English sweating sickness in the mid-1480s. 
Dedicated to King Henry VII of England (1485–1509), it survives only in manu-
script form but is related to his two printed works, one of which is the subject 
of this chapter.3 All of these written works address the topic of pestilential 
illness.
1 Some examples of the output of Jacques Le Forestier’s press are described in Ursula 
Baurmeister, ‘Was Jacques Le Forestier the Printer of the Horae ad usum Sarum of 1495?’, 
British Library Journal (1983), pp. 66–75.
2 On Thomas Le Forestier, see Ernest Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins 
en France au moyen âge (Paris: Droz, 1936), p. 762; C. H. Talbot and E. A. Hammond, The 
Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register (London: Wellcome 
Historical Medical Library, 1965), p. 343; Thomas Le Forestier, Traité de la peste, ed. G. Panel 
(Rouen: Léon Gy, 1919), pp. xvii–xviii. On Le Forestier’s employment by the municipality 
of Rennes between 1505 and his death in 1508, see Ant. Dupuy, ‘Les écoles et les médecins 
en Bretagne au quinzième siècle’, Bulletin de la société académique de Brest, 5 (1877–1888), 
pp. 347–349.
3 London, British Library (BL), Additional MS. 27582, fols. 70r–77r. Le Forestier’s treatise on the 
sweating sickness survives here in an English vernacular form written down in the first part 
of the sixteenth century. The subject of this chapter is: Thomas Le Forestier, Le regime con-
tre epidimie et pestilence (Rouen: Jacques Le Forestier, 21 October 1495) ISTC il00118050; GW 
M17471. USTC distinguishes between two versions: 71239 (longer version, 48 leaves); 90080 
(shorter version, 44 leaves). USTC correctly identifies Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France 
(BnF), RES 4-TE30-15 (A,1) and Grenoble, Bibliothèque municipale (BMG), I.231(4) Rés. as 
32 Brenner
Although the printer and the physician shared the same surname, there is 
no evidence that they were related. Indeed, it seems unlikely that there was 
a family connection between the two men, since while Jacques’s family were 
longstanding booksellers at Rouen, Thomas was born some distance away in 
the diocese of Avranches.4 Nonetheless, their worlds intersected when they 
collaborated on a French vernacular printing of an advice manual on pesti-
lential illness authored by Thomas, the Regime contre epidimie et pestilence 
(1495).5 This vernacular edition was preceded by a Latin printing of 1491 or 
1492 produced by Guillaume Le Talleur, another early Rouen printer.6 Rouen, 
like other French cities, experienced frequent plague outbreaks in the later 
fifteenth century, and Thomas and Jacques could have expected a wide read-
ership for the vernacular printing of the advice tract.7 Jacques, who rented a 
bookselling stall at the Portail des Libraires of Rouen Cathedral from at least 
1497, would have had a firm grasp of the market for such a text, and could have 
been responsible for arranging for the Latin text to be translated and adapted.8
The handful of extant copies of the vernacularprinting, including two 
copies in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (BnF), shed light on 
Jacques Le Forestier’s print production, Thomas Le Forestier’s career ambi-
tions, and the early consumption of the text.9 The two BnF copies of the 
Regime contre epidimie differ in length, with one containing an additional four 
the longer version, and BnF, RES-TE30-15 as the shorter version, but erroneously describes 
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB), 4 Inc.c.a. 1202 m as the longer version. The other 
printed work is: Thomas Le Forestier, Tractatus contra pestilentiam thenasmonem et dissinte-
riam (Rouen: Guillaume Le Talleur, after 18 December 1490) ISTC il00118000; USTC 761238; 
GW M17472. Facsimile reproduction in Thomas Le Forestier, Traité de la peste, ed. G. Panel 
(Rouen: Imprimerie Léon Gy, 1909).
4 We are told that Thomas Le Forestier originally came from the diocese of Avranches on the 
final page of the longer version of his printed vernacular tract: BnF, RES 4-TE30-15 (A,1), leaf 
g4 verso (Le Forestier, Le regime, longer version).
5 See Le Forestier, Le regime.
6 See Le Forestier, Tractatus. The edition is dated to 1491 or 1492 in Pierre Le Verdier, L’atelier de 
Guillaume Le Talleur, premier imprimeur rouennais (Rouen: Imprimerie Albert Lainé, 1916), 
p. 103.
7 See Louis Porquet, La peste en Normandie du XIVe au XVIIe siècle (Vire: Imprimerie René Eng, 
1898), pp. 124–125, 128; Elma Brenner, ‘Regulating Water Sources in the Towns and Cities of 
Late Medieval Normandy’, in Carole Rawcliffe and Claire Weeda (eds), Policing the Urban 
Environment in Premodern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), p. 212.
8 I am grateful to Stephen Parkin for the suggestion that the printer-publisher may have played 
a key role in the production of a vernacular version of the Latin tract.
9 BnF, RES-TE30-15; RES 4-TE30-15 (A,1). The other two extant copies in institutional collec-
tions are BMG, I.231(4) Rés. and BSB, 4 Inc.c.a. 1202 m, available digitally at , accessed 18 June 2020.
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0009/bsb00092271/image_1
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0009/bsb00092271/image_1
33Early Medical Printing in Rouen
leaves.10 They also have evidence of early readership; however, they are much 
less heavily annotated than an extant copy of the Latin printing held in the 
Bibliothèque Inter-Universitaire de Santé, Paris (BIU Santé), encouraging con-
sideration of whether vernacular health texts were read any more frequently 
or thoroughly than their Latin counterparts.11
This chapter also explores archival evidence for the careers of both Jacques 
and Thomas. Both figures were part of social and professional networks in 
Rouen and beyond that provided them with economic and intellectual oppor-
tunities, and meant that they left a lasting legacy in print. The collaboration 
between physician and printer reflects both the cultural and social milieu of 
Rouen at the end of the fifteenth century, and the place of medical texts in the 
landscape of early print.
1 Jacques Le Forestier and the Rouen Book Trade
Rouen developed as a centre of printing later than France’s two major centres, 
Paris and Lyon, but by the turn of the sixteenth century it was becoming one 
of the major sites for print production in the kingdom. Production was linked 
to markets in Caen, where a university was established in the fifteenth cen-
tury, and Rennes further west, as well as Paris, with which Rouen had long 
had strong commercial links by virtue of the positioning of both cities on the 
river Seine.12 Jacques Le Forestier was among the most active of Rouen’s early 
printers: 41 editions associated with him are recorded in ISTC, and 104 editions 
10 See Bibliothèque nationale de France, Catalogue des incunables Tome II Fasc. 1 (Paris: 
Bibliothèque nationale, 1981), p. 163. Two versions are also listed in Andrew Pettegree, 
Malcolm Walsby and Alexander Wilkinson (eds.), French Vernacular Books: Books pub-
lished in the French Language before 1601, (Leiden: Brill, 2007), vol. 2, p. 264 (nos. 33545 and 
33546). The shorter version ends on leaf f8 verso with the sentence ‘Et par tant ie metz fin a 
ce present regi | me fait et compose par maistre Thomas le forestier docteur | en medicine’ 
(‘And now I put an end to the present regimen, composed by Master Thomas Le Forestier, 
doctor in medicine’).
11 See Paris, Bibliothèque Inter-Universitaire de Santé (BIU Santé), cote 8215. On the read-
ing of Latin health-related editions, including Le Forestier’s Tractatus, see Elma Brenner, 
‘The Reception, Consumption and Broader Context of a French Vernacular Plague Tract 
printed in 1495’, Nuncius, 36 (2021), pp. 321–323.
12 See Denise Hillard, Traité des eaux artificielles ou vertus des eaux et des herbes (Geneva: 
Droz, 2012), p. 190. On the University of Caen, see Lyse Roy, L’université de Caen aux 
XVe et XVIe siècles: identité et représentation (Leiden: Brill, 2006). On printing in Rouen 
in the post-incunable period (1501–40), see Louise Katz, ‘Les post-incunables rouen-
nais’, in Sandra Provini, Xavier Bonnier and Gérard Milhe Poutingon (eds.), La renais-
sance à Rouen: l’essor artistique et culturel dans la Normandie des décennies 1480–1530 
34 Brenner
in USTC.13 Jacques Le Forestier’s printings include works of local interest, 
such as an edition of the vernacular version of the Norman customary law code 
(c.1497), and theological or devotional editions like Guido of Monte Rochen’s 
Manipulus curatorum, a guide for parish priests, printed in 1495 and 1497, or 
the Hours of the use of Saint-Malo, printed in 1498. News pamphlets also fea-
ture in his output, e.g. a report of the entry of King Charles VIII of France to 
Florence on 17 November 1494, printed soon after that date.14 A large number 
are vernacular works.
Archival investigation in Rouen’s rich archiepiscopal archives reveals that 
Jacques Le Forestier was a bookseller as well as a printer, and a member of a 
fifteenth- to sixteenth-century dynasty involved in book production and book-
selling. From at least 1497 into the early 1500s, he rented a shop from the cathe-
dral chapter at the Portail des Libraires, one of the main points of access to the 
cathedral, constructed by Guillaume Pontifs in 1481.
The courtyard in front of this entrance, which adjoined the rue Saint-
Romain, increasingly became a hub for the book trade in the second half of the 
fifteenth century, with bookbinders, booksellers, illuminators and scribes mar-
keting their skills and wares there. Many booksellers also resided in the par-
ish of Saint-Nicolas, which adjoined the rue Saint-Romain.15 The open spaces 
around churches provided ideal locations for shops and stalls: in the second 
half of the 1470s shops are evidenced at the entrances and in the cemetery of 
Saint-Maclou, then under construction as Rouen’s largest parish church.16
A series of account books relating to the built environment of the cathedral 
record payments by Jacques Le Forestier in lists of revenues of rents for shops 
or stalls at the Portail des Libraires. The lists reveal that he was one of a num-
ber of booksellers and other people, such as an embroideress, Jeanne Rouet, 
(Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2019), pp. 243–255 
(pp. 249–251 on Jacques Le Forestier).
13 In comparison, among other early Rouen printers ISTC lists 36 editions associated with 
Jean Le Bourgeois (42 editions on USTC); 56 editions associated with Martin Morin 
(156 editions on USTC); 29 editions associated with Guillaume Le Talleur (35 editions on 
USTC). Some of the editions listed in USTC belong to the fifteenth and others to the six-
teenth centuries.
14 See Baurmeister, ‘Was Jacques Le Forestier’, pp. 66–70, 74.
15 See Charles de Beaurepaire, ‘Les boutiques du portail des libraires’, Bulletin de la commis-
sion des antiquités de la Seine-Maritime (1905), pp.393–396. On the Portail des Libraires, 
see also Léon de Laborde, Étude sur la bibliothèque de la cathédrale de Rouen, le Portail des 
Libraires, les commencements de l’imprimerie à Rouen (Paris: Librairie Henri Leclerc, 1919), 
pp. 71–76.
16 See Linda Elaine Neagley, Disciplined Exuberance: The Parish Church of Saint-Maclou and 
Late Gothic Architecture in Rouen (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University 
Press, 1998), pp. 64–65.
35Early Medical Printing in Rouen
Figure 2.1 Portail des Libraires of Rouen Cathedral by Médéric Mieusement, 1886
Wikimedia Commons, accessed 7 March 2021
36 Brenner
renting spaces to sell their wares.17 Some of these, like Jacques, were also 
printers, including the prolific printer Jean Le Bourgeois.18 The most impor-
tant space, the ‘first shop’ on the side of the archbishop’s palace, was rented 
by Hector D’Auberville for four livres in 1497–98 and 1498–99.19 D’Auberville 
evidently had a close working relationship with the cathedral canons, since 
he received payments from them for the repair of cathedral books in 1487–88 
and 1498–99.20 Jacques Le Forestier is found lower down the list of those owing 
payment for the shop that they held at the Portail des Libraires, alongside 
others who like him paid 100 sous for the use of their space. In 1497–98 and 
1498–99 he held the third shop (sharing the space with Jean Huvin in 1498–99); 
in 1501–02 he paid 100 sous each for the use of both the third and the fourth 
shops.21 The shops rented by Le Forestier were probably more permanent fix-
tures than the less costly stalls that are also mentioned, such as the stall for 
which Jean Le Bourgeois paid 50 sous in 1498–99.22 Jacques appears also to 
have joined the community of booksellers who lived close to the cathedral in 
the area of the rue Saint-Romain: in 1501–02 ‘Jean’ Le Forestier paid 10 livres to 
the cathedral chapter for the house where he resided; ‘Jean’ here was probably 
an error for ‘Jacques’, since certain of Jacques Le Forestier’s imprints localise 
his business activity in the rue Saint-Romain at the sign of the Fleur-de-Lis.23
Earlier account books reveal that, prior to the era of printing with moveable 
type, an earlier generation of the Le Forestier family was present among the 
traders selling their wares at the location of the Portail des Libraires, which was 
earlier known as the Portail des Boursiers. The account book for 1432–33 lists 
the payment of rent of 20 sous for the fifth shop at the Portail des Boursiers by 
Jean Le Forestier, probably the father of Jacques Le Forestier.24 Although in the 
1430s this area outside the cathedral was not yet fully established as a special-
ised zone for the book trade, there is a very good chance that Jean Le Forestier, 
17 See Rouen, Archives départementales de Seine-Maritime (ADSM), G2516 (account book 
for fabric of Rouen cathedral, 1497–98), fol. 25r; G2517 (account book, 1498–99), fol. 25v. 
In 1489–90 the chapter paid Jeanne Rouet for producing silk embroidery for the cathe-
dral: G2514 (account book, 1489–90), fol. 86r.
18 ADSM, G2517, fol. 25v.
19 ADSM, G2516, fol. 25r; G2517, fol. 25v.
20 ADSM, G2512 (account book, 1487–88), fol. 70v; G2517 (account book, 1498–99), fol. 64r.
21 ADSM, G2516 (account book, 1497–98), fol. 25r; G2517 (account book, 1498–99), fol. 25v; 
G2519 (account book, 1501–02), fol. [24]r. De Beaurepaire, ‘Les boutiques’, p. 404 tells us 
that Jacques Le Forestier held two shops between 1503 and 1509, sharing one of these 
shops with the bookseller Louis Bouvet in 1505–06.
22 ADSM, G2517, fol. 25v.
23 See De Beaurepaire, ‘Les boutiques’, p. 404.
24 ADSM, G2491 (account book, 1432–33), fol.  [2]r; De Beaurepaire, ‘Les boutiques’, pp. 
403–404.
37Early Medical Printing in Rouen
who also rented a room there in 1435, was involved in the production and sale 
of manuscript texts.25 After Jean’s death (before 1458), his widow Thomasse 
appears in the record, and she herself is possibly implicated in book produc-
tion or another type of artisanal activity, since she is described as a ‘graveresse 
de signets’ (‘engraver’) who rented a stall at the cathedral between 1460 and 
1467.26 Jacques Le Forestier himself died in 1512 or earlier, as on 7 July that 
year the cathedral canons assigned the lease of his shop to his widow. In the 
following years Guillaume Le Forestier, probably his son, was also a bookseller, 
if not a printer, holding a shop at the Portail des Libraires in 1523–24. Other 
members of the Le Forestier family also held shops at the cathedral in the 1510s 
and 1520s, and Guillaume Le Forestier’s sister Anne was married to the printer 
Jacques Le Goupil.27
Jacques Le Forestier’s activity as a bookseller and printer thus formed part 
of a wider, long-term involvement of members of the Le Forestier family, 
male and female, in the book trade at Rouen. The Le Forestier family name 
and reputation no doubt helped Jacques to market his books and would 
have increased the potential sales of editions aimed at a broad audience, 
like Thomas Le Forestier’s vernacular plague regimen. While the presence of 
Jacques’s business among the cluster of shops outside Rouen Cathedral con-
firms that he aimed to reach a local market, he also had connections with the 
print trade in Paris and Caen. He jointly produced editions with the Parisian 
printers Jean Petit and Josse Bade in the early sixteenth century, and typo-
graphic founts in his name circulated in Paris in the sixteenth century.28 
Furthermore, a book of hours for Sarum use of 1495 containing woodcuts and 
borders of Parisian origin was potentially produced by him.29 At Caen, the 
university bookseller Robinet Macé marketed Jacques Le Forestier’s deluxe 
parchment printing of Hours for the use of Saint-Malo of 1498.30
The Parisian context could well have informed Jacques Le Forestier’s deci-
sion to publish a vernacular plague tract, since several French vernacular 
printings of the popular plague regimen authored by the Montpellier phy-
sician Johannes Jacobi (d. 1384) were produced by Parisian printers in the 
25 See De Beaurepaire, ‘Les boutiques’, p. 393.
26 See De Beaurepaire, ‘Les boutiques’, pp. 403–404.
27 See De Beaurepaire, ‘Les boutiques’, pp. 404–405. Baurmeister, ‘Was Jacques Le Forestier’, 
speculates that one of Jacques Le Forestier’s sons could have been a typefounder.
28 See Baurmeister, ‘Was Jacques Le Forestier’, p. 72.
29 See Baurmeister, ‘Was Jacques Le Forestier’, p. 73.
30 Horae: Ad usum Macloviensem (Rouen: Jacques Le Forestier, for Robinet Macé at Caen, 
30 May 1498) ISTC ih00347500; USTC 201380; GW 13324. Baurmeister, ‘Was Jacques Le 
Forestier’, pp. 73 figure 7, 74.
38 Brenner
1480s and 1490s.31 It is perhaps surprising that there is not more evidence 
for the printing of plague literature or other health-related material, such 
as health regimens providing advice on how to prevent illness, at Rouen in 
this period. Guillaume Le Talleur’s 1491/1492 edition of the Latin version of 
Thomas Le Forestier’s plague tract certainly fits into the category of health lit-
erature, as does the version of the Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum that appears 
in an edition of works by Marsilius Ficinus by the Rouen printer Pierre Violette 
c.1500.32 Overall, however, the relative absence of works relating to health 
within the corpus of extant Rouen incunabula is striking, especially com-
pared with the prominence of other types of text, such as Guido de Monte 
Rochen’s Manipulus curatorum, printed multiple times at Rouen before 1501, 
not only by Jacques Le Forestier but also by Jean Le Bourgeois, Martin Morin 
and Richard Auzoult.
It is worth remembering that literature about plague and other health issues 
was often ephemeral, as a result of both heavy practical use and the fact that 
texts like these lost their relevance when more up-to-date advice became avail-
able. Indeed, only one copy survives of Antoine Caillaut’s c.1489 Paris printing 
of the Johannes Jacobitract, alongside two copies of his c.1491 printing.33 This 
would suggest that no copies at all survive of certain health-related early print-
ings from Rouen and other printing centres. Indeed, USTC lists a regimen of 
health printed for Jacques Le Forestier in Rouen, of which no copy is identifiable 
today.34 According to a brief citation in Volume 5 of Jacques-Charles Brunet’s 
Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur du livre (1864), this six-page pamphlet sur-
faced on the Paris book market in December 1853, accompanying a copy of 
another regimen of health printed at Rouen, this one produced for Robinet 
Macé, bookseller of the University of Caen.35 While this work was appar-
ently printed for Jacques Le Forestier rather than by him, it demonstrates 
31 ISTC ij00004200; USTC 71137; GW 13785 (Antoine Caillaut, c.1489). ISTC ij00014000; 
USTC 71139; GW 13772 (Ulrich Gering?, c.1480–81). ISTC ij00014300; USTC 71140; GW 13786 
(Antoine Caillaut, c.1491). ISTC ij00014400; USTC 71141; GW 13794 (Étienne Jehannot, 
c.1497). ISTC ij00014450; USTC 71142; GW 13793 (Étienne Jehannot, c.1497).
32 See Marsilius Ficinus, De vita libri tres (De triplici vita); Apologia; Quod necessaria sit ad 
vitam securitas. Add: Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum (Rouen: Pierre Violette, for Pierre 
Regnault at Caen and Noël de Harsy at Rouen, c.1500) ISTC if00161700; USTC 201896; GW 
9887.
33 See n. 31 above.
34 Le regime de sante pour corps humain avec les accidens a luy contraire (Rouen: for Jacques 
Le Forestier, n.d.) USTC 80387; Pettegree, Walsby and Wilkinson (eds.), French Vernacular 
Books, vol. 2, p. 620 (no. 45592).
35 Jacques-Charles Brunet, Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur du livre (Paris: Firmin Didot 
Frères, 1860–65), vol. 5, col. 1230. USTC 80486: Le regime de sante pour conserver le corps 
humain et vivre longuement (Rouen: for Robinet Macé, n.d.).
39Early Medical Printing in Rouen
that he took a commercial interest in vernacular health literature beyond 
Thomas Le Forestier’s plague tract. Another very rare health-related printing 
is an official set of ordinances against plague produced by Martin Morin at 
Rouen on 12 September 1513.36 This pamphlet reflects the ongoing climate of 
anxiety about epidemic disease in Rouen in the first part of the sixteenth cen-
tury. The ordinances had been issued by the court of the royal Exchequer in 
November 1512, in response to an epidemic that had been affecting the city 
and nearby villages for three years. According to the contents of the pamphlet, 
the court prohibited any other printer from making these ordinances available, 
and confirmed that only this printing could be marketed, until 1 March 1514.37 
The anticipation that other printers and booksellers would be keen to get in 
on Martin Morin’s act suggests that a largescale consumption of the pamphlet 
was expected.38
2 Thomas Le Forestier and Early Medical Printing in Rouen
The investment of the Rouen printers Jacques Le Forestier and Guillaume Le 
Talleur in printing the plague literature of Thomas Le Forestier suggests that 
this physician’s advice was considered to be authoritative and was expected 
to have commercial appeal. Indeed, the textual production associated with 
Thomas Le Forestier, in both manuscript and print, presents him as a learned, 
university-educated physician, and suggests that he himself sought to promote 
his own reputation and disseminate his medical knowledge and expertise 
widely. The opening dedication of his sweating sickness tract to King Henry VII 
of England asserts his status as a member ‘of the Norman nation of the faculty 
of medicine’, thus making a claim that he was educated at the University of 
Paris, where the faculty of arts was organised into ‘nations’ in accordance with 
students’ place of origin.39 The tract closes by reiterating his membership of 
36 Ordonnances contre la peste (Rouen: Martin Morin, 1513) USTC 39005. One copy is extant 
in an institutional collection: Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, Inc p. 54. Reproduced in 
facsimile in Charles Lormier (ed.), Ordonnances contre la peste, et autres ordonnances con-
cernant la salubrité publique dans la ville de Rouen, rendues par la cour de l’Échiquier de 
1507 à 1513 (Rouen: Henry Boissel, 1863).
37 See Lormier (ed.), Ordonnances contre la peste, unpaginated facsimile section. These 
printed ordinances are discussed in Brenner, ‘Regulating Water Sources’, pp. 212, 213, 
219–220.
38 USTC lists a 1512 edition of the ordinances by an unidentified Rouen printer: Ordonnances 
contre la peste (Rouen: s.n., 1512) USTC 54068.
39 On the medical faculty at Paris, see Cornelius O’Boyle, The Art of Medicine: Medical 
Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250–1400 (Leiden: Brill, 1998).
40 Brenner
the Norman nation of the medical faculty and referring to him as a ‘doctor’.40 
His origins in the diocese of Avranches, Lower Normandy, confirm the possi-
bility of his membership of the Norman nation at Paris.41 The longer version 
of the 1495 vernacular edition of his plague tract describes him as a ‘medicin’ 
(‘physician’) and states that he was, by this time, residing in Rouen.42
Although Le Forestier was keen to assert his university credentials, he has 
not been identified in the extant records of the University of Paris.43 This raises 
the possibility that he fabricated this claim, though his writings indicate that 
he was well-versed in ancient and medieval scholarly medicine and reveal his 
familiarity with the learned language of Latin. He certainly worked actively 
to construct his reputation, and moved around between different locales, 
re-establishing himself and his professional name as he went. One wonders 
if his behaviour and/or his medical practice sometimes courted controversy, 
making it necessary for him to keep moving. He was already in England during 
the reign of Richard III (1483–1485) and appears to have done some service to 
this king, since he was awarded a royal grant of £40 per year from Kingston 
Lacy, Dorset.44 The dedication of his tract on the English sweat indicates that 
he sought to establish his allegiance to Henry VII in 1485 following the end of 
the Wars of the Roses. The outbreak of a deadly ‘fever of pestilens’ in the wake 
of the Battle of Bosworth Field provided him with an opportunity to pen a 
treatise that demonstrated his medical expertise and the availability of his ser-
vices to the new king.45 The sweating sickness tract also locates him in the City 
of London in 1485, where he claimed personally to have witnessed the brutal 
effects of the illness.46
Thomas Le Forestier appears in a list of those pardoned by Henry VII issued 
on 1 February 1488: perhaps this pardon related to his previous allegiance to 
Richard III, or perhaps it stemmed from an unsuccessful service relationship 
between the physician and the Tudor king.47 All the evidence suggests that 
by the end of the 1480s he had crossed the Channel and was in Rouen. The 
40 BL Additional MS. 27582, fol. 70r (‘Thomas fforestier Normandie nacionis | facultatis med-
icine’), 77r (‘Thomas fforestier Normandie nacio̱nis medicine | facultatis̲ ̲doctorem̱’).
41 See n. 4 above.
42 BnF RES 4-TE30-15 (A,1), leaf g4v (Le Forestier, Le regime, longer version).
43 Thomas Le Forestier is not listed in the Studium Parisiense database, , accessed 6 June 2020.
44 See Rosemary Horrox and P. W. Hammond (eds.), British Library Harleian Manuscript 433 
(Gloucester: A. Sutton, 1979–83), vol. 1. p. 257. I am most grateful to Professor Linda Voigts 
for information regarding this citation.
45 BL Additional MS. 27582, fol. 70r.
46 BL Additional MS. 27582, fol. 72r–v, 77r.
47 See Talbot and Hammond, The Medical Practitioners, p. 343.
http://studium.univ-paris1.fr/home
http://studium.univ-paris1.fr/home
41Early Medical Printing in Rouen
vernacular edition of his plague tract, with the Latin printing that preceded it 
in 1491/1492, no doubt formed part of his effortsto promote his reputation and 
influence in the Rouen area.48 Such efforts are also revealed in a letter written 
in the French vernacular before March 1490, very probably at Rouen, in which 
Thomas Le Forestier offered medical advice to Jacques, Lord of Estouteville 
(1448–1490), who headed one of the most distinguished Norman aristocratic 
families.49 Jacques d’Estouteville had suffered a serious leg injury at the Battle 
of Guinegate on 4 August 1479, from which he never fully recovered, and he 
died at the relatively young age of 41 in March 1490.50 Thomas Le Forestier rec-
ommended various medical treatments to counter Jacques’s ill health, enclos-
ing with the letter two clysters to be taken one after the other, and advising the 
nobleman to pay attention to his diet and to purge himself of bad phlegmatic 
humours.51 Although the letter indicates that Thomas was already providing 
advice and treatments to Jacques d’Estouteville, since it states ‘I know your 
case’ and refers to letters sent previously to the physician by Jacques and his 
wife Louise d’Albret, Thomas solicited a firmer relationship of service.52 He 
recommended that Jacques should retain one or two physicians on pension, 
especially since the wealthy nobility could offer support to physicians, who 
faced considerable costs from their studies and the purchase of books.53
In contrast to these examples of Thomas Le Forestier’s keenness to attract 
royal and aristocratic patrons, the vernacular version of his plague regimen 
was addressed to the poor:
so that anyone, of whatever complexion, may know what is useful and 
profitable to preserve themselves  … through this regimen they will be 
48 On both localised and transnational consumption of plague tracts authored by Le 
Forestier and others, see Brenner, ‘The Reception, Consumption and Broader Context’.
49 See Paul Le Cacheux (ed.), Correspondance de la famille d’Estouteville (1460–1535) (Rouen: 
A. Lestringant, 1935), pp. 28–31 (no. XIII). Thomas Le Forestier refers to the fact that 
Jacques d’Estouteville’s chaplain was ‘en cette ville’ (‘in this city’) at the time that he wrote 
the letter, indicating that Le Forestier was himself in Rouen (p. 31).
50 On Jacques d’Estouteville’s injury, see Gabriel de la Morandière, Histoire de la mai-
son d’Estouteville en Normandie (Paris: Ch. Delagrave, 1903), p. 506; Correspondance, 
p. 31 n. 34.
51 See Correspondance, pp. 28–29.
52 ‘je congnois vostre cas’. Correspondance, pp. 28, 29, 31.
53 Thomas Le Forestier suggests that these physicians should be recruited from ‘nostre fac-
ulté’, i.e. from among the members of the University of Paris; it is clear from the tone 
of the letter that he would have accepted a position himself in the lord of Estouteville’s 
household.
42 Brenner
able to produce by themselves several excellent remedies against the said 
illnesses, without great trouble or cost.54
People living in poverty were especially vulnerable to pestilential illness, above 
all because they had an increased risk of person-to-person infection due to 
cramped living conditions. Le Forestier’s text provides specific instructions to 
the poor about the regimen that they should follow during periods of pesti-
lence, and suggests equipment for them to use to distil medicinal waters them-
selves, as opposed to needing to purchase such treatments prepared by an 
apothecary.55 The physician also showed an awareness of the medical needs of 
the poor in his letter to Jacques d’Estouteville when he encouraged the noble-
man to retain physicians, stating that: ‘il ne peulent pas bien soy entretenir par 
les poures, qui n’ont riens’. (‘they [physicians] cannot be maintained by the 
poor, who have nothing’).56
While it is unlikely that the very poor would have had direct access to 
Thomas Le Forestier’s vernacular printed tract, his advice could have circulated 
orally, especially since it was conveyed in the spoken language of the region. 
It does appear that he was working to build his name in the public sphere, not 
only through his publications but also by marketing affordable medicines for 
which there would have been popular demand. Alongside theriac, a popular 
but expensive cure-all, the remedies described in the vernacular tract include 
powders, pills, syrups and distilled waters, which were more everyday remedies 
that could be procured and administered easily.57 Le Forestier’s own name, 
in its Latin form Silvaticus, was attached to a number of these medications, 
such as his ‘Puluis siluatici contra pestilentiam pro pauperibus’ (‘Le Forestier’s 
powder for the poor against the plague’) and his ‘Aqua preseruatiua siluatici 
contra pestilentiam’ (‘Le Forestier’s preservative water against the plague’).58 
This branding, probably presented in Latin because this language conferred 
authority, is suggestive of a marketing environment beyond the printed book, 
54 ‘Intitule aux poures: par le quel vng et chascun | de quelque complexion quil puisse estre 
peut voir et congnoi | stre les choses qui luy sont requises vtiles et prouffitables pour | 
les vser et soy preseruer … Et auec ce il pourra par ledit regime faire de soy et composer 
plusieurs ex | cellens remides sans grand peine ne coustage coṉtre lesdites ma | ladies’. Le 
Forestier, Le regime, shorter version, leaf a1r.
55 Le Forestier, Le regime, shorter version, leaves c8v, d6r–e1r. On distilled medicinal waters, 
see Elma Brenner, ‘Distilling Nature: Raw Materials, “Artificial” Remedies and the Human 
Body in the Later Middle Ages’, in Patricia Skinner and Theresa Tyers (eds.), Gender and 
the ‘Natural’ Environment in the Middle Ages (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, forthcom-
ing 2023).
56 Correspondance, p. 30.
57 For theriac, see Le Forestier, Le regime, shorter version, leaf e2r.
58 Le Forestier, Le regime, shorter version, leaves e4v–e6r.
43Early Medical Printing in Rouen
in which remedies bearing Le Forestier’s name were available in one or more 
apothecary shops in Rouen.59
3 Evidence for How Thomas Le Forestier’s Regime contre epidemie 
Was Read60
The fact that very few copies of Jacques Le Forestier’s printing of the Regime 
contre epidemie are extant may reflect the popularity of this text.61 The surviv-
ing copies have distinctive material features. At first glance, the shorter BnF 
copy appears to lack the woodcut image of a man seated at his desk that is 
printed below the title on leaf a1 recto in the longer BnF copy and the BSB 
copy.62 All three copies include the same woodcut image on the verso of leaf 
a1. On closer inspection, however, it is possible to discern the imprint of the 
woodblock on the recto of leaf a1 in the shorter BnF copy, indicating that the 
woodblock was not inked at the moment of printing, and that the woodcut 
image was meant to appear as it does in the longer BnF copy and the BSB copy.
Neither of the two BnF copies, nor the BSB copy, are heavily annotated.63 
The shorter BnF copy only has occasional underlining marks added by hand, 
with no marginal notes. The longer BnF copy contains occasional short mar-
ginal notes and has a sixteenth-century inscription ‘De cabourg’ on the verso 
of leaf a1.
The BSB copy has marginal notes by one reader in light brown ink, some-
times partially lost through trimming, that signpost the content of the text or 
simply mark passages of which special note should be taken, with the word 
59 William Eamon notes that Leonardo Fioravanti, a sixteenth-century Italian medical 
practitioner who, like Thomas Le Forestier, moved from place to place, similarly utilised 
print publishing to craft his professional reputation. Nonetheless, according to Eamon, 
‘[p]ublishing was a way of marketing, but what you marketed and how you marketed 
it mattered much more’. William Eamon, ‘Pharmaceutical Self-fashioning or How to 
Get Rich and Famous in the Renaissance Medical Marketplace’, Pharmacy in History, 45 
(2003), p. 124.
60 I discuss some of the material presented below in moredetail in Brenner, ‘The Reception, 
Consumption and Broader Context’.
61 The notion that very popular printed works have an inverse survival rate is very well 
established in current scholarship. See for example: Andrew Pettegree, ‘The Legion of 
the Lost: Recovering the Lost Books of Early Modern Europe’, in Flavia Bruni and Andrew 
Pettegree (eds.), Lost Books: Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe 
(Leiden: Brill, 2016).
62 See Le Forestier, Traité de la peste, ed. G. Panel, p. x: Panel felt that this apparent difference 
was another marker of variance.
63 The copy held at the BMG does not contain any reading marks: see Brenner, ‘The 
Reception, Consumption and Broader Context’, p. 323.
44 Brenner
Figure 2.2 Title page with woodcut image of a man seated at his desk
 Thomas Le Forestier, Le regime contre epidimie et pestilence (Rouen: Jacques Le 
Forestier, 21 October 1495), longer version, leaf a1r.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, RES 4-TE30-15 (A,1)
45Early Medical Printing in Rouen
Figure 2.3 Title page with uninked imprint of woodcut image of a man seated at his desk
 Thomas Le Forestier, Le regime contre epidimie et pestilence (Rouen: Jacques Le 
Forestier, 21 October 1495), shorter version, leaf a1r.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, RES-TE30-15
46 Brenner
Figure 2.4 Sixteenth-century inscription ‘De cabourg’
 Thomas Le Forestier, Le regime contre epidimie et pestilence (Rouen: 
Jacques Le Forestier, 21 October 1495), longer version, leaf a1v.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, RES 4-TE30-15 (A,1)
47Early Medical Printing in Rouen
‘nota’. The annotations in this copy signify practical use, especially when 
they draw attention to specific remedies or key pieces of preventive advice.64 
Compared to these three copies of the French vernacular edition, a copy of 
the 1491/1492 Guillaume Le Talleur Latin printing of Le Forestier’s tract, held 
64 For example, the note ‘nota de acete’ in the margin of leaf b6 recto adjacent to the text 
discussing the remedial benefits of vinegar; ‘nota’ mark in the margin of leaf d6 recto 
marking the section of text instructing the need for the poor to make fumigations, keep 
their houses clean, and avoid the houses and clothing of the sick during times of pesti-
lence. BSB 4 Inc.c.a. 1202 m.
Figure 2.5 Late fifteenth- or sixteenth-century marginal note ‘Medicus sit | Astronomus’
 Thomas Le Forestier, Tractatus contra pestilentiam thenasmonem et dissinteriam (Rouen: 
Guillaume Le Talleur, after 18 December 1490), leaf f2r.
Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de Santé, cote 8215
48 Brenner
in the BIU Santé, is certainly more heavily annotated.65 It contains marginal 
notes by one, possibly two, early readers, that show especial attention to the 
key knowledge that a physician should possess and to the professional identity 
of the physician.66 The annotations in this volume indicate that Latin medical 
texts were just as likely to be actively read as their vernacular counterparts, by 
a readership – here quite possibly a student – that was potentially specialised 
in the professional field of medicine.
The BnF’s copy of the longer version of Le Forestier’s vernacular tract is 
bound with another vernacular early printing from Rouen, Le traicte des 
eaux artificielles, printed between 1501 and 1507 by Richard Auzoult for 
Robinet Macé, bookseller of the University of Caen, with whom, as we have 
seen, Jacques Le Forestier also collaborated.67 This edition, with a title page 
in red and black ink, is one of multiple different printed versions of a popular 
compilation of liquid medicinal remedies produced in Paris, Lyon and Rouen 
in the later fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Like Le Forestier’s vernacular 
tract, these editions also often only survive in very few or single copies: the 
BnF’s copy of the Richard Auzoult edition is the only copy listed in USTC. Like 
the printing with which it is bound, this copy of Le traicte des eaux also bears 
the inscription ‘cabourg’, here identifying this owner or reader as a monk, ‘fratri 
francisco de cabourg’, from Cabourg, a town in Lower Normandy. The inscrip-
tion is accompanied by the date 1562; however, this could have been added 
by a different hand.68 This copy of Thomas Le Forestier’s vernacular text thus 
travelled with a printing of the Traicte des eaux artificielles from the sixteenth 
century, and was in the hands of a local monk who, like many other religious 
persons, was keen to have access to practical medical knowledge.69
The fact that these two copies circulated together may explain why the 
authorship of the Traicte des eaux has been wrongly attributed to Le Forestier.70 
65 BIU Santé, cote 8215.
66 Leaf f2 recto contains the note ‘Medicus sit | Astronomus’ (‘the physician is an astron-
omer/astrologer’), and notes on the judgement of urines are written in the margins of 
leaf g1r–v. BIU Santé, cote 8215.
67 Le traicte des eaux artificielles les vertus et proprietes d’icelles (Rouen: [Richard Auzoult] 
for Robinet Macé, [1501–07]), USTC 80202. See discussion above of another health-related 
edition produced for Macé, a regimen of health.
68 BnF RES 4-TE30-15 (A,2), leaf D8 verso; Hillard, Traité, pp. 190–196, especially p. 194 n. 22.
69 On the medical knowledge and expertise of monks and nuns in an earlier period, see Elma 
Brenner, ‘The Medical Role of Monasteries in the Latin West, c. 1050–c. 1300’, in Alison I. 
Beach and Isabelle Cochelin (eds.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the 
Latin West, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 865–881.
70 Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire, p. 762; Hillard, Traité, p. 194 n. 22.
49Early Medical Printing in Rouen
Although the Traicte was certainly not penned by Le Forestier, with one of its 
major sources being the De aquis artificialibus of the Milanese physician Maino 
de Maineri (c.1290–95 to c.1368), who taught at the University of Paris, the texts 
do have common ground, since Le Forestier describes medicinal waters in his 
Regime.71 Distilled waters were very fashionable remedies in the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries, and Le Forestier’s ‘preservative water against pestilence’, 
as well as his instructions for how to distil a beneficial eau de mesgue, were no 
doubt aimed at increasing the popularity of the plague tract.72
4 Conclusion
The collaboration in 1495 between Thomas Le Forestier, the learned physician, 
and Jacques Le Forestier, the prolific printer and bookseller, reflects the cul-
tural, social and economic milieu of Rouen at the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury, as well as the place of medical advice literature in early printing. While 
Jacques Le Forestier’s print output focused primarily on devotional literature 
and texts of specific local interest, he evidently saw a commercial opportunity 
in the chance to produce a vernacular plague tract, the marketability of which 
was increased by his family’s longstanding reputation as booksellers at Rouen. 
Thomas Le Forestier, a physician of Norman origin whose career took him 
across the Channel to London, and then back to Normandy and ultimately to 
Rennes in Brittany, worked pragmatically to build his reputation and success. 
The 1495 vernacular edition of his plague advice text, following on from a Latin 
printing of 1491/1492, disseminated knowledge of his remedies, quite possibly 
themselves available for purchase, to a wide audience. The small number of 
extant copies of Jacques Le Forestier’s printing reveals that it sometimes circu-
lated with other practical printed medical texts, and that early readers seeking 
useful medical knowledge annotated their copies, if not in extensive detail. 
This example of early printing from Rouen demonstrates how the convergence 
of the interests of authors, printers and readers spurred on the development of 
the book trade in its formative years in this city, and how the trade responded 
to widely-experienced health concerns at this time.
71 SeeHillard, Traité, pp. 11, 27–28.
72 See Le Forestier, Le regime, shorter version, leaves d2v–d3r (‘La recepte pour faire leau de 
mesgue’); leaves e5r–e6r (‘Aqua preseruativa siluatici coṉtra pestileṉtiam’). On the pop-
ularity of distilled medicinal waters, see Eamon, ‘Pharmaceutical Self-fashioning’, p. 125; 
Brenner, ‘Distilling Nature’.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_005
Chapter 3
The Quaderneto of Padua: A 1480 List of Incunabula 
for Sale
Ester Camilla Peric
Fair Padua, nursery of arts
William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
∵
The final decades of the fifteenth century saw a rapid growth in the printed 
book trade, which developed in a wide and organized network, expanding 
from the major centres of printing production to as yet unexplored market-
places. Bookshops appeared more or less everywhere, especially in places that 
offered a high concentration of potential buyers. Venetian printers and editors 
established small or medium size bookshops in university cities like Bologna, 
Pavia, Ferrara and Padua, and entrusted their running to local booksellers. 
The printer Nicolaus Jenson had a commercial agreement with the bookseller 
Giovanni Stai in Padua and owned a bookshop in Pavia from the early 1470s; 
Johannes de Colonia opened a shop in Brescia in 1473 and in 1478, together 
with his partner Johannes Manthen, signed a three-year contract with Simone 
Verde related to the sale of books and other items in Padua.1 We usually dis-
cover the existence of such business deals through the survival of documentary 
1 I’d like to express my gratitude to Neil Harris for his invaluable comments on a previous draft 
of this text. For the bookshop of Giovanni Stai in Padua see Daniela Fattori, ‘La bottega di un 
libraio padovano del 1477’, La Bibliofilía, 112 (2010), pp. 229–243; Jenson’s business relation-
ships in Pavia are mentioned in Victor Scholderer, ‘Printing at Venice to the End of 1481’, The 
Library, 5 (1925), p. 139 and Angela Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: 
Brill, 2013), p. 26; for the bookshop of Johannes de Colonia in Brescia see Paolo Veneziani, 
‘La stampa a Brescia e nel Bresciano’, in Ennio Sandal (ed.), I primordi della stampa a Brescia, 
1472–1511. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Brescia, 6–8 giugno 1984 (Padua: Antenore, 1986), 
p. 1; for Johannes’s business in Padua see instead Antonio Sartori, ‘Documenti padovani 
sull’arte della stampa nel sec. XV ’, in Libri e stampatori in Padova: Miscellanea di studi storici 
in onore di Mons. G. Bellini, tipografo editore libraio (Padua: Tipografia Antoniana, 1959), doc-
ument XL.
51The Quaderneto of Padua
evidence, either of a private or a public nature, setting out the terms of the 
agreement.
This chapter describes the main features of one of these precious docu-
ments, a small paper gathering bearing the name Quaderneto and witness-
ing the commercial agreement between Antonio Moretto  – a well-known 
editor and bookseller from Brescia – and one Domenico Giglio from Vercelli 
(Piedmont). Domenico was entrusted to manage Moretto’s bookshop in Padua 
and at the beginning of 1480 received more than 900 printed books to sell on 
his account. They are listed in detail in this quadernetto (‘a small notebook’), 
including the prices fixed by Moretto himself. Though it is a valuable source for 
our knowledge of the Italian Renaissance book trade, it has never been prop-
erly studied.
1 Discovery and First Studies
The Quaderneto was discovered around 1880 by Bartolomeo Cecchetti at the 
State Archive in Venice.2 Here it was stored in a miscellaneous folder, inside 
an envelope named Lettere-Lonato, together with another significant doc-
ument for the history of early modern book trade, that is the partnership 
agreement signed in 1507 by several major Venetian editors (Baptista and 
Silvestro de Tortis, Lucantonius Giunta, Amedeus Scotus, Georgius Arrivabene) 
and the same Antonio Moretto, which relates to the printing of law books.3 
The discovery was reported to the Venetian historian Rinaldo Fulin who, in 
1882, as part of a series of publications relating to the history of printing and 
book trade in the Venetian Republic, provided an accurate transcription of the 
Quaderneto and a brief description of its contents.4 Fulin claimed to have little 
knowledge of bibliography and book history and hoped that more qualified 
scholars would study it in greater depth. He suggested that the Quaderneto 
could indicate which texts were sold in a famous university city like Padua just 
a decade after the introduction of the printing press to Venice and regarded 
the record of sale prices as particularly relevant. It is indeed the earliest known 
list of retail book prices and it has already proved a valuable source for the 
2 Bartolomeo Cecchetti (1838–1889) was professor of paleography at the State Archive in 
Venice, as well as responsible for overseeing all the archives in the Veneto area. From 1884 he 
was also chief editor of the journal Archivio Veneto.
3 References to the 1507 agreement are to be found in Nuovo, The Book Trade, p. 56 and Brian 
Richardson, Printing, Writers, and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1999), p. 33.
4 See Rinaldo Fulin, ‘Nuovi documenti per servire alla storia della tipografia veneziana’, 
Archivio veneto, 23 (1882), pp. 390–405.
52 Peric
history of the early book trade. In the past twenty years or so it has been men-
tioned by Angela Nuovo and Ennio Sandal in their studies on the circulation of 
the printed books in the Renaissance, by Cristina Dondi and Neil Harris for its 
similarities with the Zornale of Francesco de Madiis and by Patricia Osmond 
and Ennio Sandal, with the aim of reconstructing the biography and the cul-
tural and commercial activities of Antonio Moretto.5 However, the only source 
of information about the document remains Fulin’s article which, though still 
useful, does not provide a systematic identification of the editions concerned. 
A full study was therefore undertaken by the present writer.6
2 Description and Contents
The Quaderneto is still held at the State Archive in Venice, inside the Miscellanea 
di carte non appartenenti ad alcun archivio, in folder ‘b 21’. It is a paper gathering 
of eight leaves, 310 mm in height and 107 mm in width, its format thus being 
that of an oblong quarto in eights, constituted by two sheets (Chancery size) 
folded twice along the short side, inserted one into the other and sewn in the 
middle, between the fourth and the fifth leaf. Both sheets bear a watermark 
with the figure of the trimonzio (three mounts) surmounted by a star, a very 
common symbol in paper used in northern Italy.7 The title is written on the 
5 See Angela Nuovo and Ennio Sandal, Il libro nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Brescia: Grafo, 1998), 
pp. 51, 172; Angela Nuovo, Il commercio librario nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Milan: Franco 
Angeli, 2003), pp. 57, 115, 156, 254, 257; Patricia Osmond, ‘Il testamento di Antonio Moreto edi-
tore e mercante di libri a Venezia (22 maggio 1501)’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere 
ed Arti, Classe di scienze morali lettere ed arti, 163 (2004–2005), pp. 531–557; Patricia Osmond 
and Ennio Sandal, ‘La bottega del librario editore Antonio Moretto: editoria e commercio 
librario a Venezia, c. 1480–1518’, in Lisa Pon and Craig Kallendorf (eds.), Il libro veneziano/The 
Books of Venice (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana: La Musa Talìa; New Castle Delaware: 
Oak Knoll Press, 2008), pp. 231–250; Cristina Dondi and Neil Harris, ‘Oil and Green Ginger. 
The Zornale of the Venetian Bookseller Francesco de Madiis, 1484–1488’, in Malcolm Walsby 
and Natasha Constantinidou (eds.), Documenting the Early Modern Book World: Inventories 
and Catalogues in Manuscript and Print (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 344; Cristina Dondi and 
Neil Harris, ‘I romanzi cavallereschi nel Zornale di Francesco de Madiis (1484–88): profilomerceologico di un genere’, in Johannes Bartuschat and Franca Strologo (eds.), Carlo Magno 
in Italia e la fortuna dei libri di cavalleria. Convegno internazionale di Zurigo, 6–8 maggio 2014 
(Ravenna: Longo editore, 2016), pp. 257, 272, 277.
6 See Ester Camilla Peric, Vendere libri a Padova nel 1480: il Quaderneto di Antonio Moretto 
(Udine: Forum, 2020); see also Ester Camilla Peric, ‘Il commercio degli incunaboli a Padova 
nel 1480: il Quaderneto di Antonio Moretto’, in Cristina Dondi (ed.), Printing R-Evolution 
and Society 1450–1500. Fifty years that changed Europe (Venezia: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2020), 
pp. 541–576 (http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-332-8/019).
7 The design itself dates back to the beginning of the fourteenth century, while the watermark 
in the Quaderneto is similar but not identical to the numbers 11754 and 11755 in Charles-Moïse 
http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-332-8/019
53The Quaderneto of Padua
Figure 3.1 Quaderneto de li libri lassati a Padoa in custodia de ser Domeneco da san Germano, 
leaves 1v–2r
Venice, Archivio di Stato, Miscellanea di carte non appartenenti 
ad alcun archivio, b. 21
54 Peric
first page: Quaderneto de li libri lassati a Padoa in custodia de ser Domeneco da 
san Germano (‘small notebook of the books left in Padua in the custody of Ser 
Domeneco from san Germano’).
Regarding its contents, the document can be divided into four sections. The 
main one is the first, written on 27 February 1480 and beginning on leaf 2r with 
a concise description of the contents in Italian, which, freely translated, reads, 
‘here in this small notebook are described the books left by Antonio Moretto in 
the bookshop in Padua, in the custody of Domenico Gillio from saint Germano 
of the parish of Vercelli, in the quantities and for the prices written here, and 
the prices shall be applied to each individual book, as it is clearly written 
below’. This brief incipit is followed by a detailed listing in 192 entries of the 
722 books left in the bookshop on the same day (leaves 2r–5v). It was written by 
Domenico in a fine humanist script; each entry records the number of available 
copies, the title and the price, expressed in ducats, lire and soldi, the contem-
porary Venetian currency.8 At the end of this list (leaf 6r) are three signatures. 
The first is Giglio’s, who writes ‘and I Domenico Gilio from saint Germano liv-
ing in Padua in the district of san Leonardo receive all the books mentioned 
above from master Antonio Moretto, to sell on his behalf at the established 
price, and as proof of this I wrote this document in my own hand on the day 
27 February 1480’. The signatures of two witnesses follow; the first, Michele, 
wrote a few lines in Italian, countersigning the words of Giglio and vouching 
for strict correspondence between the delivered books and those mentioned 
in the list, while Johannes Nicolaus Frontinus acknowledged the will of both 
parties with a few lines in Latin. The second section is constituted only by 
a brief note dated 12 March 1480, in which Giglio recorded the receipt of £5 
from Moretto for having sold some books on his account. On leaf 7r begins the 
third part, dated 3 April 1480, containing a further 40 entries in which Giglio 
listed the 155 books received by Antonio on the same day, mainly fresh copies 
of the better-selling titles. This list ends on the verso of the same leaf, where we 
find also the fourth section, with 21 entries listing 46 books received by Giglio 
on 4 May of the same year. The last leaf of the gathering is blank.
Briquet, Les filigranes. Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 
1282 jusqu’en 1600 (Geneva: A. Jullien, 1907), which were found in documents of the State 
Archive in Padua dated respectively 1479 and 1484.
8 In Renaissance Venice a duodecimal system was used, the gold ducat acting as a kind of 
super currency. One ducat was the equivalent to 6 lire and 4 soldi, or 124 soldi; twenty soldi 
made a lira (£); the smallest denomination was the denaro, not mentioned here, of which 
twelve made up a soldo.
55The Quaderneto of Padua
3 People Involved in the Business
Antonio Moretto (also spelled Moreto) is well known to book historians: he 
was born around 1445/50 in the territory of Brescia and died in Venice in 
1518. He was ‘an active force in Venetian printing for more than 40 years’ and 
worked as an editor, corrector, bookseller and businessman.9 Between 1472 
and 1513 he edited more than 50 publications, especially Latin classics, receiv-
ing praise from well-known humanists for his expertise.10 He probably owned 
several bookshops and the main one was located in Venice on the chief com-
mercial axis of the city, the Mercerie; close to it, in the Rialto district, was his 
warehouse.11 He conducted business relationships with the most important 
editors of his time, among them Girolamo Avogadro, Girolamo Squarciafico, 
the brothers Baptista and Silvestro de’ Tortis and Alessandro Minuziano. He 
was also involved in the paper trade: at the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury, he bought several mills on Lake Garda and regularly supplied the printing 
shops in Venice with reams of high-quality paper.12 All these activities allowed 
him to build up an impressive fortune, as is stated in his will.13
Little is known, however about Domenico Giglio (or Gillio). From the 
Quaderneto we gather that he came from the parish of san Germano of Vercelli 
and his name appears in a notarial act written in Padua in 1478 concerning a 
dispute between him and one Michele Capitevini about the dowry Domenico 
was due to receive after marrying Michele’s daughter.14 In this document he 
9 Martin Lowry, ‘La produzione del libro’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Produzione e com-
mercio della carta e del libro secc. XIII–XVIII. Atti della ventitreesima settimana di studi 
15–20 aprile 1991 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1992), p. 384. On Moretto see also Nuovo and 
Sandal, Il libro nell’Italia, pp. 51, 172.
10 For the list of the works edited by Moretto, see John Monfasani, ‘The First Call for 
Press Censorship: Niccolò Perotti, Giovanni Andrea Bussi, Antonio Moreto, and the 
Editing of Pliny’s Natural History’, Renaissance Quarterly, 41 (1988), pp. 1–31; the notes of 
Paolo Pellegrini in ‘“Cheir cheira niptei”. Per gli incunaboli di Giovanni Calfurnio, uman-
ista editore’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, 42 (2001), pp. 181–283 and Paolo Pellegrini, 
‘Marcantonio Sabellico, Bonifacio Bembo, Ermolao Barbaro, Un’attribuzione per le 
“Annotationes in Plinium” (Goff S-6)’, La Bibliofilía, 103 (2001), pp. 107–136.
11 Moretto’s bookshop is described by Marcantonio Sabellico in the afterword of his De 
linguae Latinae reparatione as a ‘celebre emporium’ where scholars and academics 
met [Venice: Damianus de Gorgonzola, about 1494-95]), leaf h6r. ISTC is00008000; GW 
M39267; USTC 991472. See also Osmond, ‘Il testamento’, p. 543; Osmond and Sandal, ‘La 
bottega’, p. 213; for Moretto’s warehouse see Nuovo, The Book Trade, p. 130.
12 Daniela Fattori, ‘Democrito da Terracina e la stampa delle Enneades di Marco Antonio 
Sabellico’, La Bibliofilía, 105 (2003), pp. 27–48; Osmond and Sandal, ‘La bottega’, p. 235.
13 Published in Osmond, ‘Il testamento’, pp. 539–548.
14 The document is mentioned by Sartori, ‘Documenti padovani’, p. 153.
56 Peric
is identified as a copyist of manuscripts, living in Venice in the district of 
san Canzian (as did Nicolaus Jenson in the same period) and also as a printer. 
However, his name does not appear in any edition published in Venice or 
anywhere in Piedmont; the notary might have been mistaken or Domenico 
could have worked anonymously in some other printer’s shop.15 He might 
also have been one of the unidentified printers that published texts edited by 
Moretto before 1480 (the ‘Printer of Brunus Aretinus’ (H 1565) or the ‘Printer 
of Domitius Calderinus’), but there is presently no documentary evidence to 
support this hypothesis. The lastmention of his name is found in the Acta 
graduum academicorum of the University of Padua, since in November 1480 
he witnessed the graduation in canon and civil law of a friend and fellow citi-
zen from Vercelli.16
The first witness, Michele, is probably to be identified with Michele 
Capitevini, Domenico’s father-in-law; he might have been a merchant since 
his handwriting is a very typical mercantesca. He most likely took Domenico 
into his house in Padua, in the district of san Leonardo, after he married his 
daughter and was therefore an easy witness to get hold of. Johannes Nicolaus 
Frontinus, whose name in Italian was Giovanni Nicolò Poletti, lived in the sec-
ond half of the fifteenth century and died in 1505.17 He studied civil and canon 
law at the University of Padua and belonged to the Collegio Campion, the old-
est and longest-standing college in Padua for poor students.18 Even when still 
studying, he was very active in the printing business: he worked as proof cor-
rector in Venice and in Padua, acted as agent for several printers, such as Petrus 
Maufer, and also coordinated the auction of the books of Vincenzo Malaffi in 
1485.19 In the Padua business deal he was probably representing Moretto, who 
15 There is a certain inaccuracy in the fifteenth-century vocabulary for professions in the 
printing business and the status of printer is often wrongly attributed to booksellers; 
see for example Giocondo Ricciarelli, ‘Mercanti di incunaboli a Perugia’, Bollettino della 
Deputazione di Storia patria per l’Umbria, 70 (1973), p. 7; Agostino Contò, ‘Il testamento di 
Innocente Ziletti da Orzinuovi’, Bibliotheca, 2 (2002), p. 133.
16 See Elda Martellozzo Forin (ed.), Acta graduum academicorum Gymnasii Patavini ab anno 
1471 ad annum 1500 (Padua: Antenore, 2001), n. 688.
17 Several items of biographical information about him are to be found in Francesco Piovan, 
‘Antonio Francesco Dottori, Pierre Maufer e una progettata edizione (1483) del De testa-
mentis di Angelo Gambiglioni’, Quaderni per la Storia dell’Università di Padova, 39 (2006), 
pp. 199–210.
18 See Paola Benussi, ‘Fonti archivistiche per la storia del Collegio Tornacense di Padova’, 
Quaderni per la storia dell’Università di Padova, 21 (1998), pp. 227–241; Pietro Del Negro 
(ed.), I collegi per studenti dell’Università di Padova. Una storia plurisecolare (Padua: 
Signum, 2003).
19 See Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular 
Text 1470–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 16; Don C. Skemer, ‘Book 
Auctions and Prices in Quattrocento Padua: Selling the Library of Francesco Malaffi da 
57The Quaderneto of Padua
appears to have been elsewhere when the Quaderneto was signed. The two 
could have met in Padua or in Venice, where they both followed their business 
activities.
4 The Quaderneto: A Documentary Source
The Quaderneto is not a contract in the strict sense of the term. It was not 
written and signed by a notary, Moretto’s signature is missing, and not all the 
conditions of the agreement between him and Giglio are specified. Though 
some details can be assumed, several remain uncertain: where the bookshop 
was located, how long the agreement was to last and how and when Moretto 
collected his profits. Nevertheless it is very clear that the kind of agreement 
established between the two was that of sale on commission, the most com-
mon in the Renaissance book trade: the wholesaler kept the property of the 
books, which had to be accurately listed in order to supervise the course of 
business and avoid claims and controversies, fixed the sale prices and received 
his earnings from time to time from the bookseller, who was given a salary or a 
percentage of the profit in exchange for his work.20
The Quaderneto, indeed, contains the accurate listing of all the books deliv-
ered to the Padua bookshop and the presence of a few idiosyncratic mistakes 
suggests that it was probably copied by Giglio from another list, maybe that 
accompanying the batch of books.21 It was also checked and corrected by 
Moretto himself.22 Another fundamental feature is the indication of the retail 
prices fixed by Moretto, which the bookseller was obliged to apply. The price 
was meant for each individual book; this is stated several times in the docu-
ment, probably because Moretto feared that his employee would divide it by 
the number of available copies. The receipt of £5 cited above implies that Giglio 
was paid on commission and did not have a fixed income, while the dates of 
Vicenza, 1484–1487’, La Bibliofilía, 108 (2006), pp. 113–58; Don C. Skemer, ‘Inside a Book 
Auction in Quattrocento Padua’, in Lisa Pon and Craig Kallendorf (eds.), The Books of 
Venice  – Il libro veneziano (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana: La Musa Talìa; New 
Castle Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2008), pp. 101–125.
20 See Nuovo, The Book Trade, pp. 89–92.
21 These mistakes are a frequent consequence of copying words and numbers densely 
packed into the page and are caused by the influence of the words following just after the 
entry which is being transcribed.
22 The title on the first page is written in Moretto’s handwriting, as appears from other 
examples of his hand. The darker ink colour associated with this writing suggests that 
some corrections, concerning the number of available copies, were also his, thus implying 
a thorough revision of the document, which probably took place on 12 March, when the 
presence of Moretto in the shop is proved by the receipt of £5 noted by Giglio.
58 Peric
the second and third list (3 April and 4 May) suggest that books were delivered 
on a monthly basis, and it was probably on this occasions that Moretto col-
lected his gains. Finally, the presence of the witnesses’ subscriptions makes the 
Quaderneto, if not precisely a contract, a semi-official document with much 
more value than a simple inventory of the books delivered to a bookshop; this 
is also most certainly the reason why it has survived until today.
5 Moretto’s Bookshop and the Padua Book Trade
The location of Moretto’s bookshop is unknown; it can be presumed, however, 
that it was where such shops were mostly found, i.e. in the areas where univer-
sity lessons were held in Padua (in the districts called Santa Caterina and Ca’ 
de Dio).23 At the end of the fifteenth century Padua was an important market-
place, hosting stationers and shops selling manuscripts and printed books, as 
well as a renowned centre for miniature and decoration.24 The main reason 
for this success was the presence of the University; officially founded in 1222, 
when a group of students and professors migrated from Bologna, the University 
of Padua had its golden age between 1460 and the beginning of the sixteenth 
century. From 1405, when the city was conquered by Venice, it became the offi-
cial studium of the Venetian Republic.25 Printing presses in Padua, the first of 
which was established in 1471 by Lorenzo Canozi, were mostly dedicated to 
23 See Emilia Veronese, ‘Gli insediamenti universitari a Padova prima del Bo’, in Giuliana 
Mazzi (ed.), L’ università e la città: il ruolo di Padova e degli altri atenei italiani nello sviluppo 
urbano. Atti del Convegno di studi, Padova, 4–6 dicembre 2003 (Bologna: Clueb, 2006), 
pp. 11–26.
24 See Luca Montobbio, ‘Miniatori, scriptores, rilegatori di libri della cattedrale di Padova 
nel sec. XV ’, Fonti e ricerche di storia ecclesiastica padovana, 5 (1973), pp. 93–195; 
Anthony Hobson, ‘Bookbinding in Padua in the Fifteenth Century’, in Martin Davies 
(ed.), Incunabula: Studies in Fifteenth-Century Printed Books Presented to Lotte Hellinga 
(London: British Library, 1999), pp. 389–420.
25 The bibliography relating to the history of the Paduan university is very extensive; the 
most recent studies include Lucia Rossetti, L’Università di Padova: profilo storico 
(Triest: Lint, 1983); Antonino Poppi (ed.), Scienza e filosofia all’Università di Padova11.1 William Beattie 229
11.2 Paulus Orosius, Le premier volume de Orose (Paris: Pierre Le Rouge Pour 
Anthoine Verard, 1491) NLS Inc.263 235
11.3 [Horae: ad usum Parisiensem] (Paris: Philippe Pigouchet, for Toussaint 
de Montjay, 1491) NLS Inc.273.5 242
Abbreviations
ADSM Archives départementales de Seine-Maritime, Rouen
AUL Aberdeen University Library
BIU Santé Bibliothèque Inter-Universitaire de Santé, Paris
BL British Library, London
BMC British Museum Catalogue
BMG Bibliothèque municipale, Grenoble
BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Bros. Brothers
BSB Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
c. circa
col. column
comp. compiler
d. died
DCL Durham Cathedral Library
doc. document
ed., eds. editor, editors
EBDB Einbanddatenbank
EBSB English Blind-stamped Bindings
ESL Early Scottish Libraries
ESTC English Short Title Catalogue
et al. et alii
etc. et cetera
EUL Edinburgh University Library
fol., fols. folio, folios
GW Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke
IGI Indice generale incunaboli delle biblioteche d’Italia
ISTC Incunabula Short Title Catalogue
Lib. Liber
LVD Liber Vitae Durham
MLGB Medieval Libraries of Great Britain
MSS manuscripts
n. note
n.d. no date
NLS National Library of Scotland
no. number
NRS National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh
NSZL National Széchényi Library, Budapest
x Abbreviations
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
OSB Order of St Benedict
p., pp. page, pages
pt. part
r recto
RAS Royal Astronomical Society, London
RCP Royal College of Physicians, London
repr. reprinted
SAUL St Andrews University Library
ser. series
SHL Senate House Library
s.n. sine nomine
TNA The National Archives
tr. translator
UCL University College London
USTC Universal Short Title Catalogue
v verso
vol., vols. volume, volumes
Notes on Contributors
Karen Attar
is the Curator of Rare Books and University Art at Senate House Library and a 
Research Fellow of the Institute of English Studies, both University of London. 
Best known for editing the Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections 
in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland (2016), she has written 
widely about Senate House Library, its collections and its history, including 
two articles specifically about its incunabula. She catalogued the library of 
Augustus De Morgan, wrote about it for The Edinburgh History of Reading 
(2020), and is an academic advisor for Brill’s project to digitise it.
Robert L. Betteridge
has had a long career at the National Library of Scotland where he is the Rare 
Books Curator for Eighteenth-century Printed Collections. With a background 
in cataloguing, one of his final tasks in his previous role was to catalogue the 
Library’s collection of incunabula. He has presented papers and published a 
number of articles on the Advocates Library’s and National Library’s history, 
collecting and collections, largely with a late 17th and 18th-century focus. He 
has curated major Library exhibitions on Robert Burns, the 1715 Jacobite Rising 
and the Scottish Enlightenment.
Elma Brenner
is a Research Development Specialist at Wellcome Collection, London, and 
an associate member of the Centre de recherches archéologiques et histori-
ques anciennes et médiévales at the University of Caen, France (UMR 6273 – 
CNRS). Her research explores health, religious culture and the history of the 
book in medieval France and England. She has authored Leprosy and Charity 
in Medieval Rouen (2015) and co-edited Memory and Commemoration in 
Medieval Culture (2013), Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300 (2013) 
and Leprosy and Identity in the Middle Ages: From England to the Mediterranean 
(2021). She is Co-editor of Social History of Medicine.
Laura Cooijmans-Keizer
is Special Collections Curator at Edinburgh Napier University, having pre- 
viously worked at the Universities of Liverpool and Edinburgh. She holds 
postgraduate degrees in Book History and Material Culture (University of 
Edinburgh), and Archives and Records Management (University of Liverpool). 
Whilst initially focusing her research interests on the medieval manuscript 
xii Notes on Contributors
cultures of the Low Countries, Iceland and the UK, her experience of work-
ing with historical collections expanded her interests to include the material 
cultures of subsequent periods, with a particular focus on the history of early 
printing.
Sarah Cusk
has catalogued early printed books at a number of libraries and institutions, 
including the Newberry Library in Chicago, the National Portrait Gallery, 
Hughenden Manor (Disraeli’s house), and Dr Johnson’s House. She is cur-
rently the antiquarian cataloguer at Lincoln College, Oxford. Her research 
interests include early sixteenth-century donations to Oxford colleges, the 
Bridgewater library and its purchase by Henry Huntingdon, and the library of 
the seventeenth-century Oxford philologist Thomas Marshall.
Anette I. Hagan
has worked as a Rare Books Curator at the National Library of Scotland since 
2002. Responsible for early printed collections to 1700, her specialist areas also 
include chapbooks and Gaelic and Scots publications to 1900. She has published 
on various aspects of book history such as the library at St Benedict’s Abbey 
at Fort Augustus, the spread of Scottish printing, editions of a seventeenth- 
century prophecy and the contemporary news coverage of the 1715 Jacobite 
Rising. She is Reviews Editor of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Journal.
Elizabeth Henderson
is Rare Books Librarian at the University of St Andrews. Her previous research 
has explored various aspects of the libraries of Scottish universities in the 
late medieval and early modern period, especially donations. Currently she is 
working on developing a database of Scottish book collectors and their collec-
tions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and is particularly interested 
in early modern collectors of medieval and antiquarian material.
Sheila Hingley
retired from full-time work as Head of Heritage Collections in Durham 
University Library at the end of 2014. She had moved to Durham in 2002 after 
serving for twelve years as Canterbury Cathedral Librarian. Her previous posts 
had been in the House of Commons Library, Durham Cathedral Library and 
the Society of Antiquaries. She has published papers on libraries and book 
ownership in the early modern period. Her current research is on the books 
printed 1450–1540 belonging to Durham Cathedral Priory and coincides with 
contracted work cataloguing the early printed books at Ushaw College.
xiiiNotes on Contributors
Ester Camilla Peric
is a Phd candidate at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale in Naples. Her doc-
toral research concerns printed catalogues as precious sources to investigate 
printers’ output and marketing strategies, with a special focus on the dynamics 
of loss and survival of sixteenth century editions. Among her other research 
interests are the history of book trade in the fifteenth century, which is the 
subject of her first monograph, Vendere libri a Padova nel 1480: il Quaderneto di 
Antonio Moretto (Udine: Forum, 2020), as well as analytical bibliography and 
printing techniques.
Jane Pirie
is a History of Art graduate of the University of Aberdeen. She is Curator (Rare 
Books) in the department of Museums, Special Collections and Archives where 
she has worked for nearly thirty years. In addition to curating the printed col-
lections, she specialises in provenance and bindings. Jane has recently con-
tributed to a new history of the University of Aberdeen, exploring how the 
collections there were established over 525 years, and is currently researching 
the work of Francis Van Hagen, a seventeenth century Aberdeen bookbinder.
Sian Prosser
has been Librarian and Archivist at the Royal Astronomical Society since 2014. 
After a language degree at the University of Glasgow and an MA in Medieval 
Studies at the University of Leeds, she joined the French Department of the 
University of Sheffield for an AHRC-fundednel 
Quattrocento (Padua: Lint, 1983); Francesco Maria Colle and Annalisa Belloni, Professori 
giuristi a Padova nel secolo XV: profili bio-bibliografici e cattedre (Frankfurt: Vittorio 
Klostermann, 1986); Paul F. Grendler, The University of Padua 1405–1600: A Success Story, in 
Books and Schools in the Italian Renaissance (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), pp. 7–17; Donato 
Gallo, Università e signoria a Padova dal XIV al XV secolo (Triest: Lint, 1998); Francesco 
Piovan and Luciana Sitran Rea (eds.) Studenti, università, città nella storia padovana. 
Atti del convegno (Padova, 6–8 febbraio 1998) (Triest: Lint, 2001); Pietro Del Negro (ed.), 
L’Università di Padova: otto secoli di storia (Padua: Signum, 2002); Pietro Del Negro and 
Francesco Piovan (eds.) L’Università di Padova nei secoli (1222–1600) Documenti di storia 
dell’Ateneo (Treviso: Antilia, 2017).
59The Quaderneto of Padua
printing university texts, in large heavy folio volumes.26 They were, however, 
unable to compete with the new and more efficient Venetian enterprises, also 
due to the protectionist policies and tolls applied by the Venetian government; 
ultimately Padua was more successful as a marketplace than as a production 
centre of printed books.27 The assortment of Moretto’s bookshop, in accord-
ance with this context and the cultural and commercial profile of its owner, 
addressed professors, rich students and scholars attending university faculties.
This is an overview of the most important genres in the list:28
26 For the introduction of printing in Padua see Roberto Ridolfi, ‘Nuovi contributi alla storia 
della stampa nel secolo XV. I: Lo ‘Stampatore del Mesue’ e l’introduzione della stampa in 
Firenze’, La Bibliofilía, 56 (1954), pp. 1–20.
27 For the history of printing in Padua, in addition to the documents published by 
Antonio Sartori, see: Erice Rigoni, ‘Stampatori del secolo XV a Padova’, Atti e mem-
orie della R. Accademia di scienze lettere ed arti a Padova, 50 (1933–34), pp. 227–333; 
Dennis E. Rhodes, ‘Rettifiche e aggiunte alla storia della stampa a Padova, 1471–1600’, in 
Studies in Early Italian Printing (London: Pindar Press, 1982), pp. 256–273; Daniela Fattori, 
‘Nuovi documenti per la storia della tipografia padovana del Quattrocento’, La Bibliofilía, 
100 (1998), pp. 3–26; Elda Martellozzo Forin, ‘Per la storia della stampa a Padova nel secolo 
XV ’, Il Santo. Rivista francescana di storia, dottrina e arte, ser. 2, 43 (2003), pp. 691–713.
28 The percentages have been calculated assigning to each title the categories of genre and 
period attributed to the corpus of the fifteenth-century printed production by the project 
astrology
3% philosophy
7%
literature
26%
grammar
7%
rhetoric
9%
theology
13%
law
16%
history and 
hagiography
6%
medicine
7%
liturgy
6%
Figure 3.2 Distribution by genre of the editions listed in the Quaderneto
60 Peric
The biggest single category is literature (26%). It includes several Latin clas-
sics, which  – together with works of rhetoric (9%), grammar (7%) and his-
tory (6%)  – were used as school texts in the curriculum of the arts (i.e. the 
humanities). Since a degree in the faculty of arts was essential to proceed to 
the study of medicine, the students attending its courses were numerous. Next 
came law books (17%), i.e. the main corpora for the study of canon and civil law 
and related commentaries; and texts on theology (13%), as the faculty of divin-
ity was particularly renowned in Padua. There were a number of texts for the 
study of natural philosophy and logic (7%) and for medicine (7%). Astrology 
was well represented (3%), thanks to several small pamphlets forecasting the 
events of the year to come, called prognostica or judicia. Among the texts not 
directly linked with university needs were devotional books and a small selec-
tion of Italian literature, mainly Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and a few chivalric 
romances.
6 The Editions on Sale
Discerning which editions were sold in the Padua bookshop entails some dif-
ficulties, since the entries are very concise and the bookseller, whose aim was 
simply to identify the books available in the shop, often wrote down just the 
name of the author or that of the work. Nowadays, online databases, mainly 
ISTC, are of great help in detecting compatible editions; they can be profitably 
questioned, thanks to filters and advanced research options, especially when 
the Quaderneto itself specifies if the edition was in Latin (‘litterale’) or in Italian 
(‘vulgare’), if the text was with or without a commentary (‘con el comento’ or 
‘senza comento’), if the format was folio (‘de li grandi’), quarto or octavo (‘de 
li pizoli’), if the edition was older than others (‘prima stampa’) or it was the 
latest one (‘ultima stampa’), where it was printed (‘de Roma’, ‘de Venexia’, ‘da 
Bologna’) and eventually by whom (‘de Magistro Francesco’).
The working assumption traditionally followed for interpreting this kind of 
booklists is to surmise that cited editions were the closest in time and space; 
in this instance, therefore, priority was given to editions actually produced in 
Padua, followed by those imported from Venice, due to their overwhelming 
15cBooktrade (https://15cbooktrade.ox.ac.uk/), considering the number of copies 
available and the total amount of sheets for each edition in order to obtain the most 
precise proportions as possible.
https://15cbooktrade.ox.ac.uk/
61The Quaderneto of Padua
diffusion and success, especially within the Republic.29 This method inevitably 
implies imperfections and mistakes. However, the early date of our document 
(1480) is of great help in narrowing down the choices, as in 38% of cases only 
one edition matches. The price is a further useful deciding factor; for example, 
‘oratio’ might be an ambiguous entry: does it refer to the works of Horace or to 
an oration of few pages? Since the price is quite high, the first option is to be 
chosen.
Domenico received a total of 923 books belonging to roughly 200 edi-
tions. 65% of them were printed in Venice, thus showing the dominance of 
Venetian presses, while those published in Padua are the second most fre-
quently represented (12%). The latter are almost exclusively texts which, 
before 1480, had been printed only in Padua such as the Speculum iudiciale by 
Guillelmus Duranti, the Consilia medica by Bartholomaeus Montagnana and 
several treatises by Jacobus de Forlivio. This suggests that the local publishing 
businesses were able to establish a kind of monopoly for some titles at least 
in the first years of their activity. A significant number of editions (7%) came 
from Bologna, another renowned university city and printing centre, while 
others were printed in Treviso, Rome, Milan and other cities. Most editions are 
folios (68%) while quartos account for 30% and there are just a few books in 
smaller formats. As regards the language, titles in Latin form the vast majority 
(83%) while the remaining 17% are in Italian.
The Quaderneto also provides valuable evidence about the existence of lost 
incunabula and furnishes an ante quem term for their dating, since several 
entries (at least 6%) refer to editions whose print runs seem to be entirely lost. 
Sometimes the reference is to works so successful that many imprints were 
plausibly destroyed by intensive use, such as the Facetiae of Poggio Bracciolini 
in Italian (the earliest known printed version of this text is dated 1483) or the 
chivalric poem La Spagna. The oldest editions of the latter text are dated 1487 
(Bologna) and 1488 (Venice). The Zornale of Francesco de Madiis, wherein the 
sale of several copies is recorded, also suggests that the chivalric poem had 
been printed before 1484; this term can now be backdated to 4 May 1480, when 
a copy was delivered to the Padua bookshop. At other times the Quaderneto 
is the only source witnessing the very existence of a printed tradition of texts 
for which no edition is known today: De syndicatu officialium,attributed to 
29 This is the principle followed by Alberto Del Prato (‘Librai e biblioteche parmensi del 
secolo XV ’, Archivio storico delle province parmensi, 4 (1904), pp. 1–56) and Domenico 
Fava (‘Un grande libraio-editore di Bologna del Quattrocento: Sigismondo dei Libri’, 
Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 16 (1941), pp. 80–97) as well as by Cristina Dondi and Neil Harris in 
the forthcoming edition of the Zornale; for the authors’ previous contributions on this 
document see n. 5.
62 Peric
Venice
65%
Padua
12%
Bologna
7%
Treviso 
6%
Rome
4%
Milan
2%
Vicenza, Mantua, 
Modena e other ci�es
4%
Figure 3.3 Distribution by printing places of the editions listed in the Quaderneto
Baldus de Ubaldis, the commentary In artem veterem written by Franciscus 
de Maioranis, and the Liber Experimentorum Mirabilium de Annulis Secundum 
xxviii Mansiones Lunae, a work of magic and necromancy attributed to Petrus 
de Abano. Finally, there are texts belonging to genres that traditionally have 
very low survival rates: grammar books, devotional and liturgical texts, ephem-
era such as almanacs, calendars and prognostications. The Padua bookshop 
offered a variety of items belonging to this last category, all probably lost due 
to their built-in obsolescence and short-term relevance of their contents; for 
example, nearly 250 copies of prognostications, both in Latin and in Italian, 
were delivered in just three months. Given these circumstances, the best 
conjecture, even when a compatible option exists, is to suppose a lost, local 
imprint.30 When these occurrences are counted as well, the percentage of lost 
editions rises to 11%.
30 See Ester Camilla Peric, ‘Prognostications as Bestsellers in Early Modern Padua’ in Warren 
Boutcher and Shanti Graheli (eds.), Bestsellers in the Pre-Industrial Age (Leiden: Brill, 
forthcoming).
63The Quaderneto of Padua
7 Book Prices and a Comparison with the Zornale of Francesco 
de Madiis
The indication of the retail prices is certainly the most interesting feature of 
the Quaderneto, due to its very early date and the quantity of data the doc-
ument provides. Book prices are a multifaceted reality: there are production 
costs and retail prices, and the latter may be those fixed by editors and whole-
sale dealers or those effectively paid by customers, which again can vary con-
siderably depending on whether they refer to bound or unbound, decorated 
or plain books, and on when and how the sale took place. The Quaderneto 
contains the prices fixed by Antonio Moretto, which are calculated to cover 
production costs and allow a profit. These values could rise or fall according to 
the market’s fickle conditions, even though retailers promised to apply them 
strictly, sometimes even signing a notarial act, and payments and salaries were 
calculated on their basis.
Price history, moreover, ‘is a study not of isolated facts but of relations: 
comparison is its essence’ and the data presented by the Quaderneto become 
infinitely more interesting when compared with the contemporary purchasing 
power and with other price records.31 Focusing on the latter issue, the Paduan 
notebook is extremely similar in some respects to the already mentioned 
Zornale of Francesco de Madiis, the ledger recording the sales of a bookshop 
located in Rialto in Venice between 1484 and 1488, and the most important 
surviving source for book prices in the fifteenth century known today.32 Both 
documents were written in the same restricted time period of less than a dec-
ade and in the same geographical area, the Venetian Republic; the structure is 
identical, and the currency employed is the same. All these similarities allow 
a legitimate comparison between the two. The Quaderneto and the Zornale 
refer to the same titles on numerous occasions; in about thirty instances the 
edition is probably the same, in others the small but significant passage of time 
between the documents, or specific characteristics in terms of language or for-
mat, suggest that the edition is different.
As concerns prices, those recorded in the Quaderneto are for the most part 
higher than those in the Zornale and the gap is significant, even when the edi-
tions are very likely the same. To take the example of the Noctes Atticae by 
Aulus Gellius: the most recent local edition is, for both documents, that printed 
31 The passage quoted is from William Henry Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England from 
the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1939), p. xxvi.
32 See n. 5 above.
64 Peric
in Venice by Andreas de Paltasichis in 1477.33 The price fixed by Moretto is £4 
and 10 soldi, while the Zornale records a sale for £2 and 10 soldi (44% less); in 
terms of cost per sheet there is a decrease from 11 to 6 denari.34 Plutarch’s Vitae 
illustrium virorum, published by Nicolaus Jenson in Venice in 1478, is priced at 
372 soldi in the Quaderneto, but sells for 200 soldi (46% less) in the Venetian 
bookshop.35 There are several other examples of this kind, as can be seen in 
the graph.
These striking falls in price probably depended on several factors. The first 
involves the different nature of the two documents. While the Quaderneto lists 
the retail prices fixed by Moretto, the Zornale records the amount of money 
actually paid by the costumers, which could be different. If the edition was dif-
ficult to sell, the bookseller could offer a lower price and cut his profit in order 
to dispose of the unsold copies still in stock, whereas if it was popular and sold 
well, it could be kept at a higher price. It is also necessary to consider that the 
editions marketed as new in Padua in 1480 were already old for the custom-
ers of de Madiis’s bookshop. Another crucial factor influencing the market is 
33 ISTC ig00121000; USTC 994775; GW 10596.
34 The cost per sheet is calculated by converting the price in soldi, multiplying this num-
ber by 12 (since twelve denari made up one soldo, see n. 7) and dividing it by the num-
ber of sheets needed to print the edition. It is a very useful parameter to narrow down 
the options and to compare the cost of the same editions over time, or that of different 
imprints.
35 ISTC ip00832000; USTC 991886; GW M34480.
Figure 3.4 Comparison of prices between the Quaderneto and the Zornale for the editions shared by the 
two documents
65The Quaderneto of Padua
-37,5%
-50%
-68%
-44%
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Quaderneto
(1480)
Zornale
(9/04/1485)
Zornale
(3/02/1486)
Zornale
(9/02/1486)
Zornale
(26/07/1486)
so
ld
i
Figure 3.5 Comparison of prices between the Quaderneto and the Zornale for the edition of 
Petri Mocenici imperatoris gesta (Venice, 1477)
competition, which is described in contemporary accounts as being merciless 
in Venice where ‘a book cost as much as its seller dared ask when he could be 
sure that someone round the corner would be selling it for less’.36 In Padua the 
book market was less competitive, or at least it was not affected by the simul-
taneous presence of a large number of rival book producers, and therefore the 
prices stayed higher.
The time of sale was also very critical: bargaining was a standard practice 
and the price could be reduced according to the relationship between the seller 
and the buyer, the purchase of multiple copies, and their conditions. This is the 
case for Petri Mocenici imperatoris gesta, a brief historical treatise, printed just 
once in Venice in 1477 by Bernhard Maler, Erhard Ratdolt and Peter Löslein 
and still surviving in about 60 copies.37 This is definitely the edition to which 
both documents refer. In the Quaderneto it is priced at 16 soldi (14.2 denari per 
sheet), while the Zornale lists the sale of various copies: one on 10 April 1485 at 
10 soldi (8.9 denari per sheet, i.e. 37.5% less), one on 3 February 1486 (7.1 denari 
per sheet, i.e. 50% less), two together on 9 February 1486 (5 denari per sheet, 
i.e. 68% less) and finally one at 9 soldi on 26 July 1486 (9 denariper sheet, i.e. 
44% less). The sale of multiple copies was, therefore, decisive, but a decrease 
in price was not necessarily irreversible.
36 Martin Lowry, Nicholas Jenson and the Rise of Venetian Publishing in Renaissance Europe 
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 190–191.
37 ISTC ic00378000; USTC 996107; GW 6473.
66 Peric
8 Why Do Book Prices Drop?
So far we have concentrated on the editions shared by the two documents. 
However, the price fall is a more extensive phenomenon characterizing the 
book trade in its entirety during the last decades of the fifteenth century, 
with significant results even in the short term. The reasons for this decrease 
are not easily explained. The simplest interpretation points to what normally 
happens following the introduction of a technological innovation such as the 
printing press: the prices, initially very high, drop due to the improvement of 
production techniques and the establishment of more effective commercial 
and marketing structures. In this perspective the Quaderneto bears witness to 
a previous stage compared to the Zornale, in which the prices of printed books 
were higher.
In addition, between the mid-1470s and the following decade, the most suc-
cessful works were reprinted in new editions, the text being compacted into 
fewer pages, adapted to a smaller format, or printed on paper of a smaller size, 
in order to reduce the greatest single cost in the printing of a Renaissance 
book: paper. These new editions were not only cheaper than the older ones 
but, when put on the market, caused the prices of the bigger and more expen-
sive ones that were still in circulation to drop. This trend can be verified by 
comparing the Quaderneto and the Zornale when they refer to different edi-
tions of the same text.
In the instance of the De priscorum proprietate verborum by Junianus Maius, 
the Padua bookshop sold two copies of the edition printed in Treviso by 
Bernardus de Colonia in 1477, whereas those listed in the Zornale belonged to 
the most recent Venetian one, printed by Octavianus Scotus in 1482.38 The first 
is a folio of 330 leaves and the paper size is Median (about 345 × 515 mm); the 
second one is a folio as well, but the paper size is Chancery (about 315 × 450 mm) 
and the number of leaves is reduced to 286 (the paper area changes from 2930 
to 2026 mm2), thanks to the choice of a more compact layout and a smaller 
roman type. Also, from a philological point of view, the Treviso edition was the 
first to offer the editing of Bartholomaeus Parthenius, an added value to the 
presentation of the text. The price, for this and probably other reasons, is very 
different: 160 soldi in the Quaderneto and just 60 in the Zornale (62.5% less, 
from 11.6 to 5 denari per sheet).
Another relevant factor to consider is a technological innovation intro-
duced precisely in this period and which, as it influenced the rhythm and the 
38 For the edition printed in Treviso see ISTC im00096000; USTC 993370; GW M20099. For 
the Venetian reprint see ISTC im00098000; USTC 993368; GW M20104.
67The Quaderneto of Padua
productivity of the printing press, was decisive for the final cost of the books: 
the two-pull press substituting the one-pull model.39 This was a major techni-
cal improvement: while with the one-pull press it was possible to print just half 
of the surface of the sheet (one page of a folio, two of a quarto), the new model 
could print, with a second pull, also the other half. It is still difficult to estab-
lish the technical changes that were introduced, because no example of a con-
temporary press has survived, and early images of printing shops are likewise 
unhelpful. The two-pull press was introduced perhaps in Rome not long after 
1470 but its adoption in the rest of Europe was slow; several printers continued 
to use both old and new types of presses for years, especially in the small print-
ing centres lacking the resources and the know-how to make the leap.
From an economic point of view, the printing procedure was sped up con-
siderably, thus increasing the quantity of work that could be completed in a 
given time. This probably encouraged, together with the contemporary devel-
opment of a more efficient distribution network, an increase in the size of print 
runs, which in turn helped lower the price of individual copies. In addition, 
39 See Michael Pollak, ‘The Performance of the Wooden Printing Press’, Library Quarterly, 
42 (1972), pp. 218–264; Alan May, ‘The One-Pull Press’, Journal of the Printing Historical 
Society, 11 (2008), pp. 65–89; Lotte Hellinga, ‘Press and Text in the First Decades of 
Printing’, in Lotte Hellinga, Texts in Transit. Manuscript to Proof and Print in the Fifteenth 
Century (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 8–36.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Clericus, Huber�nus
Crescen�nas, In
epistolas ad familiares
Ciceronis commentum
Maius, Junianus, De
priscorum proprietate
verborum
Marchesinus,
Johannes,
Mammotrectus super
Bibliam
Mesue, Johannes,
Opera medicinalia [in
italiano]
Quaderneto Zornale
Figure 3.6 Comparison of prices between the Quaderneto and the Zornale for different 
editions of the same text
68 Peric
the use of the two-pull press matched the success of the smaller and cheaper 
size of paper (Chancery), while the bigger sizes (Royal, Super-royal, Imperial) 
were still printed for a while on the older type. The new press was thus not the 
only determinant element in lowering prices but acted as a catalyst for further 
innovations and changes which collectively produced this result over time. As 
an example from the comparison between the Quaderneto and the Zornale, 
a copy of the Historia naturalis by Plinius is priced in the Quaderneto at £6 
and 10 soldi; it belongs to the edition printed in Treviso by Michael Manzolus 
in 1479, a folio of 360 leaves printed on Chancery paper using a one-pull 
press.40 The edition to which the Zornale refers was instead published by 
Reynaldus de Novimagio in Venice in 1483; the number of leaves is almost the 
same (356) and, though it was printed on bigger Median size sheets, it was 
sold at £3 and 10 soldi (46% less), in part due to being printed with a two- 
pull press.41
 Appendix
A complete transcription of the Quaderneto has now been published.42 It 
includes a full identification of the editions and a commentary, thereupon 
taking the shape of a ‘discursive index’, modelled after that in preparation for 
the Zornale.43 Each item in the list is traced back to a particular work and to 
the most likely edition in terms of time and place; the original entries appear 
in alphabetical order, with a cross-reference to the author in the main index; 
for instance Spegio de crose vulgare has a see-reference to Cavalca, Domenico. 
Following the modern form of the title, each entry includes within parentheses 
the form as it actually appears in the document.
Specific attention has been paid to the material features of the cited edi-
tions such as format, sheet size, collational formula, total number of leaves as 
well as other elements significant in price-terms, like printing in more than 
one colour, illustrations and the use of a one or two-pull press.44 References to 
40 ISTC ip00791000; USTC 991926; GW M34310.
41 ISTC ip00794000; USTC 991923; GW M34329.
42 See Peric, Vendere libri a Padova, chapter VI.
43 A sample of it has been published in Dondi and Harris, ‘Oil and Green Ginger’, p. 352: ‘Our 
way round the problem, at least in this trial sample, is to construct a discursive index, i.e. 
a parallel listing of the titles that covers the function both of the critical apparatus and of 
the index’.
44 For the importance of including the sheets’ dimensions see Paul Needham, ‘Format and 
Paper Size in Fifteenth-Century Printing’, in Christoph Reske and Wolfgang Schmitz 
69The Quaderneto of Padua
the main repertories for the description of incunabula are included.45 Finally, 
the prices fixed by Moretto are indicated,as well as the cost per sheet of each 
edition. Here a sample of the critical edition of the Quaderneto is presented, 
including the transcription and the related discursive index of leaf 2r, the very 
beginning of the list. In the transcription, the number on the left refers to the 
number of available copies; then the concise reference to the title, and the 
price, expressed in ducats, lire and soldi.
 Transcription
Qua dentro questo quaterneto se describano li libri qualli lasa M(agistro) 
Antonio Moreto in la botega da Padua in custodia e a vender a Domenigo Gillio 
de sancto G(erma)no Vercellensis diocessis, per numero e precii infrascripti et 
è per zascaduno libro, como pare qua de sotto. Et primo.46
2 Digesti vegi ducati 4 £ s
1 Codego ligato e miniado duc. 6 £ s
1 Codego d. 3 £3 s 2
1 Inforciato d. 2 £3 s 2
2 Digesto novo d. 2 £3 s 2
(eds.), Materielle Aspekte in der Inkunabelforschung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017), 
pp. 59–108. Collational formulas have been taken from the repertories but have been 
checked against the examination of real copies and rationalized when necessary fol-
lowing Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description (Princeton: Princeton 
University Press, 1949).
45 The abbreviations used are:
 BMC: Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum [British 
Library] (London: The Trustees of the British Museum [The British Library], 1908–2008); 
C: Walter A. Copinger, Supplement to Hain’s Repertorium bibliographicum or Collection 
towards a New Edition of that Work (London: H. Sotheran and Co., 1895–1902)
 GW: Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann 1925–40 [vols. 1–8]; 
then Stuttgart, 1973–2021 [vols. 8–12.4])
 H: Ludwig F. T. Hain, Repertorium bibliographicum, in quo libri omnes ab arte typographica 
inventa usque ad annum MD typis expressi ordine alphabetico vel simpliciter enumerantur 
vel adcuratius recensentur (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1826–38)
 IGI: Indice generale incunaboli delle biblioteche d’Italia (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca 
dello Stato, 1943–81)
 ISTC: Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, .
 Dietrich Reichling, Appendices ad Hainii-Copingeri Repertorium Bibliographicum … Emen-
dationes (Munich: Rosenthal, 1905–1911), 6 vols., supplement (Münster: Theissing, 1914).
46 ‘Here in this small notebook are described the books left by Antonio Moretto in the book-
shop in Padua, in the custody of Domenico Gillio from saint Germano of the parish of 
Vercelli, in the quantities and for the prices written here, and the prices shall be applied 
to each individual book, as it is clearly written below. And in the first place …’.
https://data.cerl.org/istc/_search
70 Peric
2 Volume d. 2 £ s
4 Instituta de la stampa de Venexia d. £5 s
1 Instituta de la prima stampa d. £4 s
2 Speculum iuris cum aditionibus d. 647 £ s
1 Sexto de la stampa de Roma d. 1 £3 s
1 Clementine d. £4 s
148 Secundo de Bonaventura d. 1 £ s
1 Additiones Baldi d. £3 s
5 Comenti de oratore d. £3 s 10
3 Logicheta de M(agistro) Paulo d. £1 s 5
649 Dubi de M(agistro) Paulo con le 
consequentie de Strodo
d. £2 s
550 Sermoneta d. £1 s
3 Aulo Gelio d. £4 s 10
12 Officieti de la Madona d. £ s 12
1 Officieti ligati d. £1 s 15
2 Breviari de la stampa prima d. £4 s
Additiones Baldi, see Ubaldis, Baldus de.
Aulo Gelio, see Gellius, Aulus.
Bonaventura, Commentarius in secundum librum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi 
(Secundo de Bonaventura).
S. Bonaventura from Bagnoregio wrote a commentary on the four books of the 
Sententiae by Petrus Lombardus, a fundamental study text for medieval theology and 
philosophy, published in single volumes. The edition is that printed by Reynaldus de 
Novimagio and Theodorus de Reynsburch in Venice in 1477. Folio [Chancery; two-pull 
press]: a–l10 m8 N8 n–p10 P10 q–t10 v8 x10 y8 z8 2a12 2b–2k8 2l–2m6, ff. 336 (HC(+Add) 
3538*; BMC V 254; IGI 1885; GW 4659; ISTC ib00873000). Giglio received one copy to 
sell at 1 ducat; the cost per sheet is 8.8 denari.
Bonifacius VIII, Liber sextus Decretalium (Sexto de la stampa de Roma).
The Liber sextus by Bonifacius VIII, so called because it followed the five books of the 
Decretales by Gregorius IX, was available in the bookshop in a Roman imprint, even 
47 6] corr, on 5. Darker ink, probably Moretto’s hand.
48 1] corr, on 2. Probably immediate.
49 6] corr, 8. Darker ink, probably Moretto’s hand.
50 5] corr, 8. Darker ink, probably Moretto’s hand.
71The Quaderneto of Padua
though between 1476 and 1479 Nicolaus Jenson and Johannes de Colonia and Johannes 
Manthen had published this text twice in Venice. The most recent Roman edition was 
published by Ulrich Han on 4 April 1478. Folio [Royal; one-pull press]: a10 χ2 b8 c–f 12/6 
g10 h12(-h1) i10 k6 l12 m6 n10 o6 p–q8 r10 s8 t10 v12 x10 y6 z10 A6 B–C8, ff. 231 (HR 3597; BMC 
IV 25; GW 4862; IGI 1968; ISTC ib00988000). Giglio received one copy to sell at 1 ducat 
and £3 (cost per sheet 19 denari).
Breviari de la stampa prima, see Breviarium Romanum.
Breviarium Romanum (Breviarii de la stampa prima).
The Breviarium Romanum was published several times before 1480; the phrase ‘de la 
stampa prima’ does not identify the princeps but simply an edition older than the oth-
ers available in the bookshop, presumably that printed in Venice by Jacobus Rubeus in 
1474. Octavo [Royal; one-pull press]: π8 [a–g12 h8 i2] 2[a–s12 t8] 3[a–q]12 4[a–g]12, ff. 602 
(H 3891; GW 5125; IGI 2112; ISTC ib01117000). Giglio received two copies to sell at £4, 
therefore the cost per sheet is 12.8 denari.
Clemens V, Constitutiones (Clementine).
The Papal constitutions promulgated by Pope Clemens V between 1305 and 1314 were 
called Clementinae or Liber septimus, as they belonged to the Corpus Iuris Canonici. 
The edition available in the Padua bookshop could be that published on 7 June 1479 
by Johannes de Colonia and Johannes Manthen. Folio [Super-royal; printing in red 
and black; one-pull press]: a10 b–e8 f–g10 h8 i12, ff. 82 (HC 5424*; BMC V 235; GW 7108; 
IGI 3025; ISTC ic00736000). Alternatively, it could have been the second volume 
of the edition published by Jenson on 24 November 1479, the first volume of which 
contained the Liber sextus by Bonifacius VIII. Folio [Royal; printing in red and black; 
one-pull press;]: a10 B–F8 G10 H8, ff. 68 (HC 3598; BMC V 180; GW 4864; IGI 1970; ISTC 
ib00991000). Giglio received one copy to sell at 1 ducat and £2, therefore the cost per 
sheet is 23.4 and 28.2 denari respectively.
Clementine, see Clemens V.
Codego, see Justinianus.
Codego ligato e miniado, see Justinianus.
Comenti de oratore, see Leonicenus, Omnibonus.
Digesti vegi, see Justinianus.
Digesto novo, see Justinianus.
72 Peric
Dubi de M(agistro) Paulo con le consequentie de Strodo, see Paulus, Pergulensis.
Duranti, Guillelmus, Speculum judiciale. Add: Johannes Andreae: Additiones ad 
Duranti Speculum judiciale; Baldus de Ubaldis: Additiones ad Duranti Speculum judi-
ciale; Berengarius Fredoli: Inventarium Duranti Speculi judicialis (Speculum iuris cum 
aditionibus).
The Speculum iudiciale, an important treatise written by Guillelmus Duranti between 
1271 and 1276, had widespread success, circulating first in manuscript and then in print. 
The first Italian edition was published in Rome by Ulrich Han in 1473 and was followed 
by several others. That available in the Padua bookshop was published in the same city 
by Johannes Herbort between 1478 and 1479 and the main text was accompanied by 
additions of other authors. Folio [Super-royal; one-pull press]: part I: a10 b–y8; part II: 
2a10 2b–2u8 2x–2y6 A–M8 N12; part III: O10 P8 Q–R6 S10 T–Z8 2A–2X8 3X8 2Y–2Z6; 
part IV: a10 b–k8 l6 m4 n–p8, ff. 844 (HC 6511*, BMC VII 916, GW 9154; IGI 3655, ISTC 
id00448000). Moretto left two copies to sell at 6 ducats each; the cost per sheet was 
21.2 denari.
Gellius, Aulus, Noctes atticae (Aulo Gelio).
The list certainly refers to the most famous text of the Roman writer Aulus Gellius 
(c.125–180),the Noctes Atticae, a miscellaneous encyclopedic volume that enjoyed 
great success during the Middle Ages. The first edition was printed as early as 1469 
by Sweynheym and Pannartz in Rome while the most recent one had been produced 
in Venice by Andreas de Paltasichis in 1477. Folio [Chancery; two-pull press]: a10 b–x8 
y–z6 A–B8, ff. 198 (HC *7520; BMC V, 251; IGI 4189; GW 10596; ISTC ig00121000). Giglio 
received three copies to sell at £4 and 10 soldi; the cost per sheet is 11 denari.
Horae secundum usum Romanum (Officieti de la Madona; Officieti ligati).
The term ‘officieti’ identified the Horae secundum usum Romanum, the suffix ‘-eti’ 
defining the small format sextodecimo. Catalogues and repertories include several 
editions, which are likely to be just a small part of those actually published, if the 
low survival rate of this genre is taken into account. The most recent ones were those 
printed in 1478 by Andreas de Paltasichis [Sextodecimo: a–z8 A8, ff. 192 (HC 8843?; GW 
13359; IGI VI 4816-A; ISTC ih00357300)] and Christophorus Arnoldus [Sextodecimo: 
a–l8 2a–b8, ff. 104 ([Not H]R 11987; GW 13360; ISTC ih00357340)]; they both survive in 
few copies (three and one respectively), though they certainly had high print runs. 
Giglio received twelve copies in loose sheets, to sell at 12 soldi each (about 12 denari 
per sheet), and one already bound, to sell at £1 and 15 soldi, almost three times as much 
(35 denari per sheet).
Inforciato, see Justinianus.
73The Quaderneto of Padua
Instituta de la prima stampa, see Justinianus.
Instituta de la stampa de Venexia, see Justinianus.
Justinianus, Codex Justinianus (Codego; Codego ligato e miniado).
The first entries in the list refer to the complete set of the bestseller of law literature, 
the Corpus Iuris Civilis. The most convenient choice would be to assign all the vol-
umes to the same printer; however, neither Jacobus Rubeus nor Nicolaus Jenson, who 
printed this text before 1480, published the full set. If Jenson’s editions seem to be more 
recent (the printing dates are, indeed, inferred by the main incunable repertories), 
Rubeus’s ones are linked with Padua: the text was corrected and edited by professors 
and scholars of the Studium (Angelus de Ubaldis, Pietro da Trezzo and Matteo Albrizzi), 
and the manuscript gatherings were then sent to Venice to be printed.51 Since the peo-
ple intellectually and maybe also financially involved operated in Padua, it is highly 
probable that part of the print run was subsequently traded in this city. The Codex 
was published by Rubeus on 7 May 1478. Folio [Super-royal; printing in red and black; 
one-pull press]: a10 b–h8 i6 k–q8 2q10 3q8 r–z8 &6 [cum]6 A–P8 Q–T6/8, ff. 362 (HC 9601*; 
BMC V 217; GW 7725; IGI 5432; ISTC ij00576000). Giglio received two copies, one in 
loose sheets priced 3 ducats, £3 and 2 soldi (28.8 denari per sheet), the other bound, 
decorated and probably rubricated, since it was priced 6 ducats (70% more).
Justinianus, Digestum novum (Digesto novo).
Since the Digestum novum had not been printed by Jacobus Rubeus, the edition can be 
only that published in 1477 by Nicolaus Jenson. Folio [Super-royal; printing in red and 
black; one-pull press]: a–f 10 g12 h10 i12 k–p10 q–r6 s–z10 &10 [cum]10 [rum]10 A–B10 C8 
D6 E–Q10, ff. 410 (H 6581*; GW 7702; IGI 5450; ISTC ij00566000). The two copies avail-
able in the bookshop were to be sold for 2 ducats, £3 and 2 soldi (18.1 denari per sheet).
Justinianus, Digestum vetus (Digesti vegi).
The Digestum vetus probably belonged to the edition printed by Jacobus Rubeus in 
1477: folio [super-royal; one-pull press]: a10 b–f8 g–h10 i–o8 p–q10 r–x8 y10 z8 &10 [cum]8 
[rum]8 A–D8 E10 F–M8 N–O10 P–T8 U10 X8 2a–2d8 2e10, ff. 440 (H 9546*; BMC V 216; GW 
7657; IGI 5463; ISTC ij00547000). Notice should be taken also of the apparently more 
recent one published by Jenson between 1478 and 1480. Two copies were available and 
had to be sold for 4 ducats each, i.e. 27 denari per sheet.
51 See Rigoni, ‘Stampatori’, doc. XXVIII.
74 Peric
Justinianus, Infortiatum (Inforciato).
The Infortiatum was certainly available in Rubeus’s edition, since Jenson did not print 
this section of the ensemble. It was published on 31 May 1477. Folio [Super-royal; print-
ing in red and black; one-pull press]: a10 b–d8 e6 f8 g–h6 H8 i–n8 o–p10 q–s8 t–x10 y–z8 
&8 [cum]8 [rum]8 2a–2e8 2f–2g6 2G8 2h–2o8, ff. 338 (H 9564*; BMC V 216; GW 7679; IGI 
5474; ISTC ij00555500). One copy was left in the bookshop, to be sold at 2 ducats, £3 
and 2 soldi, i.e. 22 denari per sheet.
Justinianus, Institutiones (Instituta de la prima stampa).
The term ‘prima stampa’ in the list identified not necessarily the editio princeps of this 
text, but a more recent one than the other available in the shop, i.e. the Institutiones 
printed by Jacobus Rubeus in 1478 (see the following entry). The only plausible edition 
is that published by the same printer two years earlier in 1476. Folio [Royal; printing in 
red and black; one-pull press]: a–b10 c8 d6 e–f 10 g12 h10 j6 k8, ff. 90 (HC 9501*; GW 7592; 
IGI 5497; ISTC ij00514000). Giglio received one copy to sell at £4; the cost per sheet is 
21.3 denari.
Justinianus, Institutiones (Instituta de la stampa de Venexia).
This entry refers almost certainly to the edition of the Institutiones printed by Jacobus 
Rubeus in 1478, even though Jenson also published the same text between 1478 and 
1480. Folio [super-royal; printing in red and black; one-pull press]: a–b10 c8 d6 e–f 10 
g12 h10 i6 k8, ff. 90 (HC 9505*; BMC V 217; GW 7596; IGI 5499; ISTC ij00517000). Giglio 
received four copies to sell at £5 each (26.7 denari per sheet).
Justinianus, Novellae constitutiones; Codicis libri X–XII; Libri feudorum (Volume).
The volumen parvum was the fifth of the libri legales. The edition is again most likely 
to be that printed by Jacobus Rubeus in 1477. Folio [Super-royal; printing in red and 
black; one-pull press]: a10 b–d8 e10 2e10 f 10 g–h8 i–k10 l–n8 o12 q–u8 2t10 x–z8 &6 [cum]6 
2a–2b8, ff. 238 (HC 9624*; BMC V 216; GW 7754; IGI 5527; ISTC ij00592000). Another 
one, however, needs to be mentioned, that issued by the otherwise unknown Nicolaus 
Rubeus on 26 April 1479 (ISTC ij00593000). The price is fixed at 2 ducats for each of the 
two available copies (25 denari per sheet).
Logicheta de M(agistro) Paulo, see Paulus Venetus.
Officieti de la Madona, see Horae secundum usum romanum.
Officieti ligati, see Horae secundum usum romanum.
75The Quaderneto of Padua
Omnibonus Leonicenus, Commentum in Ciceronis Oratorem (Comenti de oratore).
The list refers here to the commentary on Cicero’s De Oratore written by the human- 
ist scholar Ognibene Bonisoli. The only edition of this text printed in the fifteenth 
century was published in 1476 in Vicenza, either by Johannes de Reno or by Leonardus 
Achates de Basilea. Folio [Chancery; one-pull press]: a6 b–c10 d–e8 f6 g10 h–i8 k6 l8 
m6 n–q8 r6 ſ6 2ſ6 s6 χſ8 t8 u10, ff. 176 (HC 10030* = HR 10030; BMC VII 1041; GW M27813; 
IGI 7000; ISTC il00171000). Giglio received five copies to sell at £3 and 10 soldi each, 
therefore the cost per sheet is 9.5 denari.
Paulus Pergulensis, Dubia. Add: Radulphus Strodus, Consequentiae (Dubi de M(agistro) 
Paulo con le consequentie de Strodo).
Among the major philosophical works of Paulus Pergulensis, pupil of Paulus Venetus, 
is the Dubia super consequentiis Strodi, a treatise on the work of Ralph Strode, which in 
1496 was declared compulsory reading for the faculty of arts at Padua University. The 
only compatible edition was published anonymously in Padua on 18 May 1477. Quarto 
[Median; one-pull press]: [a]8 b–e8 f–h6 i–k8 l6, ff. 80 (HC 12628 + H [not CR] 15093; 
BMC VII 919; GW M30243; IGI 7324; ISTC ip00197000). Giglio received six copies to sell 
at £2 each; the cost per sheet is 24 denari.
Paulus Venetus, Logica (Logicheta de M(agistro) Paulo).
The philosopher from Udine Paolo Nicoletti (1369–1429) wrote important treatises on 
logic, including Logica magnaand Logica parva. The latter had a strong influence on 
the teaching of Aristotelian logic and was adopted from 1496 as compulsory reading 
at Padua University. The edition is that printed in Venice by Christophorus Arnoldus 
in about 1476. Quarto [Chancery]: a–h8 i–k6, ff. 76 (GW M30352; IGI VI 7349-A, ISTC 
ip00222000). Giglio received three copies of this text to sell at £1 and 5 soldi each; the 
cost per sheet thus was 15.2 denari.
Secundo de Bonaventura, see Bonaventura.
Sermoneta, see Sermoneta, Alexander.
Sermoneta, Alexander, Super consequentiis Strodi commentum (Sermoneta).
The text to which the list refers only by the author’s name is Super consequentiis Strodi 
commentum by Alexander Sermoneta, a commentary to the Consequentiae; this was 
a treatise on syllogism written by Ralph Strode, a logic and philosophy teacher of 
English origin who lived in the second half of the fourteenth century. The edition was 
certainly that published in Padua by an unidentified printer in 1477. Quarto [Median; 
one pull press]: a–f6, ff. 36 ([Not H]CR 15093; BMC VII 919; GW M44117; IGI 8934; ISTC 
is00474000). Giglio received five copies to sell at £1 each (26.7 denari per sheet).
76 Peric
Sexto de la stampa de Roma, see Bonifacius VIII.
Speculum iuris cum aditionibus, see Duranti, Guillelmus.
Ubaldis, Baldus de, Additiones super Speculo Guillelmi Durantis (Additiones Baldi).
Baldus de Ubaldis, a jurist and pupil of Bartolus de Saxoferrato wrote, together with 
Johannes Andreae, a number of additions and supplements to the Speculum Iudiciale 
by Guillelmus Duranti, a summary of procedural law. These were usually incorporated 
in the relevant parts of the text, so that it was impossible to isolate the original from 
the interpolations. In this case, however, the reference is to a separate and independ-
ent edition containing only the additions of Baldus de Ubaldis. The only one with the 
said characteristic was published by Ulrich Han and Simon Chardella in Rome around 
1473. Folio [Royal; one-pull press]: a10 b8 c–g10 h–i8 k6, ff. 90 (H 2336*; GW M48446; 
IGI 9991; ISTC iu00012000). Giglio received one copy to sell at £3; the cost per sheet is 
16 denari.
Volume, see Justinianus.
Part 2
Incunabula as Objects
∵
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_006
Chapter 4
Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
Andrea Vilcsek
1 Introduction
Bookbindings are part of our cultural heritage: they provide information on 
where, when, by whom and for whom a book was bound. Furthermore, in each 
era of history bindings have been witnesses to human attitudes towards both 
written traditions and to books as objects.
I have examined the library collection with Zsuzsanna Tóth, a colleague in 
the conservation studio of the National Széchényi Library (NSZL), from the 
point of view of their bindings, focussing on both the technology used to make 
them and on their decorations. Regarding the technical side, we describe the 
characteristics of each part of a book: covering, board, spine, fastenings, titling, 
bookblock (textblock, sewing, edges, endleaves, bookmark) and endband, 
while for the decorative aspect, we have made pencil rubbings, taken photos 
and compiled plates of tools.1 We are looking for connections between bind-
ings from the starting point of the different tools used, but take into consider-
ation the technique of the binding as well.2
1 Our knowledge of the history of Hungarian bookbinding is based on the fundamental 
research of Éva Koroknay, who mainly studied Hungarian Renaissance bindings. See Éva 
Koroknay, Magyar reneszánsz könyvkötések (Budapest: MTAK, 1973). Nowadays, Marianne 
Rozsondai is the most prominent expert on decorated Hungarian bindings. Her expansive 
survey of bookbinding in Hungary (Marianne Rozsondai, A magyar könyvkötés a gótikától 
a művészkönyvekig [Budapest: MTAK-Kossuth, 2020]) has been published with a sum-
mary in English: ‘Bookbinding in Hungary from Gothic Style to Object Books’, pp. 529–538. 
Erzsébet Muckenhaupt researches the bindings held in the libraries of Romania: Erzsébet 
Muckenhaupt, A csíksomlyói ferences könyvtár kincsei (Budapest-Kolozsvár: Balassi- 
Polis, 1999).
2 We write binding descriptions for the library catalogue. In 2018, while preparing for our exhi-
bition called ‘The Corvinian Library and the Workshop of Buda’, we examined books from 
the library of King Matthias (corvinas) and launched a new corvina homepage , accessed 12 March 2021. The NSZL keeps 37 of the ca. 200 extant corvinas, 
and all of these are accessible with a detailed description in Hungarian and English of the 
binding.
https://corvina.hu/en/front/
https://corvina.hu/en/front/
80 Vilcsek
In the present chapter, I attempt to demonstrate the most important ten-
dencies in Hungarian bookbinding between 1450s and 1526, while also describ-
ing some representative bindings of our collection. Hungarian bindings of this 
period show a certain stylistic similarity. Historical events, in particular the 
Ottoman victory over Hungary in 1526 at the battle of Mohács and the capture 
of Buda in 1541, were defining moments in Hungarian history, and the follow-
ing Ottoman rule had a decisive influence also on circumstances and possibil-
ities of Hungarian bookbinding.
2 The Incunabula Period
The approximately fifty-year long incunabula period saw a relatively rapid 
transition from manuscripts to print, and bookbinders started to make simpli-
fications in the binding process. Bookbinders had to keep up with the quickly 
growing number of books, which resulted in some experimental binding prac-
tices during this period.3 Nonetheless, the simplification of the binding process 
occurred at a much slower rate than the actual spread of printing itself and 
handmade bookbindings remained dominant up until the nineteenth century. 
Some technical changes in both the binding process and cover decoration 
were developed and dispersed during the sixteenth century. Initially, small 
single tools were used for the decoration of the boards, first separately, then 
later in combination. Even later, larger single tools with compound motifs 
appeared. The evolution of the floral lozenge motif in Southern Germany is a 
good example of such a development. In Hungary, the knotwork motif became 
compound at the end of the fifteenth century; the larger compound knotwork 
motifs started to fill wide frames, replacing the tiny little knotwork tools.
Finally, it was not until the sixteenth century that some innovations 
appeared in Hungary: the roll in the first half of the century, and the plate in 
the second half.
Traditional techniques, which were more complex, were used when produc-
ing more decorated and elaborate bindings, while for more common books 
3 Not only the invention of the printing caused the increasing number of books. Paul Needham 
claims that the production of handwritten books increased considerably before the inven-
tion of printing, mentioning the German monastic reform, the expansion of Europe’s paper-
making trade and the growing number of ‘less formal, “self-written” books’ as explanation. 
Paul Needham, ‘Prints in the Early Printing Shops’, in Peter W. Parshall (ed.), The Woodcut in 
Fifteenth-century Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 41–42. As he specifies, 
the years between 1451 and 1470 mark a peak in the production of handwritten books. The 
decline in the 1470s evidently correlates with the strong increase in printed book production.
81Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
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intended for everyday use, simpler techniques and even shortcuts were used. 
Also,the use of cheaper materials such as paper coverings, paperboards and 
cord sewing supports, and simpler technical solutions like single instead of 
double sewing support, by-pass sewing, then two-on instead of all-along 
sewing appeared and spread quite slowly. Most of these came into practice 
after the incunabula period, during which we only saw the beginning of these 
tendencies.
Both German and Italian bookbinding traditions are of primary impor-
tance to Hungarian bookbinding. I will first present a brief overview of these 
traditions, focussing on their main characteristics, their similarities and their 
differences.4
3 Late Gothic German Bindings
Due to historical circumstances, many incunable bindings from Germany are 
held in the NSZL. We hold volumes from bookbinderies in Ammensleben, 
Cologne, Liesborn, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Werden and some unidentified 
German workshops.5
The use of calf and sheep or goat skin as coverings is characteristic of 
these bindings, as are thick, square wooden boards made especially of oak. 
According to my observations, in the case of many Nuremberg bindings the 
outer side of the spine edge is partly bevelled (slip bevel), and the gatherings 
have been sewn on cord sewing supports. The German books are fastened by 
two hook-type right-to-left clasps, and metal furniture was common. There are 
recesses on the boards for the straps, and sometimes for the catchplates, while 
the thongs are fixed by rectangular anchor plates. Rounded spine and several 
sewing supports are also typical of several German workshops. According to 
my observations, the Benedictine monks of the Monastery of Liesborn, for 
4 My statements are based on the books in the collection of NSZL, and the fundamental refer-
ence works concerning bookbinding techniques, János Szirmai, The Archeology of Medieval 
Bookbindings (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 1999) and Julia Miller, Books Will Speak Plain. 
A Handbook for Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings (Ann Arbor: The Legacy Press, 
2014).
5 For identification first of all I use the database Einbanddatenbank (EBDB): , accessed 12 March 2021; and for the Koberger binding: Marianne 
Rozsondai, Anton Koberger működése és a Koberger-kötések problémaja (Budapest: MTA, 
1978); for monastic bindings: Erzsébet Soltész, ‘Spätgotische Einbände des Benedik-
tinerklosters Liesborn’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 71 (1996), pp. 255–266; Erzsébet Soltész, ‘Gotische 
Blindstempeleinbände der Klosterbuchbinderei Böddeken in der Széchényi Nationalbib-
liothek zu Budapest’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 72 (1997), pp. 298–302.
https://www.hist-einband.de/en/
https://www.hist-einband.de/en/
83Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
example, made extremely rounded spines. The edges were often painted yel-
low, although because of the use of orpiment, this yellow colour has often 
faded. The endbands vary. Single motifs decorate the bindings, typically an 
eagle, a griffin, a dragon, a deer, a lamb, Saints, Evangelists, a rosette, a pome-
granate, various flower stems or leaves. One of the most familiar board dec-
oration patterns is the diamond-net, where diagonal fillets divide the cover 
into lozenge compartments. Another frequently used decoration structure is 
the so-called Nuremberg type: the upper cover floral lozenge (Rautengerank) is 
filled with flower stems of ornamental foliage, while the lower cover is divided 
by fillets into diamonds.6
4 Italian Renaissance Bindings
Thanks to Hungarian humanists, Hungarian collections contain some origi-
nal Italian Renaissance bindings, and despite the small number, from the 
point of view of fifteenth-century Hungarian books, these items are crucially 
important. They arrived in Hungary in the second half of the fifteenth century, 
and many belonged to King Matthias’s library, the Bibliotheca Corvina. Thus, 
they were models, undoubtedly, for the royal bookbindery, although other 
6 See Ernst Philip Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance Book Bindings (London, 1928; reprint 
Amsterdam, 1967), p. 20.
Figure 4.2 A bookbinding from a workshop in Werden; NSZL Inc. 502
84 Vilcsek
Hungarian bookbinders were also influenced by them. In this way, they serve 
as the starting point of my inquiry.7
Many of our Italian bindings seem to belong to a certain decorative style, 
which, according to Hobson, was developed in Florence.8 This style, known 
as ‘alla fiorentina’, is rooted in the Islamic tradition, and its distinctive char-
acteristics are the punch-gilt or coloured on-lay circles which enliven the 
blind-tooled board decoration. On the cover, we usually find an emphatic cen-
tral motive, such as an eight-pointed star in the earliest examples. After 1450, a 
round centrepiece came into use, and later, in the 1460s and 1470s, a double cir-
cle and a quadrilobe could be found on the books. As Hobson claims, this style 
disappeared rapidly, giving way to the humanistic decorative style in the 1490s.
The examined books bound in the Florentine style are all blind-tooled.9
7 I have also used the following: Anthony Hobson, Humanists and Bookbinders. The Origins 
and Diffusion of the Humanistic Bookbindings 1459–1559, (Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1989); Anthony Hobson, ’Italian Fifteenth-century Bookbindings’, Renaissance Studies 
9 (June 1995), pp. 129–136; Anthony Hobson, ‘Die italienische Einbandkunst des 15. und 16. 
Jahrhunderts und ihre Verbindung mit Deutschland’, Einband-Forschung 25 (April 2009), 
pp. 41–53; Priscilla Anderson, ‘Fifteenth-century Bookbinding Structure in Italy and the 
Netherlands: A Survey of Manuscripts and Printed Books’, The Book and Paper Group Annual 
18 (1999), pp. 1–10; Tammaro de Marinis, La legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli 15 e 16. Notizi 
ed elenchi (Florence: Fratelli Alinari, 1960).
8 See Hobson, Humanists and Bookbinders, pp. 19–21.
9 Three of the examined manuscripts were copied in Florence in the 1460s and 1470s and 
were connected with a Hungarian humanist; see Cod. Lat. 415 with Johannes Vitéz, see 
Edina Zsupán, The Corvina Library and the Buda Workshop. Guide to the Exhibition (Budapest: 
NSZL, 2019), p. 186; Cod. Lat. 418 with György Handó, see Zsupán, The Corvina, p. 194; EKK,
Figure 4.3 A bookbinding from a workshop in Florence; NSZL Cod. Lat. 415
85Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
Only small stamps with ornamental motifs were used. Their rich and ele-
gant board decoration combines relatively few motifs: a double circle, a dotted 
S-tool, a small saltire with rope motif, and straight and curved knotwork. On 
most of these books, we see reddish punch-gilt ornaments. The most typical 
central ornament is the circle, but we also find a double circle, a lozenge and 
a rectangle filled with small tools. The frame of the central panel is typically 
wider on the shorter sides. The frame at these sides is full of tiny ornamenta-
tions tooled by small stamps.
All in all, the bindings in our collection help us define the following North- 
Italian, and particularly Florentine features. The books have been sewn 
all-along with kettle stitches, on alum-tawed white leather sewing supports, 
and the sewing is straight and packed. We see a reduced number of sewing 
supports. The slips of the sewing supports lie in outer channels, or enter a 
tunnel leading to an outer channel. The spine is flat or slightly rounded. The 
wooden boards are thin, or at least considerably thinner than the German 
ones. Characteristically, the boards are made of beech wood. The board edges 
are bevelled from the inside, the covering is usually made of goatskin, and 
clasps hinge from the front cover. Short ends of the full height transverse spine 
linings are glued on the outer side of the boards. The endbands show less vari-
ety than the German ones. The secondary endband is often compound. The 
alum-tawed white leather endband core is fixed with a tiedown in each gather-
ing. There is no furnishing.
Italian bindings in ourcollection have, without exception, a tongued 
corner.10 Hooked-type clasps are fixed at three edges of the boards. The books 
have trefoiled shaped brass catchplates on the lower cover. Red or green textile 
straps are recessed and fixed with nails only on the upper cover. A special kind 
of hook-clasp features the Italian Renaissance bindings: the front part of the 
catchplate recurves, and the rectangular catch on the strap is also curved and 
joins the catchplate like a claw, which is why this kind of hook-clasp is called a 
‘claw’ in Hungarian.11
 Győr Armadio I No. 1 with Péter Garázda, see Zsupán, The Corvina, p. 190. The corvina 
Cod 799 and 2458 (National Library of Austria, Vienna) show similar characteristics to the 
books of the group described above. We have more blind-tooled Italian leather bindings 
from other workshops (NSZL Cod. Lat. 344, Inc. 143, 197, 331).
10 From the point of view of identification, a tongued corner seems to be of special impor-
tance. Anderson claims that the Italian bindings she examined have mitred corners.
11 Georg Adler calls this kind of catch ‘Wulst-Lager’ in his book about fastenings. See Georg 
Adler, Handbuch Buchverschluss und Buchbeschlag (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 
2010), pp. 23–24. See also Zsuzsanna Tóth, Csatok és veretek könyvkötéseken (Budapest: 
NSZL, 2011), pp. 24–27.
86 Vilcsek
5 Hungarian Bindings
For the most part, only documentary evidence of bookbinding activity has 
survived from the Hungarian Romanesque Period, although some treasure 
bindings, velvet-covered bindings with metal fittings and undecorated leather 
bindings did survive from the twelfth to the first half of the fifteenth century.12 
Identification of the leather bindings from this period is difficult due to most 
having been undecorated, or decorated only with blind-tooled fillets; it is also 
possible that the books in these simple bindings might have been rebound at a 
later date. As for Hungarian Gothic and early Renaissance bookbinding styles 
(1450s–1480s), only a few bindings from each have survived.
Throughout most of Europe, the change from Gothic to Renaissance 
styles took place in the first decades of the sixteenth century, although the 
Renaissance style occurred even earlier in Hungary and Italy.13 The Hungarian 
royal bindery, influenced by the Italian production, bound books continuously 
in the Renaissance style from the 1480s. The bookbinding workshops of Buda, 
and also the other workshops around the capital, gradually followed suit, while 
at the same time, monastic binderies were still decorating their books in the 
Gothic style.
5.1 Gothic Bookbindings
Due to historical circumstances, most of the extant Hungarian Gothic bindings 
were produced by monastic bookbinding workshops in Northern Hungary. 
These workshops were greatly influenced by the German bookbinding tradi-
tion, and the decoration of the bindings also implies a connection with Vienna.
The German technical features from the second half of the fifteenth cen-
tury listed above are also characteristic of Hungarian Gothic bindings. Still, 
we can observe some minor deviations: Hungarian Gothic bindings are often 
made from beech board covered by goatskin, and almost never have animal 
or human figures as decoration. The tools show the following motifs: various 
kinds of flowers (four, five or six petals, a rosette, a lily), leaves, floral lozenges 
and script ribbons.
12 See József Hunyady, A magyar könyvkötés művészete a mohácsi vészig (Budapest: Attila, 
1937).
13 Spanish bookbindings show a similarity. Gold-tooling has been used in Mudéjar bind-
ings since the 1490s; see Mirjam Foot, ‘A Spanish Mudéjar Binding of the End of the 
Fifteenth Century’, in Studies in the History of Bookbinding (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 
1993), pp. 179–181, and Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance, Plate VII.
87Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
The presence of the Z (‘Haken’) tool, the lace (‘Spitz’), and the headed out-
line tool demonstrate the close connection with Vienna, as do also the diagonal 
stripes filled with tools. Goldschmidt noticed this typical Viennese arrange-
ment, and Kurt Holter dated it to the third quarter of the fifteenth century. 
Holter also emphasised the regular use of the ‘Kopfstempel’ motif in Vienna 
within this period.14 This motive also appears often on our Gothic bindings 
from the eastern cities of the Hungarian Kingdom.
In Kassa (today Košice, Slovakia), a Dominican workshop was in operation, 
from which twenty books have been identified, and three of these are now in 
our incunabula collection.15
14 ‘Headed outline tool’ is Goldschmidt’s term. See Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance, 
p. 18. Weale calls this tool ‘cusped edge stamp’, the German term is ‘Kopfstempel’. I will 
use the last one here. See Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance, p. 19 and Kurt Holter, 
‘Verzierte Wiener Bucheinbände der Spätgotik und Frührenaissance’, Codices manuscripti 
(Sonderheft 1977), p. 15. I have found some Viennese bindings from this type in the collec-
tion of NSZL: Inc. 13, Inc. 85, Inc. 107, Inc. 151 and Inc. 799. It seems that some main char-
acteristics of the late Gothic Viennese bindings are different from the German tradition: 
beech boards were used, and thongs were fixed by nails. Curved step-like clasp bevels at 
the board edges emerged in the period.
15 See Rozsondai, A magyar könyvkötés, pp. 50–61. These are: Inc. 512: Johannes Nider, 
Sermones de tempore et de sanctis cum quadragesimali, ([Strasbourg]: Printer of the 
1483 Jordanus de Quedlinburg [= Georg Husner], not after 1483). ISTC in00221000; USTC 
747512; GW M26967. Inc. 629: Gaius Sallustius Crispus, De coniuratione Catilinae; De 
bello Jugurthino. In Ciceronem invectiva. Pseudo-Cicero: In Sallustiam invectiva, (Venice, 
Bernardinus Benalius et socii, 23 April 1485). ISTC is00072000; USTC 991416; GW M39588. 
Figure 4.4 A bookbinding from a workshop in Košice; NSZL Inc. 1344
88 Vilcsek
The workshop produced blind-tooled Gothic bindings. Thirteen small 
stamps appear on the boards with the following motifs: a rosette, a lily, vari-
ous kinds of flowers and leaves, lace, and an eagle. The decoration scheme is 
similar to that of the bindings from Vienna: a diagonal stripe filled with flo-
ral motifs divides the board into diamond-shaped and/or triangular sections. 
The binding technique derives from that of the medieval period. The books 
have square, wooden boards, the external side of their spine edge is steeply 
bevelled and the fastenings on the fore-edge are right-to-left, while traces of a 
chain suggest they were used in a monastery. The textblocks are sewn on white 
leather straps, the sewings are packed, straight and all-along. There is a dou-
ble sewing thread in their first and their last two gatherings. The slips of the 
sewing supports enter the boards over the bevelled spine edge on the external 
side, and exit them on the inner side, where they are laid in a tunnel and fixed 
with a wooden peg. There is a single sewing support near to each end of the 
spine, while between them we find two or three double supports. This pattern 
of the sewing supports confirms their attribution to a provincial workshop of 
the fifteenth century.16 The full height transverse linings are glued down on the 
inner face of the boards. In the earliest printed books, inner parchment guides 
support the quires.
In the same period, there was another monastic bookbinding workshop in 
Lőcse (today Levoča, Slovakia). Nine books are known to have come from this 
bookbindery.17 Two of these are two different volumes of Petrus Lombardus’s 
Sententiae, in almost identical bindings.18
Both their binding structure and the decoration style belong to the 
Gothic style. The decoration is blind-tooled and the design of both boards is 
Bound with: Publius Vergilius Maro, Opera [Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis, with argumenta] 
(comm. Servius). Maphaeus Vegius: Liber XIII Aeneidos. Additionaltexts (Venice: Thomas 
de Blavis, 24 December 1484). ISTC iv00176000; USTC 989998; GW M49817. Inc. 1344: 
Hieronymus, Epistolae ([Strasbourg: Johann Mentelin, not after 1469]). ISTC ih00162000; 
USTC 745720; GW 12422.
16 The sewing structure mentioned is especially found on South German bindings. The sin-
gle supports at each end of the spine, which are otherwise sewn on double supports, 
are called ‘Kapitalbünde’. See Nicholas Pickwoad, ‘Tacketed Bindings. A Hundred Years 
of European Bookinding’, in David Pearson (ed.), ‘For the Love of the Binding’: Studies in 
Bookbinding History Presented to Mirjam Foot (London: British Library, Oak Knoll Press, 
2000), p. 16; and under ‘Kapitalbünde’ in , 
accessed 21 March 2021.
17 See Rozsondai, A magyar könyvkötés, pp. 75–82.
18 Inc. 558 c/1 and /2: Petrus Lombardus, Sententiarum libri IV. Johannes Beckenhaub: 
Tabula. Articuli in Anglia et Parisiis condemnati ([Nuremberg]: Anton Koberger, [after 
2 March 1491]). ISTC ip00486000; USTC 748100; GW M32527.
https://www.ligatus.org.uk/lob/concept/1406
89Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
determined by two frames. While the centre of the upper cover is filled with 
a floral lozenge, the lower cover’s centre is divided into diamonds by fillets. 
Eleven small tools decorate the boards: rosettes, lilies, leaves and a lace orna-
ment similar to the one used in Kassa, along with plants and a lion inside a 
rhombus. The spine edges of the boards are bevelled widely on the outer face, 
while the free edges are square. The books have been fastened by two pairs of 
right-to-left brass fastening clasps, and under the catchplates there are only 
minute recesses on the upper cover where the hooks are fastened. The leather 
thongs are fixed on the right board by a rectangle anchor plate. An impres-
sion mark of a chain is visible on the lower cover. The books have been sewn 
all-along on four double, white leather sewing supports with kettle stitches. 
The first and the second quires were sewn with a double sewing thread, and 
they contain an inner parchment guard. The slips of the sewing supports enter 
the boards above the bevelled spine edge, and travel in a channel in the inner 
face of the board. The edges are painted yellow, the endleaf is a sewn one-leaf 
text-hook, while the full height transverse linings are glued down on the inner 
face of the boards. The spines of the books are just slightly curved and have 
no endbands.
5.2 Renaissance Bookbindings
The influence of the Renaissance style appeared in Hungarian bookbinding 
relatively early, primarily due to humanistic Hungarian noblemen who had 
significant libraries. One of them, the king’s tutor, advocated inviting the 
Figure 4.5 A bookbinding from a workshop in Levoča; NSZL Inc. 558c
90 Vilcsek
German printer Andreas Hess to Buda.19 Renaissance features in Hungarian 
bookbinding appear first in the 1470s. A bookbinder called Master Egidus 
bound several books for Johannes Vitéz, and began making bindings in the 
Renaissance style.20 The centralized board decoration structure resembles 
some Italian bindings: single tools arranged in a cross form, surrounded by a 
wide frame filled with ornamentation. Applied Gothic motifs are character-
istic of these Hungarian bindings. A fine piece from our collection was made 
in Master Egidus’s workshop, and later became a part of the royal library. The 
decoration structure used on both the left and right boards of Cod. Lat. 412 is 
identical. The Renaissance central field features free gothic leaves organized in 
a cross shape, and the surrounding wide frame is composed of flower stems, 
smaller and larger peltate leaves and acorns. The Renaissance chevron end-
band is sewn with green and red threads. The boards are thin, but they are not 
bevelled, and the book was originally fastened with three pairs of left-to-right 
fastening clasps. Its green textile ribbons survive in fragments; they had been 
fastened to the board with three nails each. The impression of the oblong 
catchplates on the right board, which does not fit the above described Italian 
Renaissance style, is of special importance.
Another characteristic feature of the surviving early Renaissance bindings 
is a different kind of centralized board decoration, also composed of Gothic 
motifs, but with an enclosed circle as a central ornament. The shorter sides of 
the oblong central field are wider and filled with floral ornaments.21
5.2.1 Bindings of the Reign of King Matthias
The Hungarian King Matthias (1443–1490) established a powerful kingdom 
between 1458 and 1490. He invited Italian humanists to live and work and built 
his renowned Renaissance royal court in Buda. His library, the Bibliotheca 
Corvina, was the first Renaissance library outside Italy. The bindings of the 
books dedicated to him were incomparable, first and foremost because of their 
oriental-inspired, richly gilded decorations. Therefore, in the second half of 
the fifteenth century, Buda became the centre of Hungarian bookbinding.
19 All around the world, only eleven copies are known of The Chronica Hungarorum, (ISTC 
ic00484900; USTC 76065; GW 6686), which was the first product of Hess’s printing press 
in 1473.
20 See EBDB w007113, and Holter, group G2.
21 Inc. 106: Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum historiale ([Strasbourg]: Johann Mentelin, 
[1473]). ISTC iv00283000; USTC 749713; GW M50587. This item belongs to the so-called 
Lucanus group. Inc. 109: Johannes de Bromyard, Summa praedicantium ([Basel: Johann 
Amerbach, not after 1484]). ISTC ij00260000; USTC 746252; GW M13114.
91Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
As shown by recent research, the library was conceived at the end of the 
1480s.22 From that time onward, the appearance of the volumes was to a 
great extent uniform. Since we do not know a comparable number of bind-
ings from any other Hungarian bookbinderies of this period, the corvinas are 
extremely important for the history of Hungarian bookbinding. In this time, 
there was a royal bookbindery in the Castle of Buda, where books had been 
splendidly bound and rebound in painted and gilded leather, velvet and silk. 
Unsurprisingly, these bindings display an Italian influence both in technique 
and decoration.23 Such Italian-style bindings were no longer produced in 
Hungary after the reign of Matthias.
22 See Zsupán, The Corvina, pp. 100–101. Edina Zsupán, ‘A budai műhely’, in Edina Zsupán 
(ed.), „Az ország díszére”. A Corvina könyvtár budai műhelye (Budapest: NSZL Publishing 
House, 2020), p. 32.
23 It is said that Neapolitan examples probably inspired the gold-tooled bindings produced 
for King Matthias. See Paul Needham, Twelve Centuries of Bookbindings, (New York and 
London, 1979), no. 31. Beatrice of Naples (also known as Beatrice of Aragon; 1457–1508) 
married King Matthias in 1476; she had a significant influence over her husband and 
the royal court. See Klára Pajorin, ‘Mátyás és Beatrix. Hatalom és házasság’, Tiszatáj, 63 
(2009), pp. 68–77. In Italy the practice had long been to use liquid and dry powered gold 
for the decoration of book covers. The new technique of hot gilding, impressing with 
heated tools through a gold leaf, emerged in Italy in the second half of the fifteenth cen-
tury. According to Mirjam Foot it came first to Florence early in the fifteenth century, then 
to Venice and Bologna in the second half of the century, and to Naples and Rome in the 
1480s and 1490s. (See M. Foot, ‘A Spanish Mudéjar Binding’, p. 179) Giulia Bologna claims 
Figure 4.6 A leather Corvina binding from the royal workshop in Buda; NSZL 
Cod. Lat. 370
92 Vilcsek
In some parts of the book, the velvet and the leather coverings involve dif-
ferent technical methods, although some technical features are common to all 
corvinas. The books were sewn all-along on double, white leather sewing sup-
ports with kettle stitches. The sewing is packed and straight. Endbandcores, 
also made of white leather, were attached to the textblock in a separate session 
in such a way that tiedowns were made in every gathering above the cross-over 
station. Green and red (now faded) silk threads, and one silver thread, gilded 
on one side and wrapped around a yellow silk gut thread, were used for the 
embroidery of the endband.24 Endleaves are formed by one-fold sheets, sewn 
to the quires, and trimmed to a smaller size than the textblock. The short 
ends of the full height transverse leather spine linings are pasted down on 
the external side of the boards. The spine of the books might be straight or 
shaped with a gentle curve. The head and tail segments are identical. Boards 
are made of beech wood, with wide book squares, and there are internal bevels 
along the edges. The books were fastened by four pairs of left-to-right fastening 
clasps. The clasps of the corvinas belong to the claw-form hooked clasp-type. 
Originally, these clasps had leather thongs, or green or red ribbon straps, and 
although recesses have been made to accommodate the clasp straps and rib-
bons, none were made for them on the board edges.
In case of velvet bindings, the cover is not decorated, while the edge is gilded, 
adorned with red, green and blue floral patterns and gauffered.25 The fore-edge 
of the books feature abbreviations of the author and the title. Secondary sew-
ing endband of chevron were applied. The sewing supports had been led in 
at the edge of the boards, and recessed into the outer level of the boards. The 
straps were fixed with brass nails on the left board. Trefoiled form catchplates 
had usually been mounted; we find the same ones on the above-mentioned 
Florentine books.
Some technical differences between the velvet and the leather bound corvi-
nas, especially the fixing of the sewing supports, not only suggest that at least 
two Italian bookbinders, or ones who had practised in Italy, were working for 
that the Aragonese courts in Naples, Florence and Milan were the pioneers, and then 
Venice established its pre-eminence in the art of producing bindings hot-pressed with 
gold by the end of the fifteenth century. (See Giulia Bologna, ‘Gold in Book Binding. The 
Origins of the Craft’, Gold Bulletin, 15 (1982), pp. 25–30.
24 An examination carried out in 1995 identified the exact materials. See Ildikó Kozocsa, 
‘Data on the Bindings of King Matthias Codices’, Műtárgyvédelem (2001), pp. 105–114.
25 The Cod. Lat. 627 (Bavarian State Library, Munich) corvina is bound in greenish blue vel-
vet, and its edges are gilded and gauffered but not painting. This is a quite important 
exception because until now it has been believed that all velvet-bound corvinas have 
painted edges.
93Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
King Matthias, but also that the velvet-covered books were most likely made 
at an earlier time.26
In case of leather bindings, the edge is gauffered and gilded on all three 
sides, a rosette or other floral pattern is pressed in each diamond, and the end-
bands are compound. The sewing supports have been laid in recesses running 
on the outer face of the boards. This elegant method of fixing the strap and 
the clasp is quite unique; not even the Italian bindings which served as mod-
els had used such techniques. On the corvinas, the straps and the clasps were 
fixed on the wooden boards and the cover leather was only pulled on after-
wards. The resulting effect is that the components themselves are invisible and 
do not break the unity of the decoration. The bindings are richly gilded and 
painted, and the decoration is identical on the left and the right boards.27 All 
leather-covered corvinas featuring a central panel design have a similar board 
decoration scheme. Characteristic are the rows of gilded or blue or green 
on-lay leather circles, and a broader frame filled with knotwork patterns. On 
the shorter edges of the board the knotwork frame is wider, while it is thinner 
on the longer edges. The decoration of the large surface was created by press-
ing the tiny, one to two millimetre-long single tools one by one next to each 
other. The oblong central field features gilded corner ornaments filled with 
plant motifs. The central decoration is surrounded by leather on-lay circles and 
gilded frames, which were usually a row of tulips. The central panel is filled 
with a network of gilded plant motifs: tulips, a calyx flower, rosettes, leaves, 
peltate leaves, a palmette. The decoration is made up of single tools. In the cen-
tre of the central decoration is a coat of arms (Hungarian and Bohemian, or, 
occasionally, of the Hunyadi family), and the crown is located above this. The 
sphinx motif and some architectural elements such as egg-and-dart, dentil-
work and astragal, must have only appeared later; consequently, bindings fea-
turing these motifs can be considered as late among the known leather-bound 
corvinas.28 Our most comprehensive table of the tools used on Matthias-era 
gilded leather corvina bindings contains 49 tools.29
26 Linguistic errors in the titling suggest that the bookbinder must have had Italian as his 
mother tongue. (See Marianne Rozsondai, ‘Über die Einbände der in München aufbe-
wahrten Corvinen’, in Claudia Fabian and Edina Zsupán (eds.), Ex Bibliotheca Corviniana. 
Die acht Münchener Handschriften aus dem Besitz von König Matthias Corvinus (Budapest: 
NSZL, 2008), pp. 143–152.
27 The only difference is the gilded titling.
28 See Árpád Mikó, ‘A Bibliotheca Corviniana és az aranyozott corvina-kötések’, in 
Judit Nyerges, Attila Verók, Edina Zvara (eds.), MONOKgráfia (Budapest: Kossuth, 2016), 
pp. 510–514.
29 The plate of tools was compiled during the preparations for the large-scale Corvina 
Exhibition of 2018. The compilation of the table was made possible by former research 
and the professional advice and guidance of Marianne Rozsondai.
94 Vilcsek
5.2.2 Transition to the Renaissance: Beyond the Capital
The appearance of Renaissance style features was mainly restricted to the 
capital, although a few workshops outside Buda also displayed some of these 
characteristics.
There was a bookbinding workshop in the northern region of the Hungarian 
Kingdom called ‘Concentric Kopfstempel workshop’ after the typical decora-
tion scheme it employed.30 Based on the provenances of the books, and also the 
notes contained within them, the workshop has been localised to Bratislava.31 
Nine incunabula bindings are known from this bindery. Taking into account 
the imprint dates of the incunabula, the bindery was active from the second 
half of the 1480s to the end of the 1490s. Two of these works, which are con-
tained within four volumes, are held in the National Széchényi Library.32
Their centralized board decoration structure, identical on the right and 
the left boards, with multiple circles in the middle and also the presence of a 
double circle tool, establish the Renaissance character of the bindings. Also, 
the step-like clasp bevels on the upper cover are unambiguously Hungarian 
characteristics of the late fifteenth century. However, some earlier technical 
features such as the square boards, the tab-like extension on the spine of the 
leather covering, and the sewing thread turning without kettle stitches at the 
ends of the gatherings, are also visible.
The Kopfstempel and the lace motif rows support the localisation of this 
workshop as being in a place close to Vienna. The painted knotwork and the 
Kopfstempel motifs on the covering of Inc. 623 resemble a binding by Ulrich 
Schreier, a bookbinder who originally worked in Vienna before later moving 
to Bratislava.
A well-established bookbinding workshop was in operation in a Carthusian 
monastery during the fifteenth century in Lövöld (today Városlőd), in 
North-western Hungary. The bindings from this workshop have already been 
studied intensively from the 1960s.33 Up to now, twelve bindings have been 
30 See Koroknay, Magyar reneszánsz, pp.PhD on the medieval manuscripts 
of the Roman de Troie. Her first library post was at the Brotherton Library, 
University of Leeds, followed by posts at University of Warwick Library. She 
completed the MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL in 2011, returning 
to study for the HE Certificate in Astronomy 2017–2019.
Andrea Vilcsek
is a book conservator and researcher of bookbinding history at the National 
Széchényi Library (Budapest, Hungary). She graduated as a literary historian 
from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and as a publishing editor 
from the University of Pécs. She has also completed a professional course in 
conservation-restoration of paper and books. After working a few years as a 
conservator in the commercial book-market, she joined the book conservation 
department of NSzL in 2016. Her main interest is the stylistic analysis of book-
bindings, especially of cover decoration and binding techniques.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_002
Introduction
Anette I. Hagan
Europe’s earliest printed books have been the subject of research at least since 
the eighteenth century and continue to fascinate scholars, curators and con-
servators alike. Scotland, of course, did not produce any incunabula; the earli-
est books printed in Scotland, the Chepman and Myllar prints, are dated 1508. 
Nevertheless, there are outstanding collections of incunabula in Scotland. The 
largest number by far are held in Glasgow: Glasgow University Library, which 
showcased some 70 of its incunabula in the ‘Ingenious Impressions’ exhibition 
in 2015, together with another five libraries and museums in Glasgow, hold the 
country’s richest incunabula collections in public hands.1
In October 2018, the National Library of Scotland held a one-day seminar in 
Edinburgh dedicated to the study of incunabula in order to mark the comple-
tion of the cataloguing of the National Library’s collection of over 600 incu-
nabula; it was also timed to commemorate the 550th anniversary of Johannes 
Gutenberg’s death in 1468. The chapters in this volume originated primarily 
in presentations given at the seminar; its theme was ‘Incunabula: People, 
Places, Products and Their Relationships’. Bringing together results from cur-
rent research into books produced in the first eight decades of printing with 
movable type in Europe, the eleven chapters engage with a range of differ-
ent aspects of the production, reception and collection of incunabula in six 
European countries.
The call for papers had asked for presentations exploring fifteenth-century 
printed books with a view to their places of production and the relation-
ships between authors, printers and binders and for presentations discussing 
aspects of material culture found in illuminations and bindings. Ten of the 
thirteen presentations given at the seminar and one paper that could not be 
accommodated on the day are included in the present volume. Its particu-
lar strength lies in the fact that the contributors, who are based in Scotland, 
England, Hungary and Italy, are almost all hands-on professionals in the fields 
of curation, description and conservation of early printed books. As such, they 
have full access to their organisations’ collections and archives, which puts 
them in the perhaps privileged position to be able to investigate and contex-
tualise the development and use of discrete collections as well as to explore 
1 See Jack Baldwin, A Catalogue of Fifteenth-Century Books in Glasgow Libraries and Museums 
(Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020).
2 Hagan
in detail copy-specific features of individual items or sub-sets of such collec-
tions. Conversely, the examination of dispersed copies of particular editions 
is rarely part of a curator’s remit and papers exploring a particular edition, or 
re-constructing a dispersed library, did not feature in the seminar.
The chapters form a collection of case studies arranged within a three-fold 
framework: chronologically the volume proceeds from the sixteenth century, 
when incunabula were regarded as ordinary and at most old-fashioned books, 
through to the mid-twentieth century, by which time they had long become 
collectable and prized assets. In terms of topics, it moves from places of produc-
tion and trade to individual incunabula and their copy-specific features such 
as bindings and provenance marks to the dissemination, collection and use 
of incunabula in private and public or academic collections. In geographical 
terms, studies of incunabula printing and binding on the Continent, namely in 
the Netherlands, France, Italy and Hungary, precede those of particular collec-
tions and collecting activities in Scotland and England, thus providing a mod-
est measure of geographical diversity. The present volume does not seek to be 
comprehensive in its coverage of incunabula studies. Typographical, philolog-
ical or textual analyses for instance are not represented.
To an extent, the volume complements the Fifteenth-century Book Trade 
project2 that tracked the circulation of books, their national and international 
trade routes and later collecting throughout the centuries by exploring the 
distribution, use, market value and provenance of incunabula. However, even 
though provenance is one of the themes in the present volume, its chapters 
offer different perspectives: investigations into printing developments in pro-
vincial towns and particular genres such as scientific printing, reconstructions 
of the development of discrete collections for instance through bindings, and 
explorations of their private and institutional use from the sixteenth to the 
twentieth centuries.
The case studies in the first section contextualise the development of pro-
vincial and vernacular printing and the contemporary book market in four 
towns on the Continent. Deventer, a riverside city on the IJssel in the Northern 
Low Countries, emerged as a significant publishing centre in the last quarter of 
the fifteenth century when its printers produced around a quarter of the Low 
Countries’ printed output; ISTC traces 641 extant incunabula editions printed 
in Deventer, GW records 708. This output is remarkable given the limitations 
of Deventer’s geopolitical situation, not least in comparison with major cities 
such as Utrecht and Antwerp, whose printers accounted for the majority of 
the Low Countries’ fifteenth-century printed output. Laura Cooijmans-Keizer 
2 See , accessed 18 May 2021.
http://15cbooktrade.ox.ac.uk/project/
3Introduction
analyses Deventer’s success not in terms of the quantities or types of its print 
production, but through an assessment of the political, economic and, most 
importantly, cultural factors that underpinned Deventer’s status as a promi-
nent early printing centre.
Whereas Deventer was, by the contemporary standards of the Low 
Countries, a major printing centre for incunabula, Rouen in North-western 
France certainly was not. ISTC records only 226 editions produced in print-
shops in Rouen, as opposed to 1,487 in Lyon and 3,281 in Paris, the two most 
prominent printing centres which, between them, account for about a third 
of the French output. Yet some of Rouen’s printers, among them Jacques Le 
Forestier, were trailblazers: of the 41 editions emanating from his printshop, 
fourteen were printed in French, the other 27 in Latin. Just under a third of his 
output, an unusually high proportion, was thus in the vernacular. Le Forestier 
also seized opportunities for the expansion of his business both by running 
a book selling business and through collaborations. His partnership with the 
physician Thomas Le Forestier on the printing and sale of a vernacular plague 
tract is the subject of Elma Brenner’s chapter. Taking archival evidence into 
consideration, she compares the impact of the French version of this advice 
manual on pestilential illness with that of the earlier Latin version by41–42.
31 See Rozsondai, A magyar könyvkötés, pp. 252–255.
32 Inc. 558 a/1–3: Petrus Lombardus, Sententiarum libri IV. Johannes Beckenhaub: Tabula. 
Articuli in Anglia et Parisiis condemnati ([Nuremberg]: Anton Koberger, [after 2 March 
1491]). ISTC ip00486000; USTC 748100; GW 32527. Inc. 623: Werner Rolewinck, Fasciculus 
temporum (Strasbourg: Johann Prüss, 1488). ISTC ir00274000; USTC 748585; GW M38723.
33 See Éva Koroknay, ‘A lövöldi karthauzi kolostor kötéseiről’, Annales Strigonienses 1 (1960), 
pp. 25–32 and 214–223, with a summary in French pp. 33–34; Erzsébet Muckenhaupt, 
‘Lövöldi kötés a csíksomlyói ferences könyvtárban’, in Emlékkönyv Jakó Zsigmond 
95Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
identified as having been made there. The earlier ones are decorated in a 
mid-fifteenth-century Viennese style, but from the 1480s, the board decoration 
started to display Renaissance characteristics, most likely due to the proxim-
ity to the capital city and the workshop’s close connection to the royal court. 
A book from this workshop in our Rare Book Collection, printed in the 1490s in 
Koberger’s printing house, clearly illustrates how slowly these monastic work-
shops changed their practices.34 The book was printed in 1490, the year of King 
Matthias’s death. Accordingly, we see a cross-like central motive of knotwork 
in the middle of the binding; the knotwork was one of the most typical deco-
rations in Hungarian bookbinding at the end of the century and beyond. On 
the other hand, the arrangement of the tools is that of earlier bindings, while 
the binding technique is obviously Gothic: there are square boards on the free 
edges, and the boards are steeply bevelled at the spine edge of the board; we 
find three double bands in the middle and two simple bands at both ends; and 
the slips of the sewing supports enter into the edges of the boards.
nyolcvanadik születésnapjára (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 1996), pp. 339–348; 
Ildikó Kozocsa, ‘Egy magyar karthauzi kolostor könyvkötéseinek szerkezeti vizsgálata’, 
Magyar Könyvszemle, 111 (1995), pp. 68–76; Rozsondai, A magyar könyvkötés, pp. 33–45.
34 Inc. 558d: Petrus Lombardus, Sententiarum libri IV. Johannes Beckenhaub: Tabula. Articuli 
in Anglia et Parisiis condemnati, ([Nuremberg]: Anton Koberger, [after 2 March 1491]). 
ISTC ip00486000; USTC 748100; GW M32527.
Figure 4.7 A bookbinding from a workshop in Bratislava; NSZL Inc. 558a/4
96 Vilcsek
5.2.3 Bindings of King Vladislaus II
Unlike his predecessor’s corvinas, the books dedicated to Vladislaus II (1456– 
1516, King of Bohemia from 1471, King of Hungary and Croatia from 1490) are 
not uniform. The bindings show different decoration structures, different 
motifs, and were made from different materials. Single tools employed in the 
Buda workshop of the Bibliotheca Corvina during King Matthias’s reign were 
not used any more after the King’s death. The different tool sets used for the 
bindings dedicated to Vladislaus II indicate that the royal bookbindery was 
not the only workshop producing bindings during the new king’s reign, and 
it presumably stopped operating after a short time. Several other bookbind-
ers started working for the royal court. However, it seems that some of the 
binders made keen efforts to produce bindings similar to the ones made for 
King Matthias.
At the same time, Hungarian bookbinding decoration became influenced 
by a new Italian style, which Anthony Hobson labelled ‘humanistic binding’.35 
This style appeared both in Italy and Hungary in the 1490s and remained in use 
during the first decades of the new century. The main features mentioned by 
Hobson are the following: the borders of the board design consist of S-tools or 
knotwork, corners and round centres are filled with knotwork, and the circular 
centre enclosed by the knotwork or S-tool frame might be combined with pal-
mettes. According to Hobson’s research, the palmette circle was used chiefly 
in Rome, Venice and Florence. Hobson specified new motifs which emerged 
on Italian bindings at the beginning of the sixteenth century, most notably the 
acanthus and the lyre. Lyre-shaped stamps appeared consistently on products 
from Roman and Venetian binderies.
A simplified version of this decoration with the characteristics mentioned 
above also became widespread in Hungarian bookbinding practice from the 
1490s. At this stage of our research we have identified four books: Cod 44, 653, 
654, and 2139 (Austrian National Library, Vienna), and all were part of the 
Bibliotheca Corvina. They were bound either at the very end of the fifteenth 
century or in the first decades of the sixteenth. Tammaro de Marinis declared 
one of them (Cod. 653) as a Florentine binding, while Austrian scholars local-
ise it in Vienna or Buda.36 Although there is no coat of arms on these bindings, 
the rich gilding, silvering, and the decoration style make it probable that they 
were bound in Buda for Vladislaus II. This group’s bookbinder followed the 
35 See Hobson, Humanists and Bookbinders, pp. 83, 86, 90.
36 Marinis, La Legatura, no. 1102; see Holter, group G5, and Mazal, no. 92. See Otto Mazal, 
Europäische Einbandkunst aus Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Graz: Adeva, 1990).
97Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
decoration style of the Italian Renaissance, but the tools and some aspects 
of the bookbinding technique show an indisputable close relationship with 
Hungarian Renaissance bindings. The acanthus-palmette and the lyre motifs 
possibly became common after being influenced by Italian models, but their 
design, form and contour are quite different, and they resemble tools used in 
Hungary after 1490. In addition, we find a tulip tool on two of the bindings, a 
motif which had never been used in either Italian or Viennese Renaissance 
bindings. Furthermore, the binding technique is different from the Italian 
Renaissance practice: two rectangular, right-to-left clasps (the clasps are lost, 
only their impressions can be seen) fastened the books, and the board edge is 
step-like under the catchplate on the upper cover, which is characteristic of the 
Hungarian Renaissance books bound after 1490.
5.2.4 Ordinary Bindings in Buda
Two short-lived printing houses existed in Buda in the 1470s. After these early 
initiatives, there was no printing press in the Kingdom of Hungary until the 
1530s. However, in the 1480s, the sale of printed books in Buda increased. In the 
decades around the turn of the century, we know of ten booksellers in Buda 
who ordered school books and service books from distinguished European 
printers, first of all from Venice and Nuremberg, for local needs.37 These book-
sellers undoubtedly employed local bookbinders, and the strong connections 
with German and Italian cities had a possible impact on their binding practice.
The expansion of the invention of printing coincided with the laicization 
of bookbinding. From about 1490, the exchange of tools, motifs and methods 
was easier and more common, and bookbinders were likely to be more widely 
travelled. Moreover, printed materials in this time could be sold and shipped 
not only in sheets, but also in temporary and/or unfinished bindings in many 
37 Theobaldus Feger, Georgius Ruem, Johannes Paep, Stephanus Heckel, Hans Hüffel, 
Urbanus Kaym, Mathias Milcher, Jacobus Schaller and Michael Prischwicz. See Gedeon 
Borsa, ‘Budai könyvkereskedők a középkorban’, A Könyv (1955), pp. 270–273 and György 
Kókay, A könyvkereskedelem Magyarországon (Budapest: Balassi, 1997). Paul Needham 
mentions three of them (Cassis, no. 18; Paep, no. 43 and Ruem, no. 54) as publishers; see 
Paul Needham, ‘Venetian Printers and Publishers in the Fifteenth Century’, La Biblio-
folia, 100 (1998), pp. 157–200. For recent research about Johannes Cassis see Judit Lauf, 
‘Budai reneszánsz kötéstáblából előkerült ősnyomtatvány-töredékek. A Lányi-kódex 
kötéscsaládja és a budai könyvkereskedők’ Magyar Könyvszemle, 135 (2019),pp. 329–343, 
with an English summary: ‘Incunabula Fragments Found in Renaissance Book Bindings 
from Buda. Bindings Related to the Binding of Lányi Codex and the Booksellers of Buda’. 
Kókay claims that after 1526 most of the books were ordered from Cracow and Vienna.
98 Vilcsek
varieties.38 Thus, the binding process could be divided into distinct phases and 
carried out by different craftsmen at different times and places. In addition, 
the connection between the bookbinders of a given city became closer, and 
it is possible that they followed the new fashions of decoration and copied 
each other’s work. One bookbinder most likely worked for several booksellers 
as well as for individual clients, and a customer would order the most fashion-
able binding.
Many tools that resembled each other were in use, and the large number 
of tool sets that were applied simultaneously, with occasionally similar motifs 
being impressed by different tools used on the same cover, can cause some 
confusion. Similar tulips, akanthus-palmette rows or grids (diaper; borders in 
the form of lozenges containing quatrefoils) can only be distinguished by min-
ute differences. According to Marianne Rozsondai, about half a dozen book-
binderies worked in Buda, some of them for three or four generations. And 
while these bookbinders inherited or bought and continued to use some tools, 
they did not use all of them, which can explain the semi-overlapping of the 
tools between the toolsets. Besides the above-mentioned early Renaissance 
and royal bindings, we know of about twenty Hungarian Renaissance incunab-
ula bound in Buda that are now in our collection. They belong to at least ten 
different stylistic groups.39 The so-called Gazius group is represented by the 
38 Mirjam Foot describes temporary or rather interim bindings in detail. See Mirjam Foot, 
Bookbinders at Work. Their Roles and Work (London: British Library, Oak Knoll Press, 
2006). See also Pickwoad, ‘Tacketed Bindings’, pp. 119–167. Nicholas Pickwoad, European 
Bookbinding 1450–1830 (Norwich: Summer School of Ligatus Research Centre, 2017).
39 Inc. 613: Richardus de Mediavilla, Commentum super quarto libro Sententiarum (Venice: 
Christophorus Arnoldus, [not after 1477]). ISTC im00423000; USTC 993046; GW M22509; 
member of the Seneca-I group.
 Inc. 175b: Missale ad usum dominorum Ultramontanorum, (Impressus Verone [Verona]: 
[Pierre Maufer], vigesima septima augusti M.cccc. octogesimo. [27 August 1480]). ISTC 
im00729800; USTC 998633; GW M24106.
 Inc. 1145: Johannes de Thwrocz, Chronica Hungarorum (Augsburg: Erhard Ratdolt, for 
Theobaldus Feger, 3 June 1488). ISTC it00361000; USTC 749431; GW M14775; member of 
the codex Pozsonyi group.
 Inc. 180: Missale Strigoniense (Venice: Johannes Hamman, partly for Georgius Ruem, 
1 February 1493). ISTC im00723600; USTC 998637; GW M24759.
 Inc. 995: Missale Strigoniense (Venice, Johannes Emericus, 31 October 1495). ISTC 
im00723800; USTC 998636; GW M24753; member of the Gazius group.
 Inc. 182b: Missale Strigoniense (Venice: Johannes Emericus, for Johann Paep, 
26 February 1498). ISTC im00724000; USTC 998635; GW M24754.
 Inc. 281b/1: Biblia cum glossa ordinaria Walafridi Strabonis aliorumque  … Nicolaus 
de Lyra: Contra perfidiam Iudeorum, ed. Sebastian Brant. (Basel: Johannes Frobenius et 
Johannes Petri, 1498). ISTC ib00609000; USTC 740092; GW 4284; member of the GA group.
99Hungarian Bookbindings of the Incunabula Period
largest number: the NSZL holds three books from this group in contemporary 
bindings.40 The most decorative one contains a note about its purchase, which 
also confirms that the workshop was in Buda Castle.41
It is especially difficult to define groups or distinguish workshops from this 
period because of the many tools that were similar. Conversely, this phenome-
non makes it relatively easy to recognise Hungarian bindings. Therefore, in the 
last part of my chapter I will attempt to describe the characteristics of these 
Hungarian bindings.
 Inc. 281b/2: Biblia cum glossa ordinaria Walafridi Strabonis aliorumque … – Nicolaus 
de Lyra: Contra perfidiam Iudeorum, ed. Sebastian Brant. (Basel: Johannes Frobenius et 
Johannes Petri, 1498). ISTC ib00609000; USTC 740092; GW 4284; member of the Gazius 
group.
 Inc. 1196: Missale Strigoniense (Nuremberg: Georg Stuchs, for Theobaldus Feger, 
25 August 1498). ISTC im00724500; USTC 741311; GW M24750.
 Inc. 286: Revelationes. With foreword by Johannes de Turrecremata and Matthias de 
Suecia. Vita abbreviata S. Birgittae. Hymnus ad Beatam Birgittam (Nuremberg: Anton 
Koberger, 21 September 1500). ISTC ib00688000; USTC 743482; GW 4392.
 Inc. 996: Missale Strigoniense (Venice: [Johannes Emericus], for Johann Paep, 1500–
1502). ISTC im00725000; USTC 998634; GW M24756; member of the Gazius group.
40 Inc. 281b/2, Inc. 995, Inc. 996. Recent research enumerates twelve books: Rozsondai, 
A magyar könyvkötés, pp. 167–174.
41 Inc. 995: The Canon of Pressburg bought it in Buda Castle in 1497. See the original text in 
Latin: Koroknay, Magyar reneszánsz, pp. 69–70.
Figure 4.8 A bookbinding from a workshop in Buda; NSZL Inc. 995
100 Vilcsek
In books from this period, the binding technique not only reveals that 
the Italian influence was not as strong, but that there was a revival of the 
German-rooted bookbinding tradition, which had been improved by new 
innovations. In the Kingdom of Hungary, from the beginning of the Gothic 
period to the end of the Renaissance, books had beech boards covered with 
goat or calf skin, and the sewing was always packed, straight and all-along 
with alum-tawed white leather sewing supports. While monastic bindings 
were usually sewn on simple-double-simple sewing supports without kettle 
stitches, King Matthias’s bindings were sewn, as in contemporary Italy, with 
kettle stitches, and their endband cores were fixed with tiedowns in each quire. 
But from 1490, the sewing threads occasionally changed quires in several dif-
ferent ways. The sewing thread often stepped from one quire to another at the 
change-over station, or sometimes at the primary endband core. At the same 
time, some bookbinders either sewed books without kettle stitches, or only 
sewed a couple of the first and last quires with kettle stitches, but not the ones 
in between. The use of kettle stitches gradually became widespread.
The usual text-hook-type endleaves were made of handmade paper, which 
was simpler and cheaper than the one-fold parchment sheet sewn into the cor-
vinas. The type and the material of the endleaves indicated the status of a book 
and its owner. The decorated edges had a similar function. Royal bindings were 
gilded, gauffered and richly painted. Gilded edges were made for noblemen 
too. Within this period, ordinary bindings were painted yellow or remained 
undecorated.
During the Renaissance period under Italian influence, all kinds of books 
had straight or slightly rounded spines. The boards projected beyond the edges, 
the free edges of which were bevelled on the inner face, with the spine edge on 
the outer face. The endings of the sewing supports were laid in channels on the 
outer surface of the boards. The corners were mitred.
The full height transverse linings were glued down on the inner face of the 
boards. In contrast, on the corvinas made during King Matthias’s reign, the 
short ends of the linings were glued on the external side of the boards; this 
practice seems to have been adapted from Florentine books.
Italian-type clasps, which we find on corvinas and some early Hungarian 
Renaissance bindings, have left-to-right fastenings, and also the clasps fixed 
on three edges. They disappeared quickly from Hungarian binding practices. 
Instead, books were fastened by two pairs of right-to-left, rectangle form 
hook-type brass clasps, which were crafted mainly in the Nuremberg style. The 
Nuremberg type, rhombus form corner and central fastenings also occurred 
frequently.
101HungarianBookbindings of the Incunabula Period
The most remarkable innovation, at least from the perspective of earlier 
Hungarian bookbinding practice, is the use of step-like clasp bevels on the 
upper board.
Up until the second half of the sixteenth century, the core of the endband 
was usually a white leather strap. Chevron sewing was applied as a second-
ary, decorative endband on the velvet corvina bindings and early Hungarian 
Renaissance bindings, while the same chevron sewing also appears on later 
luxury bindings. Corvina leather bindings and early Florentine bindings used 
to have compound decorative endband stitches. These kinds of endbands dis-
appeared at the end of the fifteenth century when a new endband type, deco-
rated by two coloured threads, appeared and became widespread. In this latter 
type, the two parallel threads alternately overarch the core and form front 
beads beneath it.
The decoration of these Hungarian Renaissance bindings displays an Italian 
influence as well as the influence of King Matthias’s bookbindery. The motif 
set used on the corvinas remained popular. The most representative decora-
tion tools of this period are the tulip and leaf variations, the calyx flowers, the 
knotwork pattern, the double circle and the Italian jar. These can be found on 
royal bindings made for King Vladislaus II, as well as on books bound for mag-
nates. The same motifs later became widely popular in Hungarian bookbind-
ing. On the other hand, the classical motifs (palmette, akanthus-palmette row) 
and the compound (Oriental) knotworks show a new wave of Italian influence. 
Floral motifs, simple and compound rosettes, flowers and flower stems and 
also the pomegranate became popular. Various grid tools, often incorporating 
a four-petalled flower form, were frequently used in the frames of Hungarian 
bookbinding from the end of the fifteenth century. The combination of these 
motifs constitutes the characteristic Hungarian Renaissance bookbinding dec-
oration after 1490.
The typical decoration structure has an emphatic central panel surrounded 
by one or two frames, which is a simplified version of the royal bindings’ 
arrangement, and in this way derives from the Italian Renaissance bindings. 
The frame consists chiefly of a grid, compound knotwork, acanthus-palmettes 
or a compound rosette row. The inner frame of the oblong central panel is 
wider at the top and the bottom, and it is typically filled with compound knot-
work such as acanthus-palmette row or a flower-grid row. The central orna-
ment, between the two wide stripes, is a simple geometrical form, either a 
circle or quadrilobe. Another typical decoration of the oblong central panel is 
filling with floral or ornamental motifs.
102 Vilcsek
6 Conclusion
The history of decorated leather bookbinding in Hungary began with monastic 
bindings in the Gothic style. The surviving examples were made in the second 
half of the fifteenth century in the Northern monasteries of the Hungarian 
Kingdom. These blind-tooled bindings owed much to the South German and 
Viennese binding tradition, both regarding their binding techniques and their 
decoration. Italian Renaissance features appeared on the bindings from the 
1470s, due to an Italian-trained bookbinder who worked for Hungarian human-
ists. In the 1480s, the royal bindery of King Matthias for the first time in Hungary 
started binding books in the Italian Renaissance style, based especially on 
Florentine models. After King Matthias’s death, the strong Italian influence on 
the bindings diminished, the royal bindery stopped working, and some gen-
eral Renaissance technical characteristics and a simplified version of the royal 
decoration design were its remnants. Motifs used on King Matthias’s corvinas 
were still frequent, and, in addition, classical motifs became widespread.
In Buda, the number of printed items only started to increase about thirty 
years after the invention of the printing press. In the absence of a printing 
workshop, booksellers ordered and bought incunabula from abroad, while at 
the same time employing local bookbinders. This practice caused an increase 
in Hungarian binding production, and in the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury a new and interesting phenomenon emerged: similar, simple, blind-tooled 
bindings were produced in large numbers as quasi-trade bindings by the same 
workshop.
This period of Hungarian Renaissance bookbinding definitively ended 
in 1541, when Buda was occupied by the Turks. 150 years of Ottoman rule in 
Southern and central Hungary followed. In the second half of the sixteenth 
century, Hungarian bookbinding took a new direction: the use of rolls and pan-
els became common, and the German Renaissance style became dominant.42 
42 I am grateful to the National Széchényi Library for supporting my research and permitting 
the reproduction of photographs of bindings, and to my colleague Zsuzsanna Tóth for the 
excellent photographs.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_007
Chapter 5
Bindings and Provenance: Evidence from 
Contemporary Oxford Bindings on the Early 
Printed Books of the Last Monks of Durham
Sheila Hingley
It cannot be doubted that the last monks of Durham Cathedral Priory were 
interested in books right up to the dissolution of their priory in 1539, and 
beyond.1 The continuity of personnel in Durham Cathedral over the period of 
the Dissolution was remarkable: all twelve of the new canons in the reformed 
Cathedral were former monks and the last prior in 1539, Hugh Whitehead 
(c.1480–1551), became the first Protestant dean in 1541. Over half of the 
66 monks at the priory in 1539 became canons and minor canons, with others 
becoming clergy in local parishes.
With the continuity of personnel, most of the cathedral’s extensive library 
of manuscript and printed books remained in situ and in use. This remarkable 
1 See Sheila Hingley, ‘Durham Priory Library: Recent Initiatives towards the Reconstruction of 
a Cathedral Library’ in John Goldfinch, Takako Kato and Satoko Tokunaga (eds.), Production 
and Provenance: Copy-Specific Features of Incunabula (Leiden: Brill), forthcoming. Alan 
J. Piper and Ian Doyle have written about the priory library buildings and their contents, 
and described some of the individuals whose names were connected with the library; see 
Alan J. Piper, ‘The Libraries of the Monks of Durham’, in M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson 
(eds.), Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker (London: Scolar 
Press, 1978), pp. 213–249; ‘Dr Thomas Swalwell: Monk of Durham, Archivist and Bibliophile 
(d.1539)’, in J. P. Carley and C. G. C. Tite (eds.), Books and Collectors, 1200–1700: Essays Presented 
to Andrew Watson (London: British Library, 1997), pp. 71–100; ‘The Historical Interests of the 
Monks of Durham’, in David Rollason (ed.), Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and 
the North (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1998), pp. 301–332. Ian Doyle concentrated on the early 
printed books from the priory library: Ian Doyle, ‘The Printed Books of the Last Monks of 
Durham’, The Library, 10 (1988), pp. 203–219; ‘The Library of Sir Thomas Tempest: Its Origins 
and Dispersal’, in G. A. M. Janssens and F. G. A. M. Aarts (eds.), Studies in Seventeenth-Century 
English Literature, History and Bibliography: Festschrift for Professor T. A. Birrell on the 
Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), pp. 83–93; ‘Further Monastic 
Books’, Durham Philobiblon, 1 (1952), pp. 45–48. I would like to express my gratitude for the 
work of both Alan J. Piper and Ian Doyle. Sadly, both have passed away, Alan in 2012 and Ian 
in February 2018. Both were generous in sharing the results of their research so that knowl-
edge of the Priory Library could be enriched.
104 Hingley
collection, now housed in Durham Cathedral Library, Durham University 
Library and Ushaw College Library, gives a unique insight into a scholarly 
library of the late fifteenthand early sixteenth centuries from the first dates of 
purchase, soon after publication. Evidence from the inscriptions and annota-
tions in books in the library, and in books owned by individual monks, shows 
books being passed from one monk or canon to another up to the 1550s. In 1559 
nearly all the surviving canons who had been former monks refused to take 
the Oath of Supremacy to the Elizabethan government and resigned their 
prebends. Most of those books that had not entered the Cathedral Library 
by 1558, but were still present in the Cathedral precinct, appear to have been 
gathered into the possession of Canons Stephen and Nicholas Marley, former 
monks whose sister had married a member of the Tempest family. These books 
were then passed down through the Tempest and other recusant families in 
the Durham area. Those surviving into the nineteenth century made their 
way into various Catholic libraries in the North of the country, new Catholic 
parish church libraries and institutions in Durham, Northumberland and 
Lancashire, often through the good offices of Catholic chaplains to the gentry. 
After the establishment of the Catholic seminary at Ushaw College, just out-
side Durham, in the early nineteenth century, its library was seen as a suitable 
repository for these relics of pre-Reformation days. Currently the numbers of 
surviving printed books likely to have been owned by Durham monks in the 
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries are: 70 in the Cathedral Library; 67 
now at Ushaw College; three in Durham University Library; 46 dispersed in 
other collections. A list of the surviving manuscript and printed books was first 
published by Neil Ker in Medieval Libraries of Great Britain in 1964 and a later 
edition expanded this list. However, Ker sets very strict criteria for inclusion 
and this has meant the exclusion of ‘possible’ priory books. The current chap-
ter will include discussion of some of these.2
There are several interesting facets of this early collection of printed books 
that can be used not only by researchers into the history of Durham Cathedral 
Priory, but also by those who study the history of the English book trade in the 
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In particular, the collection has a 
high proportion of English contemporary bindings: over 90 English bindings 
from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries survive on priory books. 
2 See Neil R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (MLGB) (London: 
Royal Historical Society, 1964); Andrew G. Watson (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, 
A List of Surviving Books, Edited by Neil R. Ker: Supplement to the Second Edition (London: Royal 
Historical Society, 1987); A beta-version of an online MLGB is available at , accessed 20 November 2022. This is referenced as MLGB3.
http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
105Bindings and Provenance
The inscriptions and annotations in the books combined with external evi-
dence about the monk-owners can give some estimate of the time and place 
of acquisition of the books and the creation of their bindings, thus adding to 
our knowledge of the activity of early sixteenth-century binders. The reverse 
can also be true: identifying the binders can help reveal the sequence of own-
ership by members of the Durham community from first acquisition and help 
other scholars in dating acquisitions to other libraries. The scope of this chap-
ter does not allow for a comprehensive study of all the contemporary bindings 
on Durham books, so I have concentrated on the oldest of the Oxford bindings, 
listing them in a loose chronological order.
Durham College, Oxford, provided a university education for Durham 
monks, and it has been calculated that a third of all Durham monks studied 
there between 1381 and 1544 when the College ceased to exist; it was refounded 
in 1555 as Trinity College. All the later priors were Oxford graduates. Thus, 
there is more background biographical evidence to support dating claims for 
Oxford than for Cambridge or London bindings in the collection, hence the 
concentration on Oxford.3
1 Earliest Bindings
1) 1477–79. [Southern Netherlands: Printer of the Sarum Breviarium, around 
1477–79]. Homiliarius doctorum. Durham Cathedral Library (DCL) ChapterLib 
Inc.13a and 13b. Durham acquisition: before 1481.
The oldest bindings on any Durham printed book appear on two volumes 
that seem to have been acquired in Oxford and might well have been bound 
there. They are on two volumes in plain, tawed leather with the remains of a 
single clasp on each, on a copy of Homiliarius doctorum, a set of patristic hom-
ilies, now said by ISTC to have been produced in the Southern Netherlands 
by the printer of the Sarum Breviarium around 1477–1479.4 The volumes have 
inscriptions and annotations by William Law (c.1440–1481), a monk of Durham 
who was at Durham College, Oxford from 1460 to 1473, returning finally as 
3 See R. B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 
pp. 343–359 and ‘“Mynistres of Saynt Cuthbert”: The Monks of Durham in the Fifteenth 
Century’, in R. B. Dobson, Church and Society in the Medieval North of England (London: 
Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 47–82. Alan J. Piper provided a biographical register of Durham 
monks, 1083–1539, in David Rollason and Lynda Rollason (eds.), The Durham Liber Vitae, 
(LVD) III (London: British Library, 2007), pp. 129–436.
4 ISTC ih00314000; USTC 740881; GW 12926. Earlier catalogues listed the work as published in 
Cologne about 1475. See Doyle, ‘Printed Books of the Last Monks of Durham’, p. 206.
106 Hingley
warden of the College from 1475 to his probable death in 1481. This gives a date 
of acquisition between 1477–79 and 1481 and the book is likely to have been 
purchased in Oxford by Law. The presumption of acquisition at Oxford is rein-
forced by a note by Prior John Auckland, assigning the books to the new book 
cupboard in the cloister. John Auckland (?1435–1494) was Law’s immediate 
successor as Warden of Durham College from 1481–1483; he became Prior of 
Durham in 1484. An inscription on the verso of the front flyleaf to each volume 
reads: ‘Liber Magistri willelmi Law monachi sancti Cuthberti de dunelmia et a 
dicto sancto Cuthberto nunquam aliendus’. This is an inscription of a kind that 
was common in manuscript books in the priory library, but not in the majority 
of printed books. Its use implies that Law was expecting the book to be placed 
in the priory library. No evidence can be gathered from the bindings on the 
other books owned by William Law, a very large four-volume set of Nicholas 
de Lyra’s commentary on the Bible published in Strasbourg c.1474–1477, and 
Niccolò de’ Tudeschi’s commentary on books four and five of the Decretals 
printed in Venice in 1477; they have lost their original covers, having been 
rebound in the twentieth and eighteenth centuries respectively.5
2) 1474. Strasbourg: C. W., Civis Argentinensis. John Duns Scotus, Quaestiones 
in quattuor libros Sententiarum Pt 4. DCL ChapterLib Inc.4a. Durham acquisi-
tion: definitely before 1494, probably before 1484.
Binding: another early binding, this time in calf with blind tooling; this 
was made in Oxford, using Gibson tools six and twenty.6 This book was also 
assigned to the new cupboard by John Auckland, so it was probably always 
intended to be placed in the priory library. Ian Doyle has discussed the bind-
ing and cites the opinion of Graham Pollard that it was probably made by 
Thomas Hunt, Oxford University stationer from 1472 to 1492. Pollard dates the 
use of this style of binding in Oxford from the late 1470s to at least 1489.
Provenance: these dates fit with the dates of John Auckland’s official resi-
dence in Oxford as Warden of Durham College from 1481–84, so it is possible 
that Auckland acquired it during this period, or perhaps another studentmonk 
bought it and brought it back to be placed in the library in Durham by Auckland 
some time before his death in 1494. Ian Doyle dates Auckland’s assignment of 
5 Nicholas de Lyra, Postilla super Totam Bibliam. (Strasbourg: Printer of Henricus Ariminensis 
(Georg Reyser?), ca. 1474–1477) ISTC in00134000; USTC 747450; GW M26532; GW M26630. 
DCL ChapterLib Inc.1a–1e. Niccolò de’ Tudeschi, Lectura super V libris Decretalium vols. 3–4 
only (Venice: Nicolaus Jensen, [1477–78]) ISTC ip00046000; USTC 992565; GW M47867. DCL 
ChapterLib Inc.20a–20b. David Rollason and Lynda Rollason (eds.), LVD, III, p. 379, C1169 for 
Law (c.1440–?81) and pp. 373–374, C1156 for Auckland (?1435–94).
6 See Strickland Gibson, Early Oxford Bindings. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903), 
plate XXXIII.
107Bindings and Provenance
books to the library to around 1484, but this is not certain. The Durham dating 
certainly fits with other evidence for Thomas Hunt’s activity. Auckland seems 
to have been a keen scholar since he was reprimanded in 1474 for residing in 
Oxford to pursue his bachelor’s degree whilst he was Prior of Stamford. When 
he became prior at Durham, he relocated seventeen manuscripts and six incu-
nabula published between 1474 and 1483 into a new cupboard in the cloisters, 
showing his interest in improving the content of the priory library.7
3) 1481. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger. Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla super totam 
Bibliam. vol. 2 of 3 vols. DCL ChapterLib Inc.1f. Durham acquisition: before 
1494, probably before 1484.8
Binding: a single surviving volume of a three-volume set of Nicholas of Lyra’s 
Postilla on the Bible, published in Nuremberg in 1481, has an Oxford binding in 
a style which Gibson described as rather old-fashioned and still in the medi-
eval style. It uses stamps to delineate borders where rolls were used in later 
bindings, and has the very solid wooden boards and a text block very close to 
the edges of the boards that are described by Gibson. Gibson dates the use of 
this style to c.1482.
Provenance: the book, of which there were three other printed copies in 
the priory library, and several in manuscript, has three ownership inscriptions 
of Durham monks, with another inscription scratched out and unreadable. 
A small cursive inscription at the top of the flyleaf gives William Cawthorne 
(c.1458–1520) as an owner, but there is no evident annotation by him. Cawthorne 
was a student at Durham College, Oxford from 1476 to 1484, and it is possible 
that he purchased the book during this period, which fits with Gibson’s dating 
of the binding. After a period back in Durham he returned as bursar and finally 
became warden of the college in 1494. The ownership inscription on the flyleaf 
by John Manby (c.1445–1494) is large and formal. Manby has annotated the 
book extensively, using his characteristic signed annotations and a manicule 
with an extended index finger, giving the impression of dominant ownership. 
Manby left Oxford in 1478 to return to Durham and take up various senior posts 
in the priory. He became Prior of Stamford in 1491 but resigned in 1494 and 
died in Durham soon after. William Cawthorne probably acquired the book 
before he left Oxford in 1484. It was then presumably taken to Durham where 
7 ISTC id00377000; USTC 744505; GW 9084. Doyle, ‘Printed Books of the Last Monks’, p. 206. 
Graham Pollard, ‘The Names of Some English Fifteenth-Century Binders’, The Library, 25 
(1970), pp. 193–218. Auckland, LVD, III, pp. 373–374, C1156.
8 ISTC in00135000; USTC 747451; GW M26513. Gibson, Oxford Bindings, p. 22, plate XII.
108 Hingley
Manby annotated it. The final inscription dated 1513 by the Communar Robert 
Weardale (c.1464–c.1522) assigned it to the new cupboard in the cloister.9
The following bindings have been assigned to identified binders based in 
Oxford:
2 Rood and Hunt Bindery
There are five priory books assigned to the Rood and Hunt bindery. Four of 
these were described in detail in the article by Isabelle Pingree on this bindery, 
covering books published between 1473 and 1483; their provenance was dis-
cussed by Ian Doyle. A summary of this information is supplied here, headed 
by the date and place of publication of the book, with Durham dating evidence 
added.10
4) 1478. Paris: Ulrich Gering. Johannes Nider. Praeceptorium divinae legis. 
Ushaw College XVIII.A.4.1. Durham acquisition: before 1494.
Binding: blind-tooled calf over unbevelled boards using Gibson tools 44–51. 
The remains of two clasps are on the upper boards and two catches on the 
lower boards. It was rebacked in the twentieth century.
Provenance: an inscription ‘deram colege’, possibly that of a stationer, is on 
fol. 368v. Durham College was closed in 1542, to be refounded in 1555 as Trinity 
College. There are no other priory inscriptions which could suggest an earlier 
Durham acquisition date but the annotations were probably done by John 
Manby (d. 1494).
The inscription of Sir Thomas Tempest (1642–91) on fol. 1r and that of the 
Reverend Henry Rutter (1755–1838), chaplain to a local recusant family and later 
a Catholic parish priest in Lancashire in the mid-nineteenth century, show that 
the book is likely to have left the Cathedral with the Marleys around 1565.11
5) 1480. Cologne: Heinrich Quentell. Alexander Carpentarius. Destructorium 
vitiorum. DCL ChapterLib Inc.12. Durham acquisition: before 1484.
Binding: blind-tooled calf over slightly bevelled boards using Gibson tools 
44–51. It was rebound in the twentieth century with parts of the original covers 
9 Manby, LVD, III, pp. 382–3, C1181; Cawthorne, LVD, III, pp. 387–8, C1200; Weardale LVD, III, 
p. 392, C1216.
10 See I. Pingree, ‘The Rood and Hunt Binder’, The Library, 4 (2003), pp. 371–401, especially 
pp. 391–392, 399. Doyle, ‘Printed Books of the Last Monks’, pp. 16–17.
11 ISTC in00201000; USTC 761313; GW M26931. Manby, LVD, III, pp. 382–383, C1181.
109Bindings and Provenance
Figure 5.1 Rood and Hunt bindery. Back cover overlaid on new binding decorated with 
Gibson tools 44–51. One of the very few smaller format Priory books surviving. 
Ushaw XVIII.A.4.1
110 Hingley
Figure 5.2 A characteristic long-fingered manicule usually associated with the Durham 
monk John Manby. Ushaw XVIII.A.4.1
111Bindings and Provenance
overlaid on new leather. There are marks of two clasps on the upper board and 
two catches on the lower board.
Provenance: The book has the inscriptions of John Manby (c.1445–95), 
William Burton (c.1455–1494) and Robert Weardale (c.1464–c.1522). There is 
only one inscription for each of Burton and Weardale but Manby has writ-
ten notes signed ‘manbe’ and made sketches of people with his characteristic 
manicules with extended index fingers. It must have been acquired before 1484 
when Burton died at Oxford.12
6) 1481. Oxford: Theodoricus Rood. Alexander ab Alexandro, Expositio super 
tres libros Aristotelis de anima. DCL ChapterLib Inc.61. Durham acquisition: 
before 1501, probably before 1489.
Binding: blind-tooled calf over unbevelled boards using Gibson tools 44–51. 
There are marks of two clasps on the upper cover and two catches on the 
lower cover.
Provenance: there is an inscription in ink on the back cover ‘To dan Robert 
Baylle’. Robert Bailey was a monk of Durham from c.1477 until his death by 
drowning in 1501 whilst master of the priory’s cell on the Farne Islands. Bailey 
was a student, and latterly bursar, at Durham College between 1481 and 1489. 
It seems most likely that the book was given or sent to Bailey during this 
period of residence at Oxford. It is heavily annotated in parts by an unknown 
annotator.13
7) 1481. Cologne: Johann Koelhoff the Elder. Boethius, De consolatione phi-
losophiae. DCL ChapterLib Inc.6. Durham acquisition: date not known but 
there are late fifteenth/early sixteenth century Durham annotations.
Binding: blind-tooled calf over unbevelled boards using Gibson tools 44–50. 
This binding is still mainly intact with its originalspine and headbands. There 
are the remains of two clasps on the upper cover and catches on the lower.
Provenance: there are no names of Durham monks but the volume has been 
identified by Alan J. Piper as a Durham Priory book; there are annotations in 
Durham hands which appear in other Durham books, and the title is written 
up the fore-edge with a number at the head as in other Durham books.14
8) c.1480–82. [Louvain: Johannes de Westfalia.] Petrus de Alliaco. Imago 
mundi et tractatus alii, and J. Gerson, Trilogium astrologiae, theologizatae. 
The current location of this book is unknown. Durham acquisition: there are 
Swalwell annotations dating from before 1535 at the latest, but the book was 
12 ISTC ia00391000; USTC 742493; GW 865. Manby, LVD, III, pp. 382–383, C1181; Burton, LVD, 
III, p. 386, C1195; Weardale, LVD, p. 392, C1216.
13 ISTC ia00382000; USTC 500046; GW 869; ESTC S106493. Bailey, LVD, III, p. 389, C1204. 
Doyle ‘Printed Books of the Last Monks’, pp. 16–17.
14 ISTC ib00774000; USTC 743506; GW 4530. MLGB Supplement, p. 28.
112 Hingley
probably obtained when Swalwell was at Oxford between 1485 and 1496, or 
1500 and 1503.
Binding: this incunable was sold at Christie’s in November 2002; the sale 
catalogue entry gives the information that it was in a Rood and Hunt binding 
using Gibson tools 44–50.
Provenance: the book contains the name of John Hindmarsh, whose fam-
ily was connected with the Priory, and there are annotations in the hand of 
Thomas Swalwell, monk of Durham and well-known annotator of manuscript 
and printed priory books. Swalwell was at Oxford from 1485 to 1496, taking up 
offices in Durham after this but returning as Warden of Durham College in 
1500 and incepting for his D.Th. in 1503. It also has an inscription linked to the 
Weld family, a local recusant gentry family.15
3 Binder C
9) [1479?] [Cologne: Conrad Winters, de Homborch.] Gregorius I, Pont. Max. 
Moralia. DCL ChapterLib Inc. 11a. Durham acquisition: before 1494
Binding: blind-tooled calf over bevelled wooden boards using Gibson 
tools 16, 27 (Oldham 360) and 32 in the central panel. The rest of the design is 
created using triple blind fillets. Graham Pollard was unable to give a name to 
this binder whom Basil Oldham called Binder C, but he confirmed Oldham’s 
tentative identification of him as an Oxford binder and he used this Durham 
binding as an illustration of what he calls the transitional binding design of 
a Big Diamond. He also extended the dates of books bound by this binder to 
1475–c.1485; Oldham had noted his stamps used only on books printed between 
1481 and 1483. There are marks of clasps on the upper cover and catches on the 
lower, and the mark left by a chain staple at the middle of the back board, the 
usual place for Durham chain marks.
Provenance: a large formal inscription by John Manby, monk of Durham 
(c.1445–1494) is on the flyleaf but there are no obvious annotations by him. 
Below this is an inscription dated 1513 which records the assignation of this 
book to the new cupboard in the cloister by the Communar Robert Weardale 
(c.1464–c.1522). Manby was at Durham College from 1466–71 and again from 
1477–78. He died in 1494.16
15 Information from Ian Doyle’s notes. For Thomas Swalwell: LVD, III, pp. 393–96, C1221; 
Alan J. Piper, ‘Libraries of the Monks of Durham’, pp. 228–230; ‘Dr Thomas Swalwell’, pp. 
71–100; Anne T. Thayer, ‘Ministry in the Margins: Thomas Swalwell, OSB, and His Marginal 
Notes for Preaching on the Clergy’, Sixteenth-century Journal, 47 (2016), pp. 599–627.
16 ISTC ig00429000; USTC 745363; GW, 11431. J. Basil Oldham, English Blind-stamped Bindings. 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952) (after this EBSB), p. 31, pl. XXVI. Pollard, 
113Bindings and Provenance
4 Half-Stamp Binder
Basil Oldham in his study of English blind-stamped bindings identified 
22 bindings on books published between 1491 and 1511 by a binder he called 
the Half-stamp binder, because of his use of two lattice half stamps to make 
up a whole lozenge-shaped lattice stamp. This binder was not identified by 
name by Graham Pollard in his article on Oxford binders, nor was Pollard able 
to give any dates for his activity as a binder, but he increased the number of 
bindings discovered.17 There are six Durham priory books with these bindings 
which were published in Basel, Strasbourg, Paris and Nuremberg between 1486 
and 1505.
10) 1486. Basel: [Johann Amerbach]. Petrus Comestor, Historia scholastica. 
Bristol City Reference Library EPB 198/SR 36. Durham acquisition: no more 
definite date than late fifteenth or early sixteenth century can be given; the 
book has annotations and drawings in an unknown Durham monk’s hand.18
Binding: brown calf over bevelled wooden boards. The covers use a diaper 
design having a central panel with a border formed by fleur-de-lys stamps 
(Oldham 314). The central panel is divided into lozenge-shaped compart-
ments, each with Oldham’s lattice stamp 307 and half lattice stamp 308. There 
are the marks of two clasps on the upper cover and two catches on the lower. 
It has been rebound in the twentieth century with the old covers overlaid, but 
there are signs of the characteristic Durham fore-edge titles.
Provenance: the only surviving ownership inscription is that of Tobie 
Matthew (1546–1628) on the title page, but there are many annotations in 
at least one early sixteenth-century hand, and the small, marginal drawings 
relating to the text found in other priory books. The publication date for this 
book is five years earlier than books noted by Oldham and Pollard, but there is 
no Durham evidence to narrow down the date of acquisition. Tobie Matthew, 
Dean of Durham 1583–95 and later Archbishop of York, was generous in his 
gifts of books to other libraries, a number of which came from Durham. He 
gave five books to the public library founded in his native city of Bristol in 
1614. His widow gave at least sixteen manuscript and printed books to York 
Minster Library after his death in 1628, including another Durham copy of this 
edition of Comestor. A third copy of the same edition of Comestor was owned 
‘Names of Binders’, pp. 200, 212, pl. V. Gibson, Oxford Bindings, pp. 18–19. LVD, III, Manby 
pp. 382–383, C1181; Weardale p. 392, C1216.
17 Oldham EBSB, pl. XXV for the stamps of the Half-stamp binder. Pollard, ‘Names of Binders’, 
pp. 196, 213.
18 ISTC ip00465000; USTC 748031; GW M32164.
114 Hingley
by Thomas Swalwell, monk of Durham, and later by Stephen Marley, monk and 
canon of Durham.19
11) 1493. Strasbourg: [Printer of the 1483 Jordanus de Quedlinburg (Georg 
Husner)]. Guillaume Durand. Rationale divinorum officiorum. DCL ChapterLib 
Inc.63. Durham acquisition: possibly bought before 1496, but definitely 
before 1526.20
Binding: blind-stamped calf over bevelled wooden boards with a diaper 
design using stamps including Oldham 312 (lamb and flag), 318 (pelican in 
piety), 314 (fleur-de-lys in lozenge). In addition, there are three stamps not 
found in Oldham or Gibson: a four-petalled flower in a sunburst in a lozenge 
shape, a triangular floral stamp and another lozenge stamp with what appears 
to be a flambeau at the centre. There are marks of book clasps including two 
original rivets on the upper board and two brass catches are still present on 
lower board. The title is written across the fore-edge. The volume was rebacked 
in the nineteenth century.
Provenance: the inscription of Durham monk Richard Caly (c.1465–c.1526), 
who was at Durham College, Oxford, between 1485 and 1496, latterly as bursar 
before he returned to Durham, is at the head of the title page. An inscription by 
William Wylam (c.1495–1556) describes the book as belonging to St Cuthbert, 
having been bought by Caly with funds assigned to him. Wylam became a 
monk c.1513 and was at Durham College, Oxford from 1516 to 1527. He became 
Third Prior in 1539 and in 1541 was made a prebendary of the Protestant 
Cathedral under his originalfamily name of Watson. The final Durham inscrip-
tion is by Adam Holiday, Durham prebendary 1561–90. The book was bought 
by the Reverend Joseph Mendham (1769–1856). His collection was given to the 
Law Society and, at the end of the twentieth century, deposited at Canterbury 
Cathedral Library. The book was bought by Durham Cathedral in Christie’s sale 
on 5 June 2013.21
19 For an account of the Durham books given to York see C. B. L. Barr, ‘York Minster Library’, 
in G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant (eds.), A History of York Minster, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 
1977) pp. 500–502. For the books at Bristol see N. Matthews, Early Printed Books and 
Manuscripts in the City Reference Library, Bristol (Bristol: W. Crofton Hemmons, 1899), 
pp. vii–ix. The other copies of the 1486 Basel edition owned by Durham monks are Ushaw 
College XVIII.C.2.9 and York Minster Library Inc.3–11 (formerly XII.J.22). A fourth copy 
of Comestor’s work in a 1483 edition published in Strasbourg by Johann (Reinhard) 
Grüninger and Henricus de Inguiler, (ISTC ip00462000; USTC 748029: GW M32178) is DCL 
ChapterLib Inc.2. Oldham, EBSB, pl. XXV.
20 ISTC id00436000; USTC 744528; GW 9137.
21 For Richard Caly: LVD, III, p. 393, C1220; for William Wylam: LVD, III, pp. 420–421, 
C1322. Law Society. Sheila Hingley and David Shaw (eds.), Catalogue of the Law Society’s 
Mendham Collection (London: Law Society, 1994).
115Bindings and Provenance
Figure 5.3 Half-stamp binder. Front cover overlaid over new binding showing marks of 
clasps and the lamb and flag, pelican in piety, pointing finger and fleur-de-lys 
stamps as well as flambeau and floral stamps. Ushaw XVII.E.4.1
116 Hingley
12) 1495. Basel: Michael Furter, for Wolfgang Lachner. Thomas Aquinas. 
Commentaria in omnes Epistolas Sancti Pauli. Ushaw XVII.E.4.1. Durham acqui-
sition: no dating evidence more definite than before 1539.
Binding: blind-stamped calf over bevelled wooden boards in a diaper design 
using stamps including Oldham 312 (lamb and flag), 314 (fleur-de-lys in loz-
enge), 315 (outline hand with pointing finger) and 318 (pelican in piety) of 
the Half-stamp binder. In addition, there are two of the stamps not found in 
Oldham or Gibson: the triangular floral stamp and the flambeau.22 The remains 
of clasps are on the upper board, and catches are still present on the lower 
board. The title is written up the fore-edge. The book was rebound in 1961.
Provenance: there are notes in early sixteenth-century Durham hands 
including those of at least one unknown monk, but the only named monk is 
Nicholas Marley, later Canon of Durham. His name appears in a formal style 
within the red initial at the beginning of the Prologus on leaf aijr and again 
on leaf kijv. There is also an inscription on the second front flyleaf, directing 
the book to Nicholas Marley ‘yn duram abay’. The title given to Marley and the 
form of the address implies that this can be dated to before 1539, when the 
priory was suppressed.
A small, neat, Durham hand not yet identified made marginal annotations. 
The name of Sir Thomas Tempest appears on the title page. The book was 
deposited at Ushaw College along with other former priory books by the parish 
of Yealand Conyers, whose priest from 1823–34 was Henry Rutter (1755–1838), a 
former chaplain to a local recusant family.23
13) 1496. Venice: Bonetus Locatellus, for Octavianus Scotus. Johannes 
Arculanus. Expositio in primam fen quarti Canonis Avicennae De febribus. 
Venice, 1496. University of California, Biomedical Centre, Los Angeles CA. 
22 See binding 2) above.
23 ISTC it00234000; USTC 749343; GW M46148. Nicholas Marley: Liber LVD, III, pp. 432–433, 
C1370. Doyle, ‘Library of Sir Thomas Tempest’, pp. 85–87.
Figure 5.4 Ownership inscription on flyleaf for monk Nicholas Marley dateable to before 
1539 when Durham Priory was dissolved. Ushaw XVII.E.4.1
117Bindings and Provenance
Durham acquisition: Swalwell annotations before 1535 at the latest, but prob-
ably before 1503.
Binding: blind-stamped calf decorated with Oldham 312 (lamb and flag) and 
318 (pelican in piety) stamps used by the Half-stamp binder with the addition 
of a round fleur-de-lys stamp, possibly Oldham 129, a pentagonal floral stamp, 
possibly Oldham 130 and a round Tudor rose, possibly Oldham 131; all of the 
last three were used by the Athos binder, but 129 was also used by the binder 
W. G. and 131 by the Unicorn binder.
Provenance: there is an ownership inscription by the Durham monk 
Thomas Swalwell and an index and annotations in his hand. Swalwell was at 
Durham College, Oxford from 1485 and at Durham in 1496, returning to Oxford 
as warden of the College from 1500 probably until 1503 when he incepted for 
his D.Th. The book belonged to Sir Thomas Tempest. It is therefore likely to 
have been passed on to Stephen or Nicholas Marley before Swalwell’s death 
in 1539, along with other books given by him to the brothers. There is also a 
bookplate of Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford (1858–1932).24
14) 1498–1502. Basel: Johann Amerbach, for Anton Koberger. Bible. Latin. 
Vulgate. Biblia Latina cum postillis Hugonis de Sancto Charo. 7 vols. Ushaw 
XVIII.B.3.5–11. Durham acquisition: before 1503.
Binding: blind-stamped brown calf binding over chamfered wooden boards 
in a diaper style using Oldham stamps 306 (horizontal half lattice stamp), 307 
(full lozenge lattice stamp), 310 (vertical half lattice stamp), in the central panel 
and with stamp 311 (flowers around a staff) used to form the panel frame. There 
are the remains of clasps on the upper boards and of catches on lower boards. 
Traces of the title are visible on the fore-edge of vol. 3. The book was rebound 
in the twentieth century with the original covers laid over new leather.
Provenance: the inscription ‘liber a[rtium] m[agistri] T Swalwell’ appears 
on the title page of vols. 2, 6 and 7 and there are manuscript annotations by 
Thomas Swalwell, monk of Durham, in all the volumes. Swalwell was at Durham 
College, Oxford from 1485 and returned to Durham in 1496. He became Warden 
of Durham College from 1500 until 1503 when he incepted for his D.Th., so this 
inscription was probably written before then. A letter to Swalwell discussing 
priory matters, written in February 1502/3 by Henry Thew, monk of Durham 
and Prior of Stamford, was found in the book. The ownership inscription of 
Nicholas Marley is on the title page of vols. 2, 4 and 6 with a slip pasted over his 
name; it also appears on leaf 3r of vol. 7. Alan J. Piper has tentatively identified 
24 All information on this book is taken from online catalogues and notes by Ian Doyle. ISTC 
ia00949000; USTC 997560; GW 2317. For Swalwell see note 14 above. For a discussion of 
the Athos binder’s stamps see Oldham, EBSB, p. 20.
118 Hingley
Marley’s hand in notes in vols. 6 and 7. Sir Thomas Tempest’s name is on the 
title page of each volume.25
15) 1499. [Nuremberg]: Anton Koberger. Pierre Bersuire. Dictionarius. 3 vols. 
Ushaw XVII.E.4.3–5. Durham acquisition: evidence of a final date between 
1529 and 1538. Possibly bought second-hand.
Binding: on the face of it, a straightforward Durham copy of a three-volume 
work in a contemporary binding with the ownership inscription of John Tuting 
and Ralph Blakeston, both monks of Durham and canons of the Protestant 
Cathedral. However, vols. 1 and 2 have blind-tooled calf bindings over cham-
fered wooden boards, decorated in a diaper design with tools associated with 
the Half-stamp binder (Oldham 306 half-lattice, 307 full lattice and 311 flower 
and staff) while vol. 3 is decorated with stamps and a floral roll not associated 
with that binder. On vols. 1 and 2 the half-lattice stamp can be seen making up 
a whole lozenge, but there is possibly some use of 307, the full lozenge stamp. 
Stamp 311 forms the border to the central frame, where later a roll would have 
been used. The bindings are poorly executed with misalignment of stamps and 
uneven pressure applied. Vol. 3 has a blind-tooled calfbinding over bevelled 
wooden boards decorated in a diaper design using a floral roll, Oldham 706 
with a lattice stamp 991 in the central panel. Oldham says that this design 
was used by an unknown binder in Oxford who worked on books published 
between 1500 and 1517. Despite these differences in their bindings, each of 
the three volumes contain leaves as pastedowns from a copy of Tituli totius 
libri autenticorum et omnium librorum iuris ciuilis or Methodus utriusque iuris 
(four leaves in each of vol. 1 and 2 and one in vol. 3) There were four editions 
printed before 1501: Louvain 1483–1484 (ISTC im00526600); Paris 1488 (ISTC 
im00526750) and Paris 1493–1494 (ISTC im00526900). It has not been possible 
as yet to identify to which edition these leaves belong.
Provenance: there are links to several of the Durham monks described in the 
evidence below, but in vol. 2 the name John Boades appears on the back past-
edown. Boades has no connection with Durham that I have found, so perhaps 
this is evidence of a secondhand purchase. Durham monk and later canon 
John Tuting has written his name in all three volumes. In vols. 2 and 3 he has 
added separately the date of 1541, the year he became a canon. Alan J. Piper has 
suggested that Tuting came into the priory around 1527, since there is no iden-
tifiable entry in the Durham Liber Vitae to date his arrival. One could guess 
that his birth date was c.1509. He was definitely at Durham College, Oxford by 
1529 and obtained his B.Th. in 1538, a year before the dissolution of the priory. 
25 ISTC ib00610000; USTC 740094; GW 4285. Swalwell, LVD, III, pp. 393–396. Thew, LVD, III, 
p. 396, C1222. For N. Marley and Tempest see n. 23 above.
119Bindings and Provenance
It was perhaps during this period that he purchased the book in Oxford, sec-
ondhand. In 1541 he was made a canon and remained in the Cathedral until 
his death probably in 1560. Ralph Blakeston’s name is in vols. 1 and 2: in vol. 2 
he is described as ‘Doctour Blaxstoun’. Alan J. Piper records Blakeston’s entry 
into the priory around 1501 but does not note any attendance at Durham 
College, Oxford. Nor is there any record that I have found for his attendance 
at Cambridge. He was a canon until his death in 1550. Dating evidence can be 
supplemented by annotations and from papers left in the volumes by monks. 
Thomas Swalwell has left annotations in all the volumes, which gives an end 
date for acquisition of 1538 before his death in 1539, but Swalwell died in his 
seventies and in his last years his handwriting is recognisably more feeble and 
he handed on his books to other monks. It seems unlikely he would be vig-
orously annotating these three large volumes in his last few years. Part of a 
letter to ‘dayn wylliam wylem at durham Abbay’ was left in the book, and this 
would mean the book was at Durham before 1539. William Wylam entered the 
priory around 1513 and was another of the monks who became a canon (under 
his family name of Watson) in 1541, dying in 1556. Sir Thomas Tempest’s name 
appears at the front of each volume and the book was deposited at Ushaw 
College by the Catholic parish of St Mary, Yealand Conyers in 1951.26
16) 1505[–1506?]. Paris: Thielmann Kerver for Jean Schabeler and Jean Petit 
Liber sextus decretalium. Ushaw XVIII.A.5.4. Durham acquisition: no specific 
Durham dating evidence.
This work is in three parts with separate foliation and signatures to each part. 
The colophons are variously dated: part 1 December 1505; part 2 January 1505 
[i.e. 1506?]; part 3 February 1505 [i.e. 1506?].27
Binding: Blind-tooled calf over bevelled wooden boards in a diaper style, 
using the half floral lozenge stamp Oldham 306, sometimes with another to 
make up the full lozenge stamp of the Half-stamp binder but there is possibly 
also some use of 307, the full lozenge stamp. Only the front cover survives. 
Unlike binding 15) above, there are only triple fillets used to create the border 
to the central border, giving the impression of a simpler binding. The title is 
written across the fore-edge. There are marks of clasps on the upper board and 
catches on the lower. The execution of the binding is better than that of bind-
ing 15), with better alignment of the stamps within the central panel and more 
even impressions of the stamps. It was rebound in the twentieth century with 
26 ISTC ib00341000; USTC 743347; GW 3867. Tuting: LVD, III, pp. 430–431, C1364; Blakeston, 
LVD, III, p. 411, C1285; Wylam, LVD, III, pp. 420–421, C1322; Swalwell, LVD, III, pp. 393–396.
27 USTC 112561.
120 Hingley
the original front cover overlaid on new leather and a new back cover blind 
tooled in imitation of the original binding.
Provenance: this is probably a book from Durham Cathedral Priory. There 
are no ownership inscriptions of Durham monks but the head of the title page, 
where such inscriptions are usually located, is missing. Manuscript annota-
tions are in several sixteenth-century hands; at least one of these is proba-
bly in the hand of an unknown Durham monk. The title is written across the 
fore-edge in the usual Durham style. There are two inscriptions of people who 
have no known connection with Durham. On the final leaf of the volume is the 
inscription ‘Iste liber p[er]tinet ad me Johanne[m] pryce pretiu[m] vjs jd.’ in 
an early sixteenth-century hand and ‘Jo: Jones – 2s – 10d’ in a late seventeenth- 
century hand.
5 Floral Binder – Thomas Uffington
17) 1489. Basel: Johann Amerbach [and Johann Petri de Langendorff.] 
St Augustine of Hippo. Explanatio Psalmorum. DCL ChapterInc.44. Durham 
acquisition: inscription by William Wylam dated 1534.
Binding: blind-tooled calf binding by Thomas Uffington, named the Floral 
binder by Oldham, and identified as Uffington by Pollard with dates of activity 
between 1479 and 1496. The binding has Oldham tools 167, 168, 172, 170 (i.e. 
Gibson 87) and 177, with the pattern varied on front and back covers. There are 
five brass studs on each cover with one missing from the back cover. Remains 
of metal clasps on the front board and catches on the back board are still pres-
ent. The book was rebound in the twentieth century with the original covers 
overlaid. The title is written up the fore-edge.
Provenance: there is an ownership inscription dated 1534 on leaf a2, of 
William Wylam, monk and canon of Durham. Wylam became a monk around 
1513 and was at Durham College, Oxford 1516–1527. There are annotations in the 
index by another unknown Durham hand, so the book was either purchased 
earlier by this unknown Durham monk or bought secondhand by Wylam. The 
name of Sir Thomas Tempest is also on leaf a2. The book seems to have been 
purchased with others from a sale of Tempest’s books and was bought back by 
Durham Cathedral in 1838 from the bookseller, Emerson Charnley (1782–1845) 
of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.28
28 ISTC ia01272000; USTC 743124; GW 2909. Doyle, ‘Library of Sir Thomas Tempest’, 
pp. 90–96.
121Bindings and Provenance
18) [1489.] Basel: [Johann Amerbach and Johann Petri de Langendorff?] 
Robert Holcot. Super sapientiam Salomonis. Ushaw XVIII.A.6.2. Durham acqui-
sition: probably before 1494 and certainly before 1538.29
Binding: blind-tooled calf over bevelled wooden boards by Thomas Uffington 
using Oldham tools 169, 172 and 177. There are the remains of two clasps on the 
upper cover and of catches on the lower. The title is written up the fore-edge. 
The book was rebound in the twentieth century with the original covers 
overlaid.
Provenance: the book has been annotated by several unidentified Durham 
hands including probably that of John Manby, as there appear to be several of 
his characteristic manicules. There are also annotations by Thomas Swalwell. 
The name of Sir Thomas Tempest appears on the title page. The book was 
given to Ushaw College by the Reverend Thomas Crowe in 1835.30
6 Conclusion
These eighteen bindings from Durham Cathedral Priory’s library provide 
just a sample of the 90 contemporary bindingsthat survive on early printed 
books owned by the last monks. Oxford has provided an obvious focus for this 
chapter because of the existence of Durham College, but the bindings from 
Cambridge and London have equally interesting provenance. There is much 
still to be learned from the bindings on the books still in Durham as well as 
from those dispersed in other libraries. Already the physical evidence has 
provided researchers working on the intellectual content of the library with 
useful background information. It is hoped that much more evidence can be 
provided in the next few years from this group of early printed books, whose 
story can be told from their first acquisition to the present day.
29 ISTC ih00291000; USTC 745774; GW 12886.
30 ISTC ih00291000; USTC 745774; GW 12886. Manby, LVD, III, pp. 382–383, Swalwell, LVD, III, 
pp. 393–396, Tempest, see n. 23 above.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_008
Chapter 6
‘An Imperfect Copy’: Avicenna’s Canon de 
medicinae in the University of Aberdeen
Jane Pirie
In 1914, the University of Aberdeen was gifted a copy of Avicenna’s Canon of 
Medicine, printed by Adolf Rusch in Strasbourg between 1473 and 1477.1 This 
copy is incomplete; many leaves are missing and many of those that remain 
are mutilated by the excision of initials by a razor.2 It is, however, an intriguing 
book, and whilst incomplete, it contains tantalising evidence of a rich past. 
This chapter explores the complex provenance of the book: how it came to 
Aberdeen and who its previous owners may have been. It reveals the exist-
ence of several fragments, where they are located, how they may have been 
dispersed, and discusses why they were worth collecting. In an analysis and 
description of the decoration, a more exact location is proposed for their 
source, which leads to an exploration of why and how this book was exported 
from Strasbourg, with reference to the role played by Adolf Rusch (c.1435–1489) 
himself. Finally, it enquires if the instructions for embellishing this text were 
conveyed when a book was exported to the international market or conveyed 
locally.
The Al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) was written by the Persian 
doctor and polymath Avicenna (Abū ʿAlī al-H usayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , 
980–1037) during the first quarter of the eleventh century. The Canon was a 
huge, encyclopaedic work which became the central reference and teaching 
text for Western medicine; it was utilised until the seventeenth century. Rusch 
used the twelfth-century Latin translation by Gerardus Cremonensis for his 
edition of the Canon, which became the standard translation for medical stud-
ies in the Renaissance.3 Rusch’s Canon was a beautifully printed book, using 
his distinctive roman type on folio Royal paper. This important, luxurious early 
printed book was not recorded as such, however, by William Smith Mitchell in 
1 Avicenna, Canon medicinae [Latin] Lib. I–V, Tr: Gerardus Cremonensis ([Strasbourg: The 
R-Printer (Adolf Rusch), after Feb. 1473]). ISTC ia01417700; USTC 743186; GW 3114.
2 AUL Inc 5.
3 Avicenna, Canon medicinae [Latin] Lib I–V, Tr: Gerardus Cremonensis. (Milan: Philippus 
de Lavagnia, [for Johannes Antonius and Blasius de Terzago], 12 Feb. 1473). ISTC ia01417500; 
USTC 997355; GW 3115.
123‘An Imperfect Copy’
his printed catalogue of the incunabula at Aberdeen in 1968: ‘this imperfect 
copy has the folios numbered in MS … many ff. are mutilated, and the whole 
book is misbound’.4
What the dismissive description does not say is that a large portion of the 
book, 263 leaves, is bound in a handsome twentieth-century calf binding, 
whilst the remaining 143 leaves are loose, with many of them being damaged. 
The Canon is composed of five individual books and the Aberdeen copy con-
tains almost all of Books II to V. A closer inspection of the volume shows that 
the leaves are continuously foliated in a contemporary hand, suggesting that 
the book was originally bound as a whole. Handwritten signature marks and 
catchwords are present, generally on the loose leaves, and some guide initials 
are visible in the margins. The loose leaves measure 210mm × 400mm, whereas 
the dimensions of the bound leaves are two to three millimetres smaller due to 
the leaves having been trimmed by the binder. In addition to this, the bound 
leaves have been cleaned, although not washed.
In the Aberdeen Avicenna, the pages are embellished throughout with pen- 
flourished initials in red and blue ink. The same red and blue inks are used for 
decorative line fillers and alternating paragraph marks. The smaller, printed 
capitals are filled in yellow. There are 30 illuminated initials remaining, which 
are two-lines to six-lines in size. These are the work of English scribes and lim-
ners and are near-contemporary in style with the date of printing, making the 
Aberdeen Avicenna, albeit incomplete, an important example of an incunable 
decorated in England, few of which survive.
The incunable has, however, no historical connection to Aberdeen, which is 
perhaps why it has been overlooked. It was gifted to the University Library in 
1914 by John Fountain Tattersall (1857–1929). Tattersall is listed amongst over 80 
other donors in the Library Report of 1915 but there is nothing to explain why 
he chose to donate to Aberdeen University.5
There is scant information about Tattersall. An obituary in The Times links 
him to the Tattersall bloodstock auctioneers but it would appear that he took 
no part in the family business, instead spending time as a wine merchant, keen 
amateur archaeologist and writer.6 Tattersall spent all his life in the south of 
England, where he acquired the Aberdeen Avicenna in 1911, which makes his 
4 William Smith Mitchell, Catalogue of the Incunabula in Aberdeen University Library 
(Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1968), p. 3.
5 Aberdeen University Library Bulletin (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1915).
6 See ‘Mr. J. F. Tattersall’ Times, January 28, 1929, p. 17. The Times Digital Archive , accessed 
22 February 2020.
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS285810748/TTDA?u=abdn&sid=TTDA&xid=2628cb08
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS285810748/TTDA?u=abdn&sid=TTDA&xid=2628cb08
124 Pirie
donation to Aberdeen, the most northerly University in Britain at the time, all 
the more intriguing.
Whilst there is nothing from 1914 to explain the reason behind Tattersall’s gift 
to Aberdeen, there are two letters dating from 1921 which show that the librar-
ian of the time, P. J. Anderson (1853–1926), was enquiring about the Avicenna 
and its origins.7 The first letter is from the booksellers P. M. Barnard Ltd. to 
Tattersall, supplying him with a copy of a catalogue ‘containing the description 
of books from the Coventry School Library’. The second is from Tattersall to 
Anderson, explaining that the Avicenna was purchased from Barnard’s:
Here is the information you desired me to send you … you will find that 
Mr. Barnard’s catalogue is like his Avicenna – imperfect, but the descrip-
tion of the book, incomplete as it is, may be sufficient for your purpose.
Coventry Grammar School was a free school, established in 1545 by order of 
Henry VIII. The magnificent library was formed in 1602 when the then master, 
John Tovey, requested donations of books from local dignitaries and scholars.8 
By the nineteenth century, however, the school was struggling financially 
and the books, according to several contemporary accounts, were in a con-
siderable state of disrepair.9 In 1908, on the instruction of the governors, the 
whole library was sold for £70 to Hodgson’s Booksellers in London.10 Several 
of the lots, including the Aberdeen Avicenna, were bought by the booksellers 
P. M. Barnard Ltd.
The Barnard’s sale catalogue which Tattersall sent to Anderson did not 
find its way into the university library, however, and the later, extant corre-spondence between Tattersall and Aberdeen does not explain why he gave this 
donation. He may have had purely philanthropic motives; in the same year as 
he gave the Avicenna to Aberdeen, he donated another book from Coventry 
School Library to the London Library, and also sold a painting to benefit the 
7 AUL Inc 5 enclosures 1–2.
8 For an account of the formation of the library and a selective list of donors see T. Sharp 
and George W. Fretton, Illustrative Papers on the History and Antiquities of the City of 
Coventry … (Birmingham: Hall, 1871), pp. 172–176 and D. R. Woolf, Reading History in Early 
Modern England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 196.
9 See Eleanor Prescott Hammond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (New York: Mac-
millan, 1908), p. 354 and A. T. Bartholomew and Cosmo Gordon, ‘On the Library at King 
Edward VI School, Bury St. Edmunds’, The Library, 1 (1910), p. 14.
10 See Ian Doyle and George B. Pace, ‘A New Chaucer Manuscript’. Publications of the 
Modern Language Association, 83 (1968), p. 23. JSTOR, , 
accessed 22 February 2020.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261230
125‘An Imperfect Copy’
War fund.11 Tattersall also made an earlier bequest: in 1911, he donated a single 
leaf from the Aberdeen Avicenna to the library of Gonville and Caius College, 
Cambridge.
When the Avicenna was sold by P. M. Barnard Ltd. in 1911, the book was 
unbound and incomplete: ‘It begins on the 80th leaf and ends on the 556th, 
and there are a few leaves wanting (probably about 12 altogether) in the body 
of the book … covers missing’.12 The Aberdeen Avicenna has 406 leaves, folios 
94 through to 539, with some omissions meaning that 70 leaves were ‘lost’ after 
the sale in 1911. This may explain why the Aberdeen Avicenna is now in two 
distinct parts: it was bound at Tattersall’s request and it may be that it was his 
intention to gift or sell the bound section, and then dispose of, or disperse, the 
other damaged leaves.13 In the course of research for this chapter, seven known 
fragments of the book were discovered to be in other institutions or private 
collections.14 They are:
1. Cambridge, St John’s College, Upper Library Aa.5.1(85) Folio 554, gifted in 
1889 by Churchill Babington.15
2. Gonville and Caius College Library, Lower Library Aa.2.19 (G.A.S. 96) 
Folio 541, gifted to in 1911 by John Fountain Tattersall.16
3. Cambridge, University Inc.Fragments.0[77]. Folios 507–508 gifted in 1919 
by A. W. G. Murray.17
4. Gonville and Caius College Library, Lower Library. Folio 89 gifted in 1923 
by Thomas Okey, Serena Chair of Italian, Cambridge, 1919–1928.18
11 See ‘Five Centuries of Provenance: The Spoils of War at The London Library’. The London 
Library Blog 23 July 2014 and ‘Art Sale for War Funds’. 
Times, 16 February 1915, p. 11. The Times Digital Archive, , accessed 22 February 2020.
12 P. M. Barnard, Catalogue of Early English Books Offered for Sale by P. M. Barnard, Tunbridge 
Wells: No. 37 (Tunbridge Wells: Barnard, c.1911), p. 38.
13 The binding is by J. S. Wilson & Sons, Cambridge, but there is no record of the book being 
bound. I am very grateful to Mr Eric Brigham for checking the records.
14 Thanks are due to the following for their generous help with the location of the fragments 
and helpful photographs: Mark Statham, College Librarian, Gonville and Caius Library 
Cambridge; Kathryn McKee, Sub-Librarian, St John’s College Library Cambridge; Emily 
Dourish, Deputy Keeper of Rare Books and Early Manuscripts, Cambridge University 
Library, and Helen Cooper, Librarian, Henry VIII School, Coventry.
15 Cambridge, St John’s College, Upper Library Aa.5.1(85).
16 Gonville and Caius College Library, Lower Library Aa.2.19 (G.A.S. 96).
17 Cambridge University Inc. Fragments. 0[77].
18 G. A. Schneider, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Incunabula in the Library of Gonville & 
Caius College (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928).
https://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/newblog/entry/five-centuries-of-provenance-the-spoils-of-war-at-the-london-library
https://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/newblog/entry/five-centuries-of-provenance-the-spoils-of-war-at-the-london-library
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS185009232/TTDA?u=abdn&sid=TTDA&xid=8781a004
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS185009232/TTDA?u=abdn&sid=TTDA&xid=8781a004
126 Pirie
5. King Henry VIII School (formerly Coventry Grammar School) Library, 
folios 90–91. Date of acquisition unknown.19
6. Qatar National Library, 3886. Bought by Sheikh Hassan b. Mohammad 
ʿAli al-Thani in 1994 from Bernard Quaritch, London, later donated to the 
Qatar Foundation.20
7. Bifolium of leaves 228 and 231 sold by Dominic Winter Auctioneers. 
Lot 246. January 2020.21
It was not until 1994 and the sale of a single leaf at Quaritch’s that the connec-
tion was made linking just two of the Cambridge fragments with the book in 
Aberdeen.22
As previously stated, Tattersall obtained the Avicenna in 1911 from Barnard’s 
booksellers.23 The Reverend Percy Mordaunt Barnard had begun dealing in 
antiquarian books in 1906, and later traded under the name of Craddock & 
Barnard.24 ‘Craddock’ was an acknowledged pseudonym for a ‘university don 
reluctant to be seen engaging in “trade”’, later identified as A. W. G. Murray 
(1884–1919), Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge.25 The Aberdeen Avicenna 
provides further proof of this.
On Murray’s death, his brother bequeathed a number of his books and book 
fragments to various libraries: a leaf from the Aberdeen Avicenna was amongst 
these bequests to Cambridge University Library. Five of the above leaves and 
bifolia, including the leaf donated by Tattersall in 1911, have almost identical 
pencil or pen annotations in what is thought to be the hand of Murray, stat-
ing that the leaves are from Avicenna’s Canon from a copy that was once in 
19 This folio hangs on the wall of the library in the current King Henry VIII School, Coventry.
20 ‘Illuminated Leaf from Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine, Qatar National Library, 3886’, Qatar 
Digital Library , accessed 22 February 2020. 
Described in Bernard Quaritch, Arabic Science and Medicine: A Collection of Manuscripts 
and Early Printed Books Illustrating the Spread and Influence of Arabic Learning in the 
Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1994), p. 52.
21 See Dominic Winter Auctioneers, Printed Books, Maps & Documents, the Library of 
Patricia Milne Henderson, Bookbinding Equipment & Accessories, 29 January 2020 (London: 
Dominic Winter, 2020).
22 See Bernard Quaritch, Arabic Science and Medicine, p. 52.
23 See Barnard, Catalogue of Early English Books.
24 I am very grateful to John Barnard, grandson of Percy Mordaunt Barnard, the bookseller, 
for providing me with the relevant sheets from the sale catalogue.
25 See New York Public Library, P. M. Barnard Book Sale Catalogs. and Laurence Worms, ‘ABA Past Presidents 1920–1929, Percy 
Mordaunt Barnard’, Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association https://aba.org.uk/page/percy 
-mordaunt-barnard, accessed 22 February 2020.
https://www.qdl.qa/archive/qnlhc/3886
http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b19667697~S1
http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b19667697~S1
127‘An Imperfect Copy’
the Coventry School Library. Whether Murray distributed fragments amongst 
colleagues or sold them individually can only be surmised, but this shows that 
there was a central source and a Cambridge connection.
The earliest bequest, by Churchill Babington to St John’s College, was 
donated whilst the remainder of the book was still in the Coventry School 
Library: evidence, if it were needed, of just how much the library and the books 
had fallen into disrepair. The very recent appearancethe 
same author. This case study explores how the convergence of the interests of 
authors, publishers and readers spurred on the development of early scientific 
and vernacular printing in a provincial French printing town.
Archival evidence also informs an investigation into the Renaissance 
incunabula market in the Republic of Venice. Two surviving sales lists of the 
1480s reveal a plethora of information about popular titles, subjects, editions 
(including no longer extant ones) and retail prices of incunabula on offer in 
Padua and Venice itself. Padua, which belonged to the Republic of Venice, was 
an important university town and boasted a number of book shops, but its 
printing output was only about six percent of that of Venice, Italy’s major incu-
nable printing place. The Venetian bookseller Moretto transferred hundreds 
of copies for sale to a Padua bookshop close to the University, whose propri-
etor listed each item with the price fixed by Moretto in a document known 
as the Quaderneto. The register of a bookshop in Rialto in Venice recording 
book sales, the so-called Zornale, which dates from the 1480s, allows a close 
comparison of the editions and prices charged in the capital as opposed to 
the university town. Ester Camilla Peric contextualises her findings in terms of 
economic factors as well as technological developments and target audiences.
The second section moves the focus to discrete collections of incunabula 
and to individual incunabula with particular attention to bindings, inscrip-
tions and illuminations. Close examinations of these copy-specific features 
4 Hagan
allow the identification of binders and their workshops, reveal details relat-
ing to former owners and help trace the journeys of books from their place 
of production to their present location. Andrea Vilcsek brings a conservator’s 
expertise to her investigation of Hungarian bindings of the incunable and 
post-incunable period until 1526. The examination of decorations, in particu-
lar the coverings and intricate tools and as well as different binding, sewing 
and fastening techniques reveals three distinctive periods of early Hungarian 
bookbinding and enables the identification of particular workshops and cen-
tres. The bindings, which also point to collaborations between German, Italian 
and Hungarian bookbinders, are described and contextualised against the 
backdrop of Hungarian history.
With the fifth chapter, we move to Britain and the examination of copy- 
specific features of incunabula as evidence for production history and prove-
nance. No early printer apart from the elusive Nicholas Bookbynder is known 
to have been active in Durham in Northern England, but the medieval Durham 
Priory library owned nearly 200 books printed before 1539. Contemporary 
English bindings from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries survive 
on over 90 of these Priory books. Inscriptions and annotations in these books 
combined with external evidence about the monks who owned them allow 
estimates of the time and place of their acquisition and the production of 
their bindings. Through detailed descriptions of the copy-specific features of 
the books with the earliest bindings done in Oxford, Sheila Hingley establishes 
where, how and when the books were acquired for this scholarly ecclesiasti-
cal library. By establishing the owners’ connections with the Priory she draws 
the outlines of an intellectual history of this medieval seat of learning and 
devotion.
A single incomplete and mutilated copy of Avicenna’s Canon de medicinae 
may seem an odd choice for a detailed examination, but as Jane Pirie traces 
the provenance of the volume from Strasbourg via London, Westminster and 
Coventry to Aberdeen, she finds evidence in the decorations that the copy 
is one of the few surviving incunabula illuminated in England. Some leaves 
that were sold separately can now be identified in other libraries and cata-
logued appropriately as belonging to this specific copy. This is one of the 
many instances where the contributors’ professional roles add value to their 
investigations.
The final section concerns the development and use of discrete collections 
of incunabula assembled by collectors and institutions in Scotland and England 
between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. Arranged in chronological 
order, the chapters explore how private collections of theological, classical and 
scientific incunabula ended up in the libraries of academic institutions, how 
5Introduction
such incunabula collections were used in the two centuries following the incu-
nable period, and how a national institution’s incunable collection was signif-
icantly developed through the initiative of one librarian.
The sixteenth-century donation of a set of incunabula to the library of 
Lincoln College, Oxford, by Edward Audley, Bishop of Salisbury, offers some 
insights into the non-metropolitan English market in printed books. Copy-
specific provenance features such as bindings, illuminations and manuscript 
annotations in the incunabula collection assembled by Audley give vital clues 
as to their origins and their acquisition. Numerous booksellers had established 
their businesses in London, Oxford and Cambridge to supply incunabula pro-
duced both in England and on the Continent. Sarah Cusk establishes that, 
while a number of Audley’s incunabula were printed on the Continent and 
decorated and bound in English workshops, others were produced and illu-
minated before being imported to England to be bound. Drawing on evidence 
from contemporary College Library catalogues and archival sources, she traces 
the institutional use of this incunabula collection by readers in the seven-
teenth century.
Elizabeth Henderson similarly tries to establish the use of incunabula both 
by their original owners and by students in institutional libraries, but she casts 
the net more widely by taking into account six early modern Scottish collec-
tions that include both incunabula and more recently printed books. This sam-
ple approach addresses a gap in the study of the first half of early modern 
book ownership in Scotland before 1700, which has mainly concentrated on 
individual collections and collectors.3 The investigation concerns collections 
given to universities and colleges between 1580 and 1679. All six original col-
lectors, among them William Drummond of Hawthornden and Thomas Reid, 
were born and educated in Scotland and held legal, ecclesiastical, literary, 
academic and medical positions. Their collections reflected their professional 
needs. Contrasting the acquisition, exchange and use of the incunabula within 
these collections with that of manuscripts and post-1500 printed books in the 
same collections offers clues to the appreciation of incunabula in the first two 
centuries of the post-incunable period. The emerging picture suggests that the 
texts, the intellectual content of these incunabula, were deemed more impor-
tant than their date of publication, and that incunabula were not perceived as 
3 See for instance Murray Simpson, A Catalogue of the Library of the Revd. James Nairn 
(1629–1678) Bequeathed by Him to Edinburgh University Library (Edinburgh: Edinburgh 
University Press, 1990). Collectors in the second half of the early modern period are discussed 
for instance in Peter Reid, ‘Patriots and Rogues: Some Scottish Lairds and Their Libraries’, 
Library and Information History, 35 (2019), pp. 1–20.
6 Hagan
a discrete category but were appreciated and read according to their scholarly 
usefulness even if they were ‘old books’ by the 1600s.
The next two chapters focus on scientific collections containing incunab-
ula that were assembled in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by 
two English scientists whose collections are now in institutional libraries. 
Augustus De Morgan and Edmond Grove-Hills were by no means the only col-
lectors of scientific incunabula at the time, and both areat auction of a bifolium 
suggests that there may still be leaves unaccounted for in private, or even 
uncatalogued, institutional collections. These collectable fragments have been 
the cause of some confusion over the years, artificially boosting the number of 
known copies of Rusch’s Canon.26
At the original auction of the Coventry School Library in 1908, the majority 
of the lots not purchased by Barnard’s were bought by Cambridge University 
Library, including the original manuscript catalogue and donor book.27 The 
donor book covers the period from 1601–1647 and Joannes Bugge, gentleman, 
is listed as donating an Avicenna Medicinae.28
The Aberdeen Avicenna contains many annotations, especially in book 
two of the Canon, the materia medica. These are in at least two hands: one is 
near-contemporary with the printing of the book, whereas the other is a later 
hand which provides common English spellings for many of the plants and 
substances listed in a comprehensive index on the blank sheet at the end of 
the section.
A possible, although unverifiable, candidate is the London apothecary, 
Dr John Bugge (1603–1640).29 He is recorded as being extremely wealthy and 
successful in his trade. Evidently, the Aberdeen Avicenna was used as a prac-
tical source book for medical information and we know it was first located 
26 ISTC, USTC and GW list three of the fragments as separate copies. ISTC ia01417700; USTC 
743186; GW 3114.
27 Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, 
Coventry Grammar School: Catalogue of the Library and Register of Book Donors, MS 
Add.4467–4468.
28 I would like to thank Frank Bowles, Superintendent of the Manuscripts Reading Room, 
Cambridge University Library for checking the registers and supplying copies of the rele-
vant pages.
29 See G. E. Bentley, ’Records of Players in the Parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate’, Publications of 
the Modern Language Association, 44 (1929), p. 796; William Birken, ‘The Social Problem of 
the English Physician in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Medical History, 31 (1987), p. 212. 
Margaret Pelling and Frances White, ‘Buggs, John’ in Physicians and Irregular Medical 
Practitioners in London 1550–1640 Database (London: Centre for Metropolitan History, 
2004), British History Online, , accessed 23 February 2020.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-physicians/1550-1640/buggs-john
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-physicians/1550-1640/buggs-john
128 Pirie
in London, which could suggest this John Bugge, or perhaps a member of his 
family as a possible owner.30
The original owner of the Aberdeen Avicenna is unknown, but the remaining 
decoration is of enough significance to assume that it was someone of wealth 
and status. The much later distribution of fragments to several academics and 
institutions demonstrates that they were considered worthy of retaining and 
bequeathing. Incunabula are always collectable, but it is, without question, the 
decoration and embellishments which make the Aberdeen copy significant.
Although the book is incomplete, there are still 30 two- to six-line initials 
present. Sources for the analysis of late fifteenth-century English illuminations 
include the works of Kathleen L. Scott and Holly James-Maddocks.31 Scott’s 
30 On fol. 434r of the Aberdeen Avicenna are the initials H. B., one of the few annotations 
not connected to the text.
31 See Kathleen L. Scott, Dated and Datable English Manuscript Borders c.1395–1499 (London: 
Bibliographical Society, 2002) and Holly James-Maddocks, ‘The Illuminators of the 
Hooked-g Scribes and Production of Middle English Literature, c.1460–c. 1490’, The 
Chaucer Review, 51 (2016), pp. 151–186.
Figure 6.1 Fol. 178v–179r
129‘An Imperfect Copy’
description of ‘entirely English’ decorative features is typical of those found 
in the Aberdeen Avicenna. The initials are illuminated in gold, on pink and/or 
blue grounds with white filigree centres and foliate sprays, or extensions, into 
the margins. The champ initials show spraywork and feathering ‘in black or 
brown ink, whose ends are drawn together to form a central vein or stem with 
the end terminating in a small plain rounded or oval lobe or finial, in a curve, or 
in a squiggle’.32 Scott’s description of the green colouring used in the feather-
work is also a feature of the Aberdeen Avicenna. From a survey of the remain-
ing 30 initials, it can be seen that there are three, possibly four, individual 
artists involved in creating the decorations of the Aberdeen Avicenna. These 
are referred to below as Artists A, B, (B*) and C for clarity.
Artist A is responsible for the feathering in the initials remaining from 
Book II of the Canon which are executed in a dark, almost black ink with 
well-defined lines. The green lobes on the featherwork are crisply outlined and 
most of the initials have, as terminal motifs, a golden ball with three ‘petals’ 
filled in with green and a pine-cone with stiff ‘whiskers’, and a final green-lobed 
line extension. Artist A was responsible for the only remaining six-letter ini-
tial on fol. 94v of the Avicenna which includes a more elaborate pinecone and 
petal end-motif. This illuminator’s work also exhibits an additional, abstract 
‘signature flourish’ alongside the featherwork.
The initials found in Book III are worked in a different palette with a light 
brown ink rather than black, and lighter colouring in the feathering. The 
majority, if not all, of two to five-line initials are by one artist. Artist B draws 
the featherwork in a clean delicate style, sometimes with a slight wave. The 
small, illuminated golden balls have petals, ranging in number from one to 
four, either half coloured in green or rose or filled in solid green. The three and 
four-petalled flowers have green-lobed stamens, giving them an appearance 
similar to a speedwell. This artist also uses free, unattached green-lobed squig-
gles between the flowers. The end pine-cone motifs have short bristles which 
decrease in size to the tip of the cone which ends in a green-lobed pen-stroke.
Of the thirteen initials remaining in Book III, there are two, maybe three 
initials which exhibit a much less careful style than that of the other ten.33 
They are less precise, using some short pen-strokes to suggest movement but 
are loose and untidy. They may simply indicate a lapse of concentration by 
Artist B but are perhaps the work of a less experienced or apprentice limner, 
copying a master, (Artist B*).
32 Scott, Dated and Datable, p. 122.
33 AUL Inc 5, fols. 204r, 255r, 266v.
130 Pirie
Figure 6.2 Fol. 94r (Artist A)
131‘An Imperfect Copy’
Figure 6.3a Fol. 217r (Artist B)
132 Pirie
Figure 6.3b Fol. 200r (Artist B)
133‘An Imperfect Copy’
Figure 6.4 Fol. 256r (Artist B*)
134 Pirie
Figure 6.5 Fol. 510r (Artist C)
135‘An Imperfect Copy’
There are five initials remaining in Book IV of the Canon which are exe-
cuted by the third principal limner, Artist C. This artist displays a free, quite 
vibrant style, using a number of short pen-strokes which make the feather-
ing appear to quiver on the page. This artist uses three-petalled golden balls, 
but each is surrounded by unattached dashes and squiggles in ink that imply 
movement, which is echoed in the form of the featherwork that bends in a 
swaying fashion. This artist, in addition to pinecones as end-motifs, uses tre-
foils and half-moons.
The freer stylistic change in technique exhibited in Books III and IV in com-
parison to Book II is also echoed in the style of the pen-flourished decorations. 
This may indicate that these embellishments in red and blue ink were either 
executed by the same artists who produced the illuminations or produced by 
scribes working alongside each artist following an agreed workshop style.
Of course, the Aberdeen Avicenna is incomplete, lacking BooksI and V, 
which may have involved the work of yet more limners. It is impossible to look 
at the excisions and not feel a sense of sadness at being unable to see what 
work was involved in absent decorations. The surviving initials are skilfully 
executed, and this makes it all the more frustrating and tragic that the copy is 
no longer complete.
What is clear is that the Aberdeen Avicenna is the result of the collaborative 
work of several artists. The extent of the Canon may well have been a factor in 
determining that more than one artist be involved in the rubrication and dec-
oration, and the fact that each artist appears to have been allocated a separate 
section of the book may mean that they were not necessarily in the same phys-
ical location. The complex interactions between those involved in the London 
book production in the fifteenth century is examined in Sonja Drimmer’s Art 
of Allusion, in which she describes the difficulty in attributing illuminations 
to specific artists, who by tradition worked collaboratively often adopt each 
other’s style.34
However, extensive work in a survey of illuminated incunabula by Holly 
James-Maddocks suggests that the artists may be part of a collaborative group 
located in Westminster, which she has named the ‘Owl Illuminating Group’ of 
around six individuals.35 She has suggested that the Aberdeen Avicenna is also 
34 See Sonja Drimmer, ‘The Illuminators of London’, in Sonja Drimmer (ed.), The Art of 
Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403–1476 (Philadelphia: 
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), pp. 21–52.
35 I am indebted to Dr Holly James-Maddocks for her generous sharing of unpublished 
research into incunabula illuminated in England and for placing the decoration of the 
Aberdeen Avicenna: Holly James-Maddocks, ‘Illuminators of English and Continental 
Incunabula in England, c. 1455–1500’, in John Goldfinch, Takako Kato and Satoko Tokunaga 
136 Pirie
the product of these artists. James-Maddocks has also identified links between 
Westminster and the importation of books from Strasbourg, which were also 
illuminated by this group.
The contemporary pen-work and illuminations are evidence that Conti-
nental books were appearing in England very soon after they were printed. 
Medical books of this size and quality were unusual, even without decoration, 
and to embellish a book in such a lavish and comprehensive way was a major 
and costly undertaking.
The Aberdeen Avicenna was decorated around 1480, which is precisely 
when printed books from the Continent began to be imported into England in 
greater numbers.36 One of the earliest accounts of an incunable, also printed 
(eds.), Production and Provenance: Copy-Specific Features of Incunabula (Leiden: Brill, 
forthcoming).
36 See Elizabeth Armstrong, ‘English Purchases of Printed Books from the Continent 1465–
1526’, The English Historical Review, 94 (1979), pp. 268–290; Lotte Hellinga, ‘Importation 
of Books Printed on the Continent into England and Scotland before c.1520’, in: Sandra 
Hindman (ed.), Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450–1520 
(Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 205–224; Margaret Lane Ford, 
‘Importation of Printed Books into England and Scotland’, in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp 
(eds.), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol. III, pp. 179–201.
Figure 6.6 Fols. 538v–539r Incipit page of Book V showing major initial excision
137‘An Imperfect Copy’
by Adolf Rusch and purchased in England, was recorded in 1474.37 This book, 
a commentary on Valerius Maximus, was purchased by John Gunthorpe, Dean 
of Wells Cathedral and envoy for Edward IV.38
Gunthorpe was a humanist scholar and Latinist who owned a renowned 
library of both manuscript and printed books. He was also Canon and 
Prebendary of St Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster during the 1470s.39 
Gunthorpe’s library contained a number of manuscript works, transcribed 
in his own hand, the exemplars of which he had viewed when abroad or 
had access to in England. He is also suggested as the scribe of the Charter of 
Incorporation of the Wax Chandlers Company, which was also decorated in 
Westminster.40 Although he was not a physician or apothecary, it is known that 
Gunthorpe obtained texts for their quality of Latin as much as their content.41 
Any link to the Aberdeen Avicenna is, of course, circumstantial but it does 
demonstrate that a wealthy collector was purchasing texts in England that had 
been printed in Strasbourg by Rusch.
Rusch was a successful businessman. One of the wealthiest citizens of 
Strasbourg, he traded principally in paper and thus had forged connections 
throughout Europe. Printers such as Rusch needed an international market to 
make a return on their substantial initial investment and large print runs, and 
so to find that his works were being sold for export at this early date comes 
as no surprise. Evidence of Rusch’s various business dealings survives in won-
derful letters about print, font, paper and many aspects of the book trade that 
he wrote to the Swiss printer and bookdealer Johannes Amerbach.42 What is 
clear is that both men traded books printed by a variety of printers, not just 
37 See Alan Coates, ‘The Latin Trade in England and Abroad’, in Vincent Gillespie and Susan 
Powell (eds.), A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, 1476–1558 (Cambridge: 
Boydell & Brewer, 2014), pp. 45–58.
38 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bod-Inc: D-091. Dionysius de Burgo Sancti Sepulcri, Commentarii 
in Valerianum Maximum. ([Strasbourg, The ‘R-printer’, [=Adolf Rusch], not after 1475]). 
ISTC id00242000; USTC 744270; GW 8411.
39 Biographical information about Gunthorpe can be found in Martin Lowry, ‘The Arrival 
and Use of Continental Printed Books in Yorkist England’, in P. Aquilon (ed.) Le livre 
dans l’Europe de la Renaissance (Paris: Promodis, Editions du Cercle de la librairie, 1988), 
pp. 450–459; R. Weiss, Humanism in England During the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: 
Blackwell, 1967); A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 
1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).
40 London, belonging to the Wax Chandlers’ Company. Charter of Incorporation to the 
Company of the Wax Chandlers of London. Cited in Scott, Dated and Datable, p. 132.
41 See Weiss, Humanism in England, p. 125.
42 See Barbara C. Halporn (ed.) The Correspondence of Johann Amerbach: Early Printing in Its 
Social Context (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
138 Pirie
from their own presses, with Rusch supplying Amerbach with works printed 
by many others in Strasbourg.43
Amerbach acted as a middleman for the wider book trade and in the 1490s 
sent books to London through the Cologne merchant Andreas Ruwe. Although 
this was after the death of Rusch, there is no reason to suppose that Rusch did 
not do something similar, using other merchants, to export to London.44
It is possible too, that the Aberdeen Avicenna was exported with decora-
tion in mind. The Canon is divided into five books: general medicine; a materia 
medica of simple remedies; diseases of specific organs of the body; diseases of 
the whole body; and pharmacology. Each book is divided into treatises or fen 
which are further systematically divided into chapters and paragraphs.
There is a multiplicity of gaps in the letterpress of the Canon to allow scribes 
or illuminators to add initials. Such a structured book requires a methodical 
visual guide; the established ‘hierarchy of decoration’ is achieved by using 
larger initials to denote major sections and smaller and less lavishly flourished 
initials for each subsequent division.45 The Aberdeen Avicenna was flourished 
and illuminated exactly as if it were a manuscript of the same period, not only 
to enhance the beauty of the page, but as a necessary function in order to make 
the structure and layout of the text intelligible to the reader.46Digitised copies of Rusch’s Canon held in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in 
Munich and the Universitätsbibliothek in Freiburg show a hierarchy of decora-
tion almost identical to the Aberdeen copy.47 Whilst three is a very small sam-
ple, one wonders if copies of this book were sent out from the Rusch print shop 
with instructions to rubricators, flourishers and limners in place, to create such 
uniformity. Other early printed books, in particular Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible, 
were issued with printed rubrication guides from the print shop, and there is 
evidence that another Strasbourg printer, Heinrich Eggestein (c.1415–1488), 
issued rubrication guides with some of his publications, perhaps influenced 
43 See Correspondence of Johann Amerbach, p. 16.
44 See Correspondence of Johann Amerbach, p. 89.
45 See Kathleen L. Scott, Tradition and Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts 
(London: British Library, 2007) and L. M. J. Delaissé, ‘Towards a History of the Medieval 
Book’, Divinitas, 11 (1967), pp. 423–435.
46 See the nuanced discussion of the treatment of early print as manuscripts in David 
McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 2003), pp. 35–38.
47 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/details 
/bsb00071240 and Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg, http://dl.ub.uni-freiburg.de/diglit 
/avicenna1473, accessed 22 February 2020.
139‘An Imperfect Copy’
by his connection with Gutenberg.48 It seems possible that a guide was issued 
with the Avicenna, and it may even have been an essential component, but it 
may not, of course, have been printed. This was possibly true of the Avicenna 
as there are manuscript guide initials still evident in the margins (for instance 
fols. 125v, 133v). The Aberdeen Avicenna also displays errors where the limner 
has misunderstood the instructions or shows unfamiliarity with some letter 
forms, an indication that the instructions were perhaps not fully explained.49 
A locally written manuscript would have had instructions relayed by a sta-
tioner or scribe, either written or verbal, but an imported, printed book with 
guide initials in an unfamiliar hand may not have been interpreted correctly.50
The Aberdeen Avicenna displays the work of a host of individual crafts-
men and is an encapsulated illustration of book production, trade, market-
ing and collecting. The book has been used in a variety of ways, embellished 
with illuminations, consulted for its medical content, prized and looted for its 
decoration, neglected, auctioned and collected. For custodians of such books, 
however, it again stresses the important function of adequately cataloguing 
and describing such objects so that knowledge of their existence is widely dis-
seminated, and the study of the individual book be used to add to the sum of 
knowledge of the early book trade.
48 See Paul Needham, ‘Copy-Specifics in the Printing Shop’, in Bettina Wagner (ed.), Early 
Printed Books as Material Objects (Berlin: De Gruyter Saur, 2010) pp. 9–20.
49 Fols. 239v and 298r have incorrect flourished initials whilst the final illumination in 
Book II is reversed (fol. 176v).
50 See Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘Notes for the Illuminator: The Case of the Omne Bonum’, The 
Art Bulletin, 71 (1989), pp. 551–564; Kathleen L. Scott, ‘Limning and Book-producing Terms 
and Signs in situ’, in Richard Beadle and Alan J. Piper (eds.), New Science out of Old Books; 
Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle (Aldershot: Scholar 
Press, 1995), pp. 142–188.
Part 3
Collecting
∵
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_009
Chapter 7
Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation to 
Lincoln College, Oxford: Reconstructing a Private 
Library and Its Afterlife
Sarah Cusk
Any discussion of the history of Lincoln College and its library will owe much 
to the work of Vivian H. H. Green and this is in fact where my interest in one of 
the most important donations to the College library, that of Edmund Audley, 
Bishop of Salisbury, began. In his discussion of Audley’s generosity to Lincoln, 
Green wrote that Audley ‘enriched the library with a number of books and 
manuscripts, nine of which still survive’ and went on to describe this dona-
tion as the ‘most significant single collection’ of incunabula in Lincoln’s Senior 
Library.1 With these words, Green both drew upon the work of earlier histori-
ans of the College library and set the pattern for later ones by pointing to the 
significance of the donation while being rather vague, if not actually mistaken, 
about its details: the dates these historians give for Audley’s donation range 
from 1515 to his death in 1524 and the number of books he gave from nine to 
eighteen.2 When I first encountered Audley and his books, as part of a pro-
ject to catalogue Lincoln’s Senior Library, my interest was in determining what 
books he gave and when he gave them. During the process of cataloguing this 
small collection my interest shifted as I came to see that they can be ‘read’ in 
two rather different ways: as valuable evidence for our understanding of book 
ownership in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and as a means to 
understanding the place of incunabula in institutional libraries in the centu-
ries that followed.
Edmund Audley was born around 1439 into a landed, but not aristo-
cratic, family. His father, James Tuchet, fifth Baron Audley, fought with 
the Lancastrians, dying in 1459 at the head of Margaret of Anjou’s forces at 
Bloreheath. His half-brother John, the sixth Baron, switched his allegiance to 
1 Vivian H. H. Green, The Commonwealth of Lincoln College 1427–1977 (Oxford: Oxford University 
Press, 1979), pp. 77, 675–676.
2 Audley’s donation is described in A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of 
Oxford to A.D. 1500. Vol. 1: A to E (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 76; Paul Morgan, Oxford 
Libraries Outside the Bodleian: A Guide (Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 1980), p. 66; and 
Andrew Clark, Lincoln College (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 34–35.
144 Cusk
the Yorkists in 1460 and went on to become one of Edward IV ’s most loyal sup-
porters. Audley graduated B.A. from Oxford in 1467, which may indicate that 
he was possibly resident at Lincoln although there is no evidence of his asso-
ciation with this or any other college. He then made his way with impressive 
speed through a number of livings and prebends, including Lincoln, Salisbury, 
St Paul’s and York cathedrals, until he was consecrated Bishop of Rochester in 
1480. He was translated to Hereford in 1492 and in 1502 to Salisbury where he 
remained until his death in 1524.3
Beyond the dates of his many preferments, translations and consecrations 
we know rather little about Edmund Audley. He is described as ‘a vigorous 
defender of the church’s power and prestige’ and the 70 prosecutions of peo-
ple with unorthodox views, particularly Lollards, that took place in Salisbury 
while he was Bishop do seem to support this. There is evidence that he was a 
generous benefactor to both Oxford University and Lincoln College: he gave 
money to the University to endow what was known as the Chichele chest, 
which made funds available to hard-up colleges, and paid for the restoration 
of the old house of congregation. Between 1513 and his death in 1524 Audley 
gave Lincoln £40 to buy land, £400 for the observance of his obit in perpetuity, 
a small collection of plates and, of course, the books and manuscripts that 
are the subject of this paper. As far as Audley’s broader theological beliefs and 
intellectual interests are concerned, the only evidence is the books he gave to 
Lincoln and these have been used to flesh out our picture of a man who in the 
end still remains elusive.4 What is certain, however, is that Audley left his mark 
on Lincoln and that this is nowhere more evident than in the Collegelibrary.
It is important to stress that, while the College library would have benefited 
from Audley’s gift, he would also have benefited from his association with what 
was an impressive collection. Lincoln was founded in 1427 and by the end of the 
fifteenth century had one of the most important college libraries in Oxford.5 
3 For Audley’s biography and descriptions of his gifts to Lincoln and Oxford see Jonathan 
Hughes, ‘Audley, Edmund (c. 1439–1524), Bishop of Salisbury’ in Oxford Dictionary of National 
Biography vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 931–932; Emden, Biographical 
Register, pp. 75–77; and Green, Commonwealth, pp. 74–78.
4 Hughes cites the books in Audley’s donation as evidence of his ‘commitment to the pasto-
ral office’ and that he was ‘in touch with humanist learning’. (Hughes, ‘Audley Edmund’). 
Graham Pollard includes Audley in his list of influential English humanists; see Graham 
Pollard, ‘The Names of Some English Fifteenth-century Binders’, The Library, 25 (1970), p. 196.
5 Elizabeth Leedham-Green writes that for a brief moment at the end of the fifteenth century, 
‘Lincoln possessed what by our standards would be regarded as the finest of the Oxford col-
lege libraries’: ‘University Libraries and Book-sellers’ in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (eds.), 
The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1999), p. 32. See also Green, Commonwealth, p. 674.
145Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
This was largely due to donations by the founder, Richard Fleming (c.1385–1431), 
and his nephew, the English humanist Robert Fleming (c.1417–1483). Robert 
Fleming’s manuscripts are particularly fine: there is evidence that he trav-
elled widely in Italy and that he bought some of his books from the Florentine 
bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci.6 For all that these donations were made 
over 500 years ago, we know a remarkable amount about the manuscripts the 
Flemings gave to Lincoln. They are all inscribed in a fifteenth-century hand 
with the name of their donor and many contain information about where they 
were bought and how much they cost. There is also external evidence about 
these and other fifteenth-century donations: two inventories drawn up in 1474 
and 1476 when Thomas Rotheram, Bishop of Lincoln, ordered that a valuation 
of the college be taken.7 The first of these lists the 135 books kept permanently 
in the library; the second those books that were in circulation among the fel-
lows, ‘in communi eleccione sociorum Collegii Lincoln[iensis]’.8
By contrast, we know rather less about the first major donation of printed 
books, those given by Edmund Audley. As I have suggested, there is no certain 
evidence about the date of the donation or the number of books. Vivian Green 
seemed confident that the donation was made in 1518, possibly assuming that 
the donation of books was made at the same time as the other important 
donations Audley made in that year; yet he also wondered whether they might 
have been given in 1514 when, according to the College registers, one pence was 
paid by Friar Austin, a Lincoln Fellow, to a Thomas Gamston to carry ‘a great 
baskytt for to books from my Lord of Sarum’.9 It is not unusual for there to be 
no record of specific gifts to the library at this stage in its history. The library 
donors’ book dates from the seventeenth century (the earliest gift it records 
was made in 1620) and while there are references to donations of books in 
the College registers, these are few and unreliable. There is also no mention 
6 See A. C. de la Mare, ‘Vespasiano da Bisticci and the Florentine Manucripts of Robert 
Flemming in Lincoln College’, Lincoln College Record, 1972–3, pp. 9–15.
7 See LC/R/1, Vetus Registrum (1472–c.1640), fols. 12r–14r and 18r–18v. The inventories are 
described and transcribed in R. Weiss, ‘The Earliest Catalogues of the Library of Lincoln 
College’, Bodleian Quarterly Record, 8 (1938), pp. 343–359. The 1474 inventory is a particu-
larly rich source for our understanding of Lincoln’s fifteenth-century library: for each book, 
it gives the title and second folio of the manuscript, the name of the donor and its location 
by press. On the basis of these inventories, which Weiss describes as richer in detail than 
other extant fifteenth-century catalogues of Oxford and Cambridge libraries, he was able to 
sketch a plan of the layout and contents of the library as it was in 1474. Weiss speculates that 
Fleming, an early humanist, must have given some printed books but there is no evidence in 
the College library or archives.
8 Vetus Registrum, fol. 18r.
9 LC/B/AA/COM/3, Computus 1514, fol. 34 (quoted in Green, Commonwealth, p. 77 n. 4).
146 Cusk
in Audley’s will of any gift of books, to Lincoln or for that matter to any other 
institution or individual.10
The evidence we do have for Audley’s donation takes the form of an inscrip-
tion in an early sixteenth-century hand on the first printed page of a number 
of Lincoln’s incunabula, giving the name of the donor and the book’s author 
and title. In the first volume of an edition of Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla super 
totam Bibliam, for example, this reads: ‘Summa p. d[e] Lyra ex dono Edmu[n]di 
Sa[rum] ep[iscop]i.’11 This inscription is clearly visible in ten of Lincoln’s incu-
nabula and in two of its manuscripts. In a further two volumes the inscription 
has been struck out and in one, a copy of the works of Hugo de Sancto Caro, 
only the tails of the letters are visible, the inscription having fallen victim to 
a seventeenth-century binder.12 These inscriptions, or traces of them, can be 
found in two manuscripts and twelve printed books still in Lincoln’s library. 
Yet there could obviously be more Audley books, as yet unidentified, in the 
collection. Of Lincoln’s 49 incunabula, eighteen are in seventeenth-century 
Oxford bindings with no known provenance and it seems likely that in some 
cases an inscription could have been lost in the process of rebinding. We could 
also look beyond incunabula to any book printed before Audley’s death. And it 
is also possible that books originally given to Lincoln are, for whatever reason, 
no longer in the College library. An example of this can be found in the library 
of Trinity College, Cambridge, where a copy of Livius’s Historiae Romanae dec-
ades (Treviso, 1482) has the Audley inscription found in the books at Lincoln 
and, as I will discuss later, is decorated in the distinctive style of two books 
from the Audley donation.13
10 Audley’s will was drawn up on 11 June 1523 and proved on 3 December 1524 (TNA: 
PROB 11/21).
11 Nicolaus de Lyra, Postilla super totam Bibliam ([Cologne: Ulrich Zel, not after 1483]), ISTC 
in00136000; USTC 747452; GW M26502. Lincoln College (LC) K.8.13 leaf aiir.
12 Hugo de Sancto Caro, Postilla super Evangelia (Basel: Bernhard Richel, 10 January 1482), 
ISTC ih00529000; USTC 745854; GW 13578. LC K.10.17 leaf a1r.
13 Titus Livius, Historiae Romanae decades (Treviso: Johannes Rubeus Vercellensis, 1482) ISTC 
il00243000; USTC 993540; GW M18477. Trinity College VI.16.16. The inscription on leaf 
a1r reads ‘Titus Livi[us] ex dono Edmundi Sar[um] ep[iscop]i.’ This work appears in the 
Lincoln College election register of 1543 (discussed later) as ‘Titus liuis 2o fo romanorum’. 
This edition of Livy has this second folio and is in a reversed-calf binding showing marks 
of chaining, both typical of Lincoln’s early printed books. A seventeenth-century inscrip-
tion on an added title-page reads ‘Ex dono Rev[eren]di Viri Magistri Musson.’ Foster 
records a number of members of the Musson family, several of whom became clergy-
men, who were at Lincoln in the seventeenth century. See James Foster, (ed.), Alumni 
Oxonienses 1500–1714, (Oxford, 1891), British History Online , accessed 22 April 2020.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714147Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
Figure 7.1 The Audley ex dono inscription in Nicolaus de Lyra, Postilla super totam Bibliam 
(Cologne, not after 1483). Lincoln College K.8.13 leaf aiiir
148 Cusk
At the very least, then, Audley’s donation amounted to fifteen works in six-
teen volumes.14 This is undoubtedly a small collection, especially when com-
pared with the libraries left to Oxford colleges by men such as Richard Foxe, 
John Clayton and John Shirwood.15 However, although the number of books 
is small, a close reading of them both as individual volumes and as a collec-
tion can tell us something about how, and why, Audley acquired his books. 
It is important first of all to remember that as a university-educated and very 
successful clergyman, Audley would have had, to use Margaret Lane Ford’s 
terms, both the need and the means to buy books.16 Based on the collection 
at Lincoln, the books Audley ‘needed’ and then chose to buy were typical of 
a man of his education: of the fifteen volumes, ten can be broadly classed as 
theology; they include patristic works, biblical commentary and a preaching 
manual. Copies of the works of Aurelius Augustinus, Bishop of Hippo and 
Johannes de Bromyard found in Audley’s collection, for example, would have 
been widely available in Oxford and Cambridge libraries at the beginning of 
the sixteenth century.17 In some ways, though, Audley’s library was not typical: 
evidence suggests that the three works by the Italian Renaissance historian 
Flavius Blondus he gave to Lincoln, as well as the fifteenth-century manuscript 
copy of Strabo’s De situ orbis and the Astronomia of Julius Formicus Siculus, 
would have been the only copies in any Oxford college library at the time.18
While a brief survey of Audley’s books by subject can give us an idea of why 
he bought the books he did, it is harder to establish how, or rather where, he 
bought them. Like the other men who left their libraries to Oxford colleges, 
Audley was himself Oxford trained, had risen through the Church hierarchy 
14 A list of those books so far identified as part of Audley’s donation can be found at the end 
of this chapter.
15 A search of Margaret Lane Ford’s database of sixteenth-century book owners (avail-
able at https://data.cerl.org/ebob/_search>, accessed 22 April 2020) gives 24 books for 
Shirwood, 69 for Foxe and 94 for Claymond. Fox’s and Claymond’s libraries are described 
in R. M. Thomson, The Fox and the Bees: The Early Library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford 
(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer for Corpus Christi College, 2018) For Shirwood’s library see 
P. S. Allen, ‘Bishop Shirwood of Durham and His Library’, in English Historical Review, 25 
(July 1910), pp. 445–456.
16 See Margaret Lane Ford, ‘Private Ownership of Printed Books’, in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. 
Trapp (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1999), p. 205.
17 See Ford, ‘Private Ownership’, p. 210.
18 This evidence can be found in Dennis E. Rhodes, A Catalogue of Incunabula in All the 
Libraries of Oxford University Outside the Bodleian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 
1982). Of the copies of Blondus held in Oxford College libraries, all but those at Lincoln 
are nineteenth-century donations. The Livius was more common: Foxe, Claymond and 
Richard Topcliffe all left copies of various editions. See Rhodes, A Catalogue of Incunabula, 
pp. 1096–1101.
https://data.cerl.org/ebob/_search
149Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
and would have needed books for his professional activities. So where did he 
buy his books? Elizabeth Armstrong has described how early English book 
owners such as James Goldwell, John Shirwood and John Russell were able 
to buy their books on the Continent because their ‘successful careers in the 
service of church and state gave them special opportunities to go abroad’.19 
While Audley’s books included editions printed and, as I will discuss later, dec-
orated on the Continent, there is no evidence that he ever travelled outside of 
England. But of course he would not have needed to: it is well documented that 
by the end of the fifteenth century the trade in printed books had been estab-
lished for some decades and that there were plenty of opportunities to buy a 
wide range of books printed abroad from booksellers in London, Oxford and 
Cambridge.20 Pollard included Audley in a group of early English book owners 
who bought their books in London when he warned against using ‘present-day 
college ownership’ as evidence that a book was bound (or bought) in Oxford 
or Cambridge:
About 1500 several bishops and deans laudably bequeathed their 
books to their colleges in Oxford or Cambridge. It is more likely – and 
in some cases demonstrable – that it was in London that such men as 
Rotheram and Gunthorpe, Fox and Audley, bought the books which they 
bequeathed to their college libraries.21
Pollard does not explain here what he means by ‘demonstrable’ evidence and 
the inscriptions giving prices and booksellers’ names that can be found in John 
Claymond’s library, which was left to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, for exam-
ple, are nowhere to be found in Audley’s books.22 Yet there is evidence in these 
19 Elizabeth Armstrong, ‘English Purchases of Printed Books from the Continent 1465–1526’, 
The English Historical Review, 94 (April 1979), p. 268.
20 The work of Lotte Hellinga, Paul Needham and Margaret Lane Ford is particularly valua-
ble in understanding the import of Continental books in this period. See Lotte Hellinga, 
‘Importation of Books Printed on the Continent into England and Scotland before c.1520’ 
in Sandra Hindman (ed.), Printing the Written Word: the Social History of Books, circa 
1450–1520 (Ithaca, NY and London, 1991), pp. 205–224; Paul Needham, ‘The Customs Rolls 
As Documents for the Printed-book Trade in England’, in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp 
(eds.), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1999), pp. 148–164; Margaret Lane Ford, ‘The Importation of Printed 
Books into England and Scotland’, in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (eds.), The Cambridge 
History of the Book in Britain vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 
pp. 179–204.
21 Pollard, ‘The Names of Some English Fifteenth-century Binders’, p. 196.
22 These inscriptions are transcribed in the list of Claymond’s books at the end of R. M. 
Thomson, The Fox and the Bees, pp. 58–66.
150 Cusk
books of another kind, contemporary English bindings and textual decoration 
that I would argue confirm Pollard’s belief that Audley bought his books in 
London.23
One such binding is found on two volumes: parts 1 and 2 of a four-part edi-
tion of Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla super totam Bibliam, printed in Cologne by 
Ulrich Zel not after 1483.24 Both volumes are bound in late fifteenth-century 
English blind-stamped calf over wooden boards with parchment endpapers 
and evidence of clasps on the upper board and catch plates on the lower.25 The 
boards of both volumes are decorated with a frame around a diapered central 
panel filled with small stamps. In the binding of the first part, the frame incor-
porates stamps depicting two dragons with interlocking heads and a crane 
attacking a four-legged animal and there is a small rosette stamp in the dia-
pered panel. In the second part, the frame is made of blind fillets and the only 
stamp used in the diapered panel is a small flower. G. D. Hobson listed a group 
of fifteen bindings with these stamps as the work of a London binder known 
as the Indulgence Binder, sometimes identified with the London printer John 
Lettou because strips of an otherwise unknown indulgence printed by him 
were found in a binding at Jesus College, Cambridge.26
The second contemporary English binding in Audley’s donation is on 
a three-volume edition of Augustinus’s commentary on the Psalms, the 
Explanatio Psalmorum, printedprobably in the Southern Netherlands between 
1486 and 1487.27 All three volumes are bound in blind-stamped calf over 
23 See cumulative bibliography for the works by Pollard, Oldham, Hobson and Foot I have 
relied on for this study of Audley’s books.
24 ISTC in00136000; USTC 747452; GW M26502. LC K.8.13–14.
25 As a rule of thumb, in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English and French bindings the 
clasps were attached to the upper cover with the catch on the lower; on bindings from 
Germany and the Netherlands this was reversed. See P. J. M. Marks, The British Library 
Guide to Bookbinding History and Techniques (London: The British Library, 1998), p. 49.
26 G. D. Hobson, Blind Stamped Panels in the English Book Trade (London: Bibliographical 
Society, 1944), pp. 21–22. Graham Pollard identified a total of seventeen volumes by this 
binder (see ‘The Names of Some English Fifteenth-century Binders’, p. 195): he listed two 
volumes from the Audley donation among them but mistakenly described them as ‘two 
volumes of a bible printed at Cologne by Conrad Winters about 1475 (GW 4214)’ when in 
fact they come from the seventeenth-century bequest of Thomas Marshall. The identifi-
cation with Lettou has been challenged by Mirjam Foot, among others, who warned that 
‘such fragments cannot be used as proof either of the place of binding or of the identity of 
the binder’: Mirjam Foot, ‘English Decorated Bookbindings’, in J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall 
(eds.), Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1989), p. 74.
27 Aurelius Augustinus, Explanatio psalmorum ([Southern Netherlands?: Printer of 
Augustinus, ‘Explanatio psalmorum’, about 1486–87]). ISTC ia01271000; USTC 743123; GW 
2908. LC K.8.26–28.
151Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
Figure 7.2 An Audley volume bound by the Octagonal Rose Binder. Lincoln College K.8.26, 
upper board
152 Cusk
wooden boards decorated in a diapered pattern with six small stamps (one 
or two in each lozenge): a double-headed eagle, a floral lozenge, an octago-
nal rose, a small fleur-de-lys surrounded by four small rosettes, and a floral 
medallion surrounded by the same rosette. J. Basil Oldham called this binder 
the Octagonal Rose Binder and argued that he was of Continental origin and 
worked in London between 1489 and 1496.28
The third volume with a contemporary English binding is an edition of the 
letters of Hieronymus printed in Strasbourg before 1469.29 Like the other con-
temporary English bindings in Audley’s donation this is done in blind-tooled 
calf over wooden boards with parchment pastedowns and evidence of clasps 
on the upper board and catch plates on the lower. The decoration on this vol-
ume, however, is much less elaborate: both boards have a simple diaper pat-
tern made of blind fillets with a slight variation between upper and lower 
boards of the kind seen in English bindings from the 1490s and done in Oxford, 
Cambridge or London. The simplicity of the decoration suggests this binding 
would have been a cheaper option than those done by the ‘named’ binders I 
have described.30 This volume is also hand-coloured and in a typically English 
style with the 5–7 line initials decorated with red and blue penwork, evidence 
that this volume was one of the many imported as loose sheets to be bound 
and decorated by English craftsmen.
Another book from Audley’s donation, Flavius Blondus’s Roma instaurata 
(Verona, 1481–1482), demonstrates how the decoration of printed books can 
provide valuable evidence when the original binding has been lost.31 The book 
is decorated in an English style that shows some Continental influence: two 
gold initials on a compartment ground of rose and blue highlighted in silver and 
white with borderwork of a distinctive pattern of leaves and roses with barbed 
edges. The seventeen large initials have been decorated with pen-flourishing 
and in a similar style to the illuminated initials. Holly James-Maddocks has 
argued that the decoration of this volume is the work of a specialist incunable 
28 See J. Basil Oldham, English Blind-stamped Bindings (Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1952), p. 30 and plate XXV. The stamps used in this binding are classified by Oldham 
as 321, 323, 324, 327 and 326, 328 and 326.
29 Hieronymus, Epistolae ([Strasburg: Johann Mentelin, not after 1469]). ISTC ih00162000; 
USTC 745720; GW 12422. LC K.10.5.
30 For this style of binding see David Pearson, English Bookbinding Styles (New Castle: Oak 
Knoll Press, 2015) p. 46 and fig. 3.13, reminding us as that ‘the binding trade, at all periods, 
provided buyers with options to suit their taste and pocket, and it should not be imagined 
that all late-fifteenth-century bindings were as extensively tooled as the examples so far 
illustrated’.
31 Flavius Blondus, Roma instaurata (Verona: Boninus de Boninis, de Ragusia, 1481–82). ISTC 
ib00702000; USTC 996806; GW 4423. LC K.8.10.
153Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
Figure 7.3 The work of an English incunable artist in Audley’s copy of Flavius Blondus, Roma 
instaurata (Verona, 1481–82). Lincoln College K.8.10, leaf a1v
154 Cusk
artist or limner, who worked during the 1480s as part of a team employed by 
William Caxton to provide books for a market of university-educated men.32 
It is telling – and exciting – that among the books James-Maddocks has iden-
tified as the work of Caxton’s limner, three can be linked to early English 
owners: Thomas Wright (active 1465–1488), Richard Mayhew (d. 1516) and 
Edmund Audley.
The hand of an English illuminator is visible in one more book from the col-
lection, a copy of a 1472 edition of Augustinus’s De civitate Dei.33 Like Audley’s 
Roma instaurata, this book was rebound in the seventeenth century but retains 
evidence of its fifteenth-century English provenance: a series of 8-line initials 
decorated with pen-flourishing using foliate motifs, hatched grounds and scal-
loping, and smaller Lombard initials in red and blue.34 While this style of dec-
oration was widespread and so cannot be identified as the work of a particular 
workshop or even city, it does provide strong evidence, again, of a market in 
printed books from the Continent that drew on the work of English craftsmen 
and was aimed at a network of English readers.
This ‘reading’ of Audley’s books confirms our understanding of one aspect 
of the book trade in the fifteenth century: that printed books were imported 
as loose sheets to be decorated and bound in English workshops.35 Yet there 
is a group of books from Audley’s donation that points to a different model 
that has been less well documented, where books might be printed in one 
place and decorated in another before being imported into England to be 
bound and sold. This pattern has been discussed by Azzurra Elena Andriolo 
and Suzanne Reynolds who, in cataloguing illuminated incunabula in 
Cambridge, have uncovered evidence of trade networks linking printers in 
Venice and elsewhere in Northern Italy, illuminators in the Netherlands and 
32 See Holly James-Maddocks, ‘Illuminated Caxtons and the Trade in Printed Books’, The 
Library, 22 (2021), pp. 291–315. James-Maddocks argues that Caxton would have dealt 
largely with books imported from the Continent, such as Latin texts of the law, classics, 
humanism and theology, which he would have reserved for illumination and sold on to 
individual buyers or provincial booksellers.
33 Aurelius Augustinus, De civitate Dei (Basel: Michael Wenssler [and Bernhard Richel], 
25 Mar. 1479), ISTC ia01241000; USTC 743101; GW 2885. LC K.10.3.
34 For examples of this style of decoration see Azzurra Elena Andriolo and Suzanne Reynolds, 
A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge 
Colleges, pt. 5: Illuminated Incunabula (London: Harvey Miller, 2017–), vol. 1, p. 219 and 
pp. 252–253.
35 This is well established and supported by evidence from contemporarycustoms rolls. See 
Needham, ‘The Customs Rolls’, pp. 148–163.
155Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
binders and customers in Cambridge.36 Audley’s donation includes three vol-
umes that seem to be the product of just such a network, all humanist works 
printed in Northern Italy: two works by Flavius Blondus (Roma triumphans and 
Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades) and Porrus’s edition 
of Livius’s Historiae Romanae decades.37 While all three were rebound in the 
seventeenth century, and so any evidence about whether their earliest bind-
ings were English or Continental has been lost, there is evidence at least that all 
three volumes came into England via a workshop in the Southern Netherlands. 
All are decorated in the same style: penwork initials in red and blue, some 
with voided ornament, with short pen-flourished extensions washed in an 
unusual combination of inks in light or dark brown, ochre and green, a style of 
decoration identified by Andriolo and Reynolds as done in the southern part 
of the county of Holland, possibly in Leiden, towards the end of the fifteenth 
century.38 Audley’s copy of Hugo de Sancto Caro’s commentary on the Gospels, 
printed in Basel in 1482 (and now in a seventeenth-century binding), seems 
also to have been decorated on its way to England. The style of the decoration 
is Dutch with a particularly striking 17-line Q on leaf a1r: a solid blue initial 
with pen flourishes in rose, blue and green of foliate and floral motifs forming 
a square ground and extending to form a short border within which sit two 
decorated globe shapes, one possibly a pomegranate, joined together by a vine.
What has struck me in the course of cataloguing the books from Audley’s 
donation is that even a small collection can provide so many examples of what 
we know about the trade in printed books in England at the end of the fif-
teenth century: the availability of Continental books to English book buyers, 
made possible by the existence of a network of book producers that stretched 
across Europe, and the development of a market for books bound and dec-
orated in England that brought together craftsmen, booksellers and their 
university-educated customers.39 Yet while Audley’s books can tell us much 
36 See Andriolo and Reynolds, Illuminated Incunabula, pp. 124, 127. See also Suzanne Reynolds, 
‘Tracking Changes: Decoration, Binding and Annotation in Incunabula Imported to 
England’, in John Goldfinch, Takako Kato and Satoko Tokunaga (eds.) Production and 
Provenance: Copy-Specific Features of Incunabula (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
37 Flavius Blondus, Roma triumphans (Brescia: Bartholomaeus Vercellensis, 1482), ISTC 
ib00704000; USTC 996804; GW 4425. LC K.8.11; Flavius Blondus, Historiarum ab incli-
natione Romanorum imperii decades (Venice: Octavianus Scotus, 16 July 1483), ISTC 
ib000698000; USTC 996810; GW 4419. LC K.8.12; Titus Livius, Historiae Romanae dec-
ades (Treviso: Johannes Rubeus Vercellensis, 1482), ISTC il00243000; USTC 993540; GW 
M18477. Trinity College Cambridge VI.16.16.
38 See Andriolo and Reynolds, Illuminated Incunabula, p. 131.
39 Audley’s library does not contain any books in Continental bindings. While the customs 
rolls show that bound books were imported, as yet (and thanks to Paul Needham for a 
156 Cusk
about the private ownership of books in the period, they also bear the marks 
of the more than 500 years they have spent in an institutional library. In the 
next section of this paper, I will look at the ways in which the continued life of 
Audley’s books is visible in the physical copies, in bindings and annotations, 
as well as in documents in Lincoln’s archives, and discuss what this can tell us 
about the changing place of incunabula in a college library.
That Audley’s books continued to be read by fellows of Lincoln well into 
the sixteenth century is suggested by evidence from the College registers: four 
lists of non-library books that could be chosen by fellows on an annual basis.40 
As Neil R. Ker has shown, the system of book elections among fellows was 
a largely medieval practice that, in Oxford at least, had begun to die out by 
the beginning of the sixteenth century in every college apart from Lincoln.41 
Lincoln’s election registers date from 1543, 1568, 1596 and 1597 and Audley’s 
books figure prominently on these lists: of the 92 books on the 1543 register, for 
example, eleven are from his donation.
It is difficult to pin down what these numbers can tell us about the status of 
Audley’s books at the time. Ker described the books in Lincoln’s election reg-
isters as ‘standard theology in old editions’ and argued that, with the increas-
ing availability of affordable books and a chained collection ‘for reference and 
reading of the sort of books a college fellow was not likely to have reference to 
otherwise’, the books on the election register must have been those that were 
considered outdated and superfluous.42 Elizabeth Leedham-Green has simi-
larly described the books on election registers as ‘the less valuable books’.43 Yet 
at least one sixteenth-century fellow of Lincoln seemed to think the system 
still had some value: Edward Hoppey, who died in 1538, stipulated in his will 
that books from his library should ‘remayn in the Election annually’.44 And, of 
course, the value of a particular book can be assessed in different ways. Both 
Ker and Leedham-Green have speculated that a certain ‘pietas’ towards impor-
tant donors explains Lincoln’s reluctance to part with particular books and it is 
striking that so many of the volumes on the 1543 election register, for example, 
very helpful discussion on this topic) there has not been much research done on the 
import of bound books into England.
40 The College election registers are in the Vetus registrum (LC/R/1), fols. 22–23, 234 () and the 
Medium registrum (LC/R/2), pp. 11–12 (), accessed 22 April 2020.
41 See Neil R. Ker, ‘The Provision of Books’, in J. I. Catto and T. A. R. Evans (eds.), The History 
of the University of Oxford vol. II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 440–486.
42 Ker, ‘The Provision of Books’, pp. 456–457.
43 Leedham-Green, ‘University Libraries and Booksellers’, p. 323.
44 Quoted in Green, Commonwealth, p. 51.
https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/42c4a166-0083-408c-89da-8f0634577767/
https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/42c4a166-0083-408c-89da-8f0634577767/
https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/d51e1105-5feb-4ad2-ad58-228cd74eecf4
https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/d51e1105-5feb-4ad2-ad58-228cd74eecf4
157Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
Figure 7.4 The Lincoln College election register from 1543. Lincoln College LC/A/R/1, leaf 22r
158 Cusk
are identified by the name of their donor. Audley’s name is the most prom-
inent but there are other important early sixteenth-century donations from 
men such as John Longland and Francis Babington.45 Perhaps the election reg-
isters should be seen not as a graveyard for antiquated books but as a way of 
ensuring the continued life of books given by important donors?
One way of answering this question might be to look for evidence that these 
books continued to be read. Towards the end of a talk he gave in 1972 on his 
work in Oxford college libraries, Dennis Rhodes wondered whether incunab-
ula were ever read.46 While the evidence of reading activity in Audley’s books 
is not plentiful, the occasional inscriptions and marginal annotations found in 
their pages do tell us something about the life of these ‘non-library’ books in 
the sixteenth century. These annotations, largely the underlining of text and 
the extraction of key words, in a variety of sixteenth-century English hands 
do suggest that the books were read, if only in a perfunctory way,by mem-
bers of the Lincoln community in the hundred years after Audley’s donation. 
More interesting are the traces left by readers who wrote their names in books 
belonging to the college. The Roma instaurata, for example, is inscribed in an 
early sixteenth-century hand with the name ‘Dominus Flower’, possibly the 
George Flower who graduated M.A. from Lincoln in 1535 and, rather neatly, 
served as Audley’s chantry priest in Salisbury in 1539.47 Another Lincoln fel-
low, Thomas Arderne (1517–1565), left his mark on Audley’s copy of Bromyard’s 
Summa predicantium by inscribing it with the words ‘Liber Thomae Arderne’.48 
And on the back pastedown of Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla super totam Bibliam 
are a Latin couplet widely found in churches and emblem books (‘mors tua 
mors, christi, fraus mundi, gloria coeli et dolor inferni sunt meditanda tibi’) 
and the names of Marmaduke Lodington, Tobias Heyrick and Christopher 
Chalfont. All three were Fellows of Lincoln at the end of the sixteenth century 
and the names of both Chalfont and Heyrick appear on the 1595 and 1596 elec-
tion registers.
Ker’s account of Oxford college libraries in this period demonstrates that 
colleges could be ruthless in discarding books, particularly at the turn of the 
seventeenth century when the refurbishment of college libraries and the shift 
from lecterns to book presses provided libraries with an opportunity to get 
45 See Leedham-Green, ‘University Libraries and Booksellers’, p. 342; Ker, ‘The Provision of 
Books’, p. 445.
46 See Dennis Rhodes, ‘An Account of Cataloguing Incunables in Oxford College Libraries’, 
Renaissance Quarterly, 9 (1976), p. 19.
47 See Blondus, Roma instaurata, fol. M6r. For Flower see Green, Commonwealth, pp. 113, 603.
48 Bromyard, Summa predicantium, leaf a1r. For Arderne see Foster, Alumni oxonienses.
159Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
rid of anything that was old, outdated or duplicated by a more modern edi-
tion.49 At Lincoln, however, the story is rather different. While the library was 
refurbished, it does seem that not only were older books largely retained but 
volumes from the election register were moved back into the library collec-
tion. A number of books listed in the registers, including several from Audley’s 
donation, are inscribed with the words ‘layd in the library 1603’ and the chain 
scars still visible on their bindings show that they were incorporated into 
the chained collection.50 It is interesting that, almost a hundred years after 
Audley’s donation, his books were still considered relevant or valuable enough 
to be included in what constituted the library’s core collection of texts.
The seventeenth-century refurbishment of the library had another material 
consequence for some of the books from Audley’s donation as the College paid 
for an extensive programme of rebinding. Both printed books and manuscripts, 
including ten from Audley’s donation, were rebound in one of two styles: a 
simple reversed calf and a tanned calf, blind-tooled in a way that is distinctive 
of Oxford binders of the time.51 The blind-tooled bindings can be identified as 
the work of the bookbinder Roger Barnes who worked in Oxford, initially for 
his brother, the printer Joseph Barnes, from the 1590s.52 His work was valued 
in seventeenth-century Oxford not just for the quality of the leather he used 
but for the skill with which he and his team of craftsmen decorated the bind-
ings; examples of his work can be found in almost every Oxford college library 
as well as in the Bodleian, where he was responsible for much of the binding 
49 See Ker, ‘The Provision of Books’, pp. 445–454. The refurbishment of Lincoln’s library in 
this period is described in Green, Commonwealth, pp. 670–673.
50 This inscription and the chain scars can be found in Audley’s copies of Aurelius Augustinus, 
Explanatio psalmorum (ISTC ia01271000; USTC 743123; GW 2885) and Hugo de Sancto Caro, 
Postilla super totam Bibliam (ISTC ih00529000; USTC 745854; GW M26502) Lincoln’s 
chained library is described in Burnett Hillman Streeter, The Chained Library: A Survey of 
Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library (Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1931), pp. 249–255.
51 In a reversed-calf binding the flesh side of the animal skin faces outward and the resulting 
binding has a soft, suede-like finish. This type of binding was often used for account books 
and ledgers (described in Pearson, English Bookbinding Styles, p. 18) but is also widely 
found on printed books and manuscripts in Oxford college libraries. There is apparently 
no evidence about the relative cost of the two types of calfskin bindings: given that the 
reversed-calf skins needed less preparation and that the bindings using this skin have 
minimal decoration it does however seem likely they would have been cheaper.
52 For a short biography of Barnes, as well as examples of bindings attributed to him, see 
David Pearson, Oxford Bookbinding 1500–1640: Including a Supplement to Neil Ker’s 
Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts Used as Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings (Oxford: 
Oxford Bibliographical Society, 2000), p. 127.
160 Cusk
Figure 7.5 Johannes de Bromyard, Summa praedicantium (Nuremberg, 1485) rebound for 
Lincoln College by Roger Barnes. Lincoln College K.10.1, upper board
161Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
done in the 1620s.53 The books from Audley’s donation that were rebound by 
Roger Barnes are all in the same style: a dark tanned calf over pasteboards, 
blind-tooled with rolls and fillets to form a frame of concentric rectangles.54 
The bindings have stood the test of time and, beautiful as they are, can tell us 
quite a lot about the value of Audley’s books to the College in the first decades 
of the seventeenth century. As Mirjam Foot has said, when a fifteenth-century 
book survives in its original binding we should entertain the idea that perhaps 
the book was never read.55 I would add to this that when a fifteenth-century 
book is in what must have been a costly seventeenth-century binding, the 
book must not only have been read but valued.
At this point, the evidence about Audley’s library, its provenance, its readers 
and its place in Lincoln’s library runs dry. Along with the rest of the collection, 
the books from Audley’s donation would have been ‘unchained’ at some point 
after 1739, the last recorded date of a reference to the practice of chaining in 
the College archives. All of Lincoln’s manuscripts, Audley’s among them, have 
been housed in the Bodleian since the nineteenth century; the printed books 
are now under lock and key in the College library although there is no record of 
when they, or the rest of the historic collection for that matter, were removed 
from the main library. And so Audley’s printed books are now part of Lincoln’s 
collection of incunabula: not easily available, certainly not circulated and, in 
the narrowest meaning of the word, not read. But they are still valued, not only 
for what they can tell us as historians of the book or of Lincoln College but as 
objects that we can hold in our hands, as generations of readers have done, 
and that give us a very real way of touching the past. As a coda to this study 
I would like to end with the last piece of evidence, chronologically speaking, 
the collection contains evidence of a reader who managed to get his hands 
on one of Audley’s books and leave his mark. On the back pastedown of 
the Octagonal Rose binder Explanatio psalmorum I discussed earlier is the 
signature of Josef Halfer, an expert in marbled paper and the inventor of a 
revolutionary marbling process. Halfer was also a friend of one of Lincoln’s 
nineteenth-century rectors, the scholar and bibliophile Mark Pattison and so 
53 See Strickland Gibson, Early Oxford Bindings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903), p. 13.
54 According to Pearson, the two rolls used in the design (Gibson XVII and XXI) can be 
traced to London inthe 1550s and 1560s and seem to have come to Oxford in the 1590s 
when they are associated with Roger Barnes, who continued to use them until his death 
in 1631 when they are mentioned in his inventory. See Pearson, English Bookbinding 
Styles, p. 69.
55 See Mirjam Foot, ‘Bookbinding 1400–1557’, in Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (eds.), The 
Cambridge History of the Book in Britain vol. III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1999), p. 127.
162 Cusk
would, presumably, have had access to Lincoln’s rarest books. It is somewhat 
ironic that Halfer has left this trace of himself in a fifteenth-century book 
housed safely in an Oxford library since the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury: copies of the English translation of his only work, Die Fortschritte der 
Marmorierkunst, published in Budapest in 1885, are extremely rare, with most 
having been destroyed in a warehouse fire before they were bound.56
 Appendix: Books Donated to Lincoln College by Edmund Audley
Aurelius Augustinus, De civitate Dei (Basel: Michael Wenssler [and Bernhard Richel], 
25 March 1479) Lincoln College K.10.3. ISTC ia01241000; USTC 743101; GW 2885.
Aurelius Augustinus, Explanatio psalmorum ([Southern Netherlands?: Printer of 
Augustinus, ‘Explanatio psalmorum’, about 1486–87]) Lincoln College K.8.26–28. 
ISTC ia01271000; USTC 743123; GW 2908.
Flavius Blondus, Roma instaurata (Verona: Boninus de Boninis, de Ragusia, 1481–82). 
Lincoln College K.8.10. ISTC ib00702000; USTC 996806; GW 4423.
Flavius Blondus, Roma triumphans (Brescia: Bartholomaeus Vercellensis, 1482). 
Lincoln College K.8.11. ISTC ib00704000; USTC 996804; GW 4425.
Flavius Blondus, Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades (Venice: 
Octavianus Scotus, 16 July 1483) Lincoln College K.8.12. ISTC ib00698000; USTC 
996810; GW 4419.
Johannes de Bromyard, Summa praedicantium (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 29 June 
1485) Lincoln College K.10.1. ISTC ij00261000; USTC 746253; GW M13116.
Gregorius I, Pont. Max., Commentum super Cantica canticorum ([Cologne: Ulrich Zel, 
not after 1473]) Lincoln College K.8.1(2) ISTC ig00394000; USTC 745346; GW 11414.
Hieronymus, Epistolae ([Strasbourgh Johann Mentelin, not after 1469]) Lincoln College 
K.10.5. ISTC ih00162000; USTC 745720; GW 12422.
Hugo de Sancto Caro, Postilla super evangelia (Basel: Bernhard Richel, 10 January 1482) 
Lincoln College K.10.17. ISTC ih00529000; USTC 745854; GW 13578.
Titus Livius, Historiae Romanae decades (Treviso: Johannes Rubeus Vercellensis, 1482) 
Trinity College Cambridge VI.16.16. ISTC il00243000; USTC 993540; GW M18477.
Nicolaus de Lyra, Postilla super totam Bibliam ([Cologne: Ulrich Zel, not after 1483]) 
(Parts I and II only.) Lincoln College K.8.13–14. ISTC in00136000; USTC 745854; 
GW M26502.
56 See Josef Halfer, The Progress of the Marbling Art from Technical Scientific Principles 
(Buffalo, NY: L. H. Kinder, 1893). A note on the flyleaf of a copy of the book at the 
University of Minnesota (digitised at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.319510022798763) 
reads ‘Nearly all copies of this work were destroyed by fire in the process of binding’.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.319510022798763
163Incunabula from a Sixteenth-Century Donation
Rainerius de Pisis, Pantheologia, sive Summa universae theologiae (Nuremberg: Anton 
Koberger, 12 February 1477) Lincoln College K.10.2. ISTC ir00008000; USTC 748377; 
GW M36940.
Paulus de Sancta Maria, Scrutinium scripturarum ([Strasbourg: Johann Mentelin, 
not after May 1470]) Lincoln College K.8.1(1). ISTC ip00201000; USTC 747727; GW 
M29971.
Strabo, De situ orbis. Julius Firmicus, Astronomia. Italy, 15th century. Lincoln College 
MS Lat 114.
Gospels. Greek. Fifteenth century. Lincoln College MS Gr 1.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_010
Chapter 8
The Place of Incunabula in Early Modern 
Scottish Libraries
Elizabeth Henderson
‘Old tomes’, wrote Anthony Ross in the introduction to Early Scottish Libraries, 
‘that were out of date or out of fashion were readily abandoned. Such were the 
law books which Andrew Melville noted in the dust of a St Andrews college 
three decades after the Reformation’.1 Durkan and Ross laid the foundations 
for all subsequent work on Renaissance Scottish book ownership, but this 
assertion deserves a closer look. By the late sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies incunabula were, by definition, old tomes, often embodying even older 
texts. Yet early modern Scottish book owners were demonstrably buying incu-
nable editions alongside the latest publications, giving them as gifts and read-
ing them with pen in hand. The continuing circulation and active acquisition 
of incunabula by Scottish owners throughout the seventeenth century implies 
either that these particular books and editions were not perceived as outdated 
or old-fashioned – or, if old-fashioned, not without academic or textual merit – 
or that they were valued for other reasons.
Early modern owners might possess an incunable edition of a text for 
straightforward, practical reasons, if the text was not frequently reprinted, or 
if a fifteenth-century edition is what happened to be most readily available.2 
1 John Durkan and Anthony Ross, Early Scottish Libraries (Glasgow: John S. Burns & Sons, 
1961), p. 7. Hereafter cited as ESL. The reference is to a note in an inventory of books in 
St Mary’s College, St Andrews, probably compiled in 1588 and identified by Durkan as in 
the hand of Andrew Melville (1545–1622), the leading Scottish theologian and principal of 
St Mary’s College from 1580 to 1607; for the identification, see John Durkan, ‘The Cultural 
Background in Sixteenth-century Scotland’, in David McRoberts (ed.), Essays on the Scottish 
Reformation 1513–1625 (Glasgow: Burns, 1962), p. 327. The note reads ‘&c. quorum volumina 
circiter trigenta sex vtcunque corrosa a tineis adhuc in puluere et situ conseruantur’. An 
edited transcript of the inventory, National Library of Scotland Adv.MS.29.2.7 fol. 210r–v, is 
printed as S23 in John Higgitt (ed.), Scottish Libraries. Corpus of British Medieval Library 
Catalogues 12 (London: The British Library in association with The British Academy, 2006), 
pp. 346–357. Higgitt clarifies that the note is written in a different hand, though it precedes 
the signatures, including Melville’s.
2 For example, Thomas Reid’s 1497 edition of the Epitome of Zenobius (ISTC iz00024000; USTC 
761849; GW M52087) was only available in one other edition in his lifetime, a 1535 octavo 
165The Place of Incunabula in Early Modern Scottish Libraries 
A detailed investigation of a sample of early modern Scottish owners of incu-
nabula, however, suggests a more complex picture. The sources of their incu-
nabula range from inheritance from friends and family, to libraries dispersed 
by the Reformation, to the second-hand markets. Price evidence in surviving 
books can start to shed light on the comparative value of antiquarian and new 
books, although this is complicated by the lack of precise dating for most of 
the recorded prices. The fundamental question is whether in this period these 
books continued to be acquired and read purely for their intellectual content, 
or whether there is the beginning of a shift towards appreciating and valu-
ing incunabula as antiquarian objects. Jacqueline Glomski and, more recently, 
Kristian Jensen have traced the origins of a gradual development towards col-
lecting and marketing old books as historic and ‘rare’ in the seventeenth cen-
tury, before it accelerated in the eighteenth.3 Glomski has also analysed the 
concepts of rarity and value as applied to books in the seventeenth century, 
identifying factors including scarcity, historical significance, antiquity, physi-
cal beauty and exoticism.4 There are compelling reasons to add consideration 
of the importance of provenance and the value of annotations to early modern 
collectors to this discussion. Despite a lack of hard data, interesting indications 
emerge thatprovenance or annotations may have been a factor for some col-
lectors, and that framing ownership of incunabula together with other anti-
quarian material, such as medieval manuscripts, can prompt a reappraisal of 
even the most well-known early modern Scottish libraries.
In order to explore these questions in more detail, this chapter analyses the 
libraries of six Scottish book owners who died between 1580 and 1679, each of 
whom owned at least two incunabula. The earliest is the advocate Clement 
Litill or Little (c.1527–1580), who bequeathed his theological books, valued at 
1,000 merks, to the kirk of Edinburgh.5 Litill’s ‘haill law bukes and uther bukes 
edition printed in Haguenau (USTC 707718). Reid’s copy is now Aberdeen Universiy Library 
Inc 137.
3 See Jacqueline Glomski, ‘Book Collecting and Bookselling in the Seventeenth Century: 
Notions of Rarity and Identification of Value’, Publishing History, 39 (1996), pp. 5–21, and 
Glomski, ‘Incunabula Typographiae: Seventeenth-century Views on Early Printing’, The 
Library, 2 (2001), pp. 336–348. Kristian Jensen, Revolution and the Antiquarian Book: Reshaping 
the Past, 1780–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), especially Chapter 3, ‘An 
object-based discipline emerges: old books, new luxury’, pp. 68–105.
4 See Glomski, ‘Book Collecting’, pp. 8–10.
5 Charles P. Finlayson, Clement Litill and His Library: The Origins of Edinburgh University Library 
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh Bibliographical Society and the Friends of Edinburgh University 
Library, 1980), p. 21–23.
166 Henderson
for scollaris’, valued at £140 17s 7d, were left separately.6 Thomas Reid (d. 1624), 
Latin secretary to James VI and I, left his collection of books and manuscripts 
to Marischal College, Aberdeen, along with a bequest of 6,000 merks to pro-
vide a ‘Bibliothecar’ or librarian with an annual salary.7 William Drummond of 
Hawthornden (1585–1649) donated books to the College of King James, now 
the University of Edinburgh, on various occasions between 1624 and 1636, 
with the most substantial gift in 1626.8 The minister and Principal of King’s 
College, Aberdeen, William Guild (1586–1657), bequeathed his library to the 
University of St Andrews, with the exception of one manuscript which he left 
to the College of King James in Edinburgh.9 Mungo Murray (1599–1670), regent 
of St Leonard’s College, St Andrews, later professor of astronomy at Gresham 
College and rector of Wells in Norfolk, bequeathed his books to St Leonard’s 
College in 1670.10 Sir John Wedderburn (1599–1679), physician to Charles I and 
II, similarly bequeathed his books to St Leonard’s in 1679.11 These men are not 
the only early modern Scottish owners of incunabula, but their libraries provide 
6 Finlayson, Clement Litill, p. 21. Half of Litill’s legal books went to his widow, 
Elizabeth Fawside, who later married an advocate. A few of Litill’s legal and scholarly 
books have been traced: see Finlayson, Clement Litill, p. 27, and ESL, pp. 123–4.
7 Iain Beavan, “The Best Library that Ever the North Pairtes of Scottland Saw’: Thomas 
Reid (Latin Secretary to James VI) and his Books’, in Peter Isaac and Barry McKay (eds.), 
The Reach of Print: Making, Selling and Using Books (Winchester and Delaware: St Paul’s 
Bibliographies and Oak Knoll Press, 1998), pp. 205–220.
8 See C. P. Finlayson and S. M. Simpson, ‘The history of the Library 1580–1710’, in Jean R. 
Guild and Alexander Law (eds.), Edinburgh University Library 1580–1980: A Collection of 
Historical Essays (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Library, 1982), pp. 43–66, esp. pp. 
45–46; Robert H. MacDonald, The Library of Drummond of Hawthornden (Edinburgh: 
Edinburgh University Press, 1971), esp. pp. 47–48.
9 See Christine Gascoigne, ‘Book Transmission in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-century 
North East Scotland: The Evidence of William Guild’s Books’, Journal of the Edinburgh 
Bibliographical Society, 4 (2009), pp. 32–48. For the bequest of the manuscript, see 
William Maitland, The History of Edinburgh, from its Foundation to the Present Time 
(Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour and Neill, 1753), pp. 371–373.
10 See Murray, whose name is Latinized as Kentigernus or Quintigernus Morra[v]ius, has 
received little attention, with no entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 
Bob Smart summarises the dates of his education and appointments: Robert N. Smart, 
Alphabetical Register of the Students, Graduates and Officials of the University of St Andrews 
1579–1747 (St Andrews: University of St Andrews Library, 2012), vol. II, p. 445. See also the 
brief biography in John Ward, The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College (London: John 
Moore, 1740), pp. 88–90.
11 See A. H. Millar and Roger Hutchins, ‘Wedderburn, Sir John (1599–1679), Physician’, in 
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 57 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 
pp. 913–914. See also Alexander Wedderburn, The Wedderburn Book: A History of the 
Wedderburns in the Counties of Berwick and Forfar, Designed of Wedderburn, Kingennie, 
Easter Powrie, Blackness, Balindean, and Gosford; and Their Younger Branches; Together 
167The Place of Incunabula in Early Modern Scottish Libraries 
an initial sample to explore why these sixteenth- and seventeenth-century 
owners acquired, kept, exchanged and read fifteenth-century printed books. 
By studying a group of libraries, it is possible to look for patterns, but also to 
consider the individual collectors and their collections in a more nuanced 
context.
This group of book owners covers a range of professions, including the law, 
the church (of both Scotland and England), medicine, royal service, academia 
and literature. All were university graduates; Litill, Reid and Drummond fol-
lowed the established Scottish educational pattern of studying first at a univer-
sity in Scotland, then proceeding to further study in Europe, and Wedderburn 
is also said to have ‘travelled into various countries, and became … celebrated 
for his great learning and skill in physick’, which may imply that he studied 
medicine on the Continent, probably in the 1630s.12 Half of the group, Reid, 
Drummond and Guild, were published authors. In geographical terms, Litill 
and Drummond were based in Edinburgh and Midlothian, while Guild was 
born and died in Aberdeen and spent his ecclesiastical and academic career 
in North-east Scotland. Reid and Wedderburn both spent most of their career 
in Europe and England, and Reid died in London, though Wedderburn retired 
to Gosford, Haddingtonshire in 1662 and lived there until his death in 1679. 
Murray left St Andrews in 1637 for London, then settled in Norfolk, where he 
died in 1670.
All were Scots, born and, at least initially, educated in Scotland. The librar-
ies of Reid, Murray and Wedderburn, however, could arguably be considered 
as much English as Scottish; an approach adopted by David Pearson in his 
exploration of English private libraries in the seventeenth century, which 
includes some Scottish and Irish owners ‘if their careers, and their libraries, 
were primarily based in England’.13 They are included in this discussion of 
Scottish libraries for two reasons. Firstly, all three bequeathed their books to 
Scottish universities or colleges in the seventeenth century, and so wherever 
the collections of books were built up, they became part of Scottish institu-
tional libraries in the early modern period. Secondly, Scots who travelled to the 
Continent or to London to pursue their studies or career, and bought books as 
with Some Account of Other Families of the Name. 1296–1896. Vol. 1: The History. (Printed for 
Private Circulation, 1898), pp. 132–137.
12 Anthony Wood, Fasti Oxoniensis, quoted in Wedderburn, The Wedderburn Book, p. 133.
13 David Pearson, ‘The English Private Library in the Seventeenth Century’, The Library, 13 
(2012), p. 389. The preliminary list of owners included in the article now forms part of the 
online directory Book Owners Online, createdcompared with some 
of their bibliophile peers in these chapters. The juxtaposition of De Morgan 
and Grove-Hills in this volume brings a degree of overlap between their col-
lections to light. To the extent that their fields of study, mathematics and 
astronomy, are related, this is not surprising. However, it is worth noting that 
this overlap also concerns a few incunabula and thus texts which, in terms 
of their scientific content and approach, had long been superseded. Two of 
these represent the first printing of key scientific texts cherished by collec-
tors, namely Euclides’s Elementa (Venice 1482) and Regiomontanus’s Epitoma 
(Venice 1496). Both collectors also owned copies of the same two editions of 
Sacro Bosco and copies of different editions of Alphonsus’s and Rolewinck’s 
works. The mathematician and book collector Augustus De Morgan is the sub-
ject of Karen Attar’s chapter. Having established the place and estimation of 
the incunabula within his wider collection, she focuses on the use De Morgan 
made of the incunabula and on his collecting strategy. Annotations in his own 
hand are testimony to the fact that he actively worked with the texts, some 
of which are incomplete. An examination of the sale catalogues he preserved 
and a comparison with other contemporary mathematical collections offer 
insights into the mid-nineteenth-century book trade in mathematical and sci-
entific incunabula.
Sian Prosser’s outline of the chequered life of the astronomer, surveyor 
and photographer Edmond Grove-Hills provides the backdrop for her inves-
tigation of his collection of incunabula and later works on astronomy, which 
was donated to the Royal Astronomical Society in the early 1920s. A keen bib-
liophile, he developed his library by drawing on the expertise of antiquarian 
booksellers, as is evidenced by sales receipts. His incunabula collection is com-
pared with those of contemporary astronomers, thus providing a wider picture 
of contemporary collecting of scientific incunabula in England.
Whereas these two chapters look at collections made by individuals over an 
extended time period, and which subsequently passed to institutions, Robert 
Betteridge explores direct institutional acquisitions of incunabula over just six 
years. The purchase of a large number of incunabula during World War II by 
a knowledgeable and dedicated librarian at the National Library of Scotland, 
who had access to a sizeable purchase fund, is set against the backdrop of a 
7Introduction
depressed antiquarian book market. The circumstances surrounding his acqui-
sitions are explored through archival material such as library reports and min-
utes as well as correspondence with librarians in other national institutions.
The eleven chapters in this volume thus shine spotlights on various aspects 
of incunabula production, reception and collecting in several European coun-
tries across six centuries. They enrich the field of study through explorations 
of the development and use of specific collections, through the close investiga-
tion of copy-specific features, and through analyses of economic, cultural and 
linguistic factors that determined the production and market for incunabula. 
As such, they add important facets to the grand but yet incomplete mosaic that 
is the study of incunabula.
Part 1
Continental Case Studies
∵
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004681378_003
Chapter 1
Early Printing along the IJssel: Contextualising 
Deventer’s Success as a Centre of Incunabula 
Production
Laura Cooijmans-Keizer
It is to Deventer’s credit that – when the art of printing began to 
spread across Europe – the city was among the first to favourably 
adopt this artistry within the confines of its walls.1
∵
These proud words were written by Philipp Christiaan Molhuijsen, who became 
librarian of the Athenaeum Library in 1830. Situated in the heart of Deventer, 
this city library is the Netherlands’s oldest institution of its kind – representing 
a nucleus of book historical research for a city whose past is inextricably linked 
to books and printing. Tracing its roots to a wooden church erected in 768 by 
missionaries Lebuinus and Marcellinus, Deventer would continue to develop 
as Christianity began to gain an ever firmer foothold throughout the region.2 
With it came literacy, initially among the clergy, but gradually extending to 
wider audiences.3 As the city expanded over the following eight centuries, a 
shared development of education and religion allowed a culture of writing and 
book production to flourish. In this manner, fertile ground was prepared for 
1 P. C. Molhuijsen, ‘De eerste Overijsselsche drukkerijen en de Donatus’, Overijsselsche alma-
nak voor oudheid en letteren, 7 (1841), p. 39. Translation by the author.
2 See Jeroen Benders, ‘768–ca.1400: Het geschreven woord in kerk en stad’, in Suzan Folkerts 
and Garrelt Verhoeven (eds.), Deventer Boekenstad: Twaalf eeuwen boekcultuur aan de 
IJssel (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2018), p. 11; Henk Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer. Deel I: 
Oorsprong en Middeleeuwen (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2010), p. 15.
3 See Jos A. A. M. Biemans, ‘Handschrift en druk in de Nederlanden rond 1500’, in Herman Pleij 
and Joris Reynaert (eds.), Geschreven en gedrukt: Boekproductie van handschrift naar druk 
in de overgang van Middeleeuwen naar moderne tijd (Ghent: Academia Press, 2004), p. 20; 
Benders, ‘Geschreven woord’, p. 11.
12 Cooijmans-Keizer
the local introduction of printing with moveable type during the final quarter 
of the fifteenth century.
Despite the above developments, the study of book production in 
Deventer has thus far lacked an overarching investigation into the wider 
politico-economic grounds for its sustained success up to and during the fif-
teenth century. Whereas other cities, including nearby Zwolle and Utrecht, 
have received this scrutiny, particular studies on printing in Deventer have 
traditionally been limited to general histories of the city itself and the outputs 
of its initial printers.4 Aiming to address this lacuna, this chapter will assess 
the wider political, economic, and cultural factors that facilitated Deventer’s 
development as a prominent centre of early printing.
1 The Low Countries up to the Fifteenth Century
Over the course of the fifteenth century, the majority of the Southern 
Netherlands, including Flanders and Brabant, had been brought under the 
authority of the Valois dukes of Burgundy. Having consolidated their power 
throughout the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they set out to formal-
ise and centralise key aspects of societal structure, including language, juris-
prudence, currency and bureaucracy.5 Despite ongoing conflicts within the 
Burgundian heartlands, the implementation of this new governmental appa-
ratus gave rise to the formation of a relatively homogenous political entity by 
the middle of the fifteenth century.6
4 For printing in Zwolle, see Jos. M. M. Hermans, Zwolse boeken voor een markt zonder grenzen, 
1477–1523, met een Catalogus van de verschenen edities en gegevens over de bewaard gebleven 
exemplaren (’t Goy-Houten: Hes & de Graaf, 2004); Wytze Hellinga and Lotte Hellinga, The 
Fifteenth-Century Printing Types of the Low Countries vol. I (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 
1966), pp. 40–43, 104–107. For printing in Utrecht, see Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types 
vol. I, pp. 10–14, 47–48, 50–52; Geocontexting Printers and Publishers 1450–1800, , 
accessed 10 August 2023. For printing in Deventer, see L. A. Sheppard, ‘Printing at Deventer 
in the Fifteenth Century’, The Library, 24 (1943–1944), pp. 101–119; Hellinga and Hellinga, 
Printing Types vol. I, pp. 39–40, 108–111; Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer; Suzan Folkerts 
and Garrelt Verhoeven (eds.), Deventer Boekenstad: Twaalf eeuwen boekcultuur aan de IJssel 
(Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2018).by David Pearson and published by the 
UCL Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL) in partnership with the Bibliographical 
Society , accessed 29 March 2021.
http://www.bookowners.online
168 Henderson
they went, constitute a significant proportion of early modern Scottish book 
collectors, with contrasting patterns of acquisition and ownership compared 
to, say, Guild in Aberdeen.14 The valid comparison between the sources and 
opportunities for book acquisition should not, though, imply that any of these 
collectors were restricted to or by their locality. Sebastiaan Verweij, building 
on comments by Julian Goodare and Michael Lynch on ‘localities’ versus the 
‘centre’, cautions against underestimating the intrinsic mobility of participants 
in early modern literary culture.15 Guild, for example, though at first glance 
the most static of the six, travelled to study at St Andrews and to attend the 
General Assembly in Glasgow, published books in London which may have 
involved personal visits, and fled abroad briefly in the aftermath of the 1638 
National Covenant.16 He is known to have preached a sermon in Gdańsk and 
seems to have acquired his copy of the manuscript declaration known as the 
Bohemian Protest there.17
1 Interpreting the Evidence
The nature of the evidence for the different collections varies. Contemporary 
manuscript inventories survive for the bequests of Clement Litill’s theo-
logical books, Thomas Reid, Mungo Murray and Sir John Wedderburn.18 
14 See, for example, David Allan, Philosophy and Politics in Later Stuart Scotland: Neo-Stocisim, 
Culture and Ideology in an Age of Crisis, 1540–1690 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000).
15 See Sebastiaan Verweij, The Literary Culture of Early Modern Scotland: Manuscript 
Production and Transmission, 1560–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 12–14, 
quoting Julian Goodare and Michael Lynch, ‘James VI: Universal King?’, in Julian Goodare 
and Michael Lynch (eds.), The Reign of James VI (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000), p. 23.
16 Guild was one of the ‘Aberdeen Doctors’ who opposed the Covenant, but he signed it with 
three reservations in 1638. Along with several others, Guild fled Aberdeen by sea when 
Montrose’s Covenanting army approached in 1639. For a contemporary account of events 
in Aberdeen (but one which is hostile to Guild), see the chronicle of John Spalding. The 
standard edition is John Stuart (ed.), Memorialls of the Trubles in Scotland and in England. 
A.D. 1624–A.D. 1645 by John Spalding (Aberdeen: Printed for the Spalding Club, 1850–1851) 
Spalding states that Guild fled to Holland (Memorialls, vol. I. p. 151).
17 Now Edinburgh University Library (EUL) Coll-1698, the only known surviving copy of the 
protest by Bohemian nobles against the burning of religious reformer Jan Hus in 1415. 
Guild is located in Gdańsk by The Christians Passover, or, A Sermon Preached before the 
English Congregation in Danzik at Their Receaueing of the Holie Communion, by William 
Guild D. D. and Minister at Aberdene ([Gdańsk: Andreas Hunefeld], 1639). USTC 3020608. 
For a story about how Guild is said to have acquired the Bohemian Protest through a mis-
understanding, see Susan Hardman Moore, ‘Jan Hus and Scotland. The Bohemian Protest 
(1415) and Its Journey to Edinburgh’, Communio Viatorum, 57 (2015), pp. 47–52.
18 The inventory of Litill’s bequest exists in two versions, a list headed ‘Catalogus librorum 
quos vir eximius et bonae memoriae M. Clemens Litill Edinburgenae ecclesiae et 
169The Place of Incunabula in Early Modern Scottish Libraries 
Robert H. MacDonald’s reconstruction of Drummond of Hawthornden’s library 
was based on a manuscript booklist prepared by Drummond in 1611, later short 
lists and references in his hand, and the printed catalogue of Drummond’s 
1626 donation, the Auctarium Bibliothecae Edinburgenæ, printed by the heirs of 
Andro Hart in 1627.19 William Guild’s will does not survive and no inventory of 
his bequest has been traced.20 In her study of his library, Christine Gascoigne 
identified 175 surviving titles, including one manuscript codex, based on 
Guild’s characteristic ownership inscription, ‘Liber Gulielmi Guild. S.T.D’, usu-
ally at the head of the title page.21
There are inherent methodological challenges in analysing ownership of 
incunabula in this period. The crucial piece of evidence, the date of publication, 
is not routinely recorded in many early modern book lists. Of the collections 
analysed here, only the catalogue of Reid’s library systematically lists place of 
publication, publisher or printer, and date. The Auctarium includes dates and 
often places of publication in most but by no means all cases. The inventories 
of the Litill, Murray and Wedderburn bequests contain no dates and only very 
brief entries. Where no publication dates are given, identification of incunab-
ula relies on either surviving corresponding volumes, or more detailed bibli-
ographic information from another source. Occasionally a title is distinctive 
ministerio eiusdem obiens legavit et consecravit’, now National Records of Scotland 
(NRS) GD122/3/17/7, and a copy on parchment by Alexander Guthrie intended for dis-
play, now EUL MS. Dd.3.36. Finlayson, Clement Litill, provides an edited transcript of the 
original inventory, reconciled with the slightly altered order in Guthrie’s list, and with 
identifications of surviving books. References to Litill’s books in this chapter include 
their Finlayson number. Three lists of Reid’s bequest are bound together in Aberdeen 
University Library (AUL) MSM70. I am deeply grateful to Dr Iain Beavan, who generously 
shared his transcriptions of the manuscript and his database identifying existing books. 
The Murray and Wedderburn lists each exist in two copies, now all bound together in 
one volume, St Andrews University Library (SAUL) UYLY106/1. The books from both gifts 
were dispersed throughout the Library and partially reassembled as named collections 
last century, but only a fraction of the books was identified.
19 See Auctarium Bibliothecae Edinbvrgenæ, sive Catalogus Librorum quos Guilielmus Drum-
mondus ab Hawthornden Bibliothecæ D. D. Q. Anno 1627 (Edinburgh: Heirs of Andro Hart, 
1627). USTC 3013261. References to Drummond’s books in this chapter include their 
MacDonald number.
20 See Gascoigne, ‘Book Transmission’, p. 43 and n. 26, suggesting that Guild’s will may 
have been destroyed in a fire in Aberdeen Sheriff Court. Some clauses are transcribed in 
Maitland, History of Edinburgh, and James Shirrefs, An Inquiry Into the Life, Writings, and 
Character, of the Reverend Doctor William Guild (Aberdeen: Printed by J. Chalmers & Co., 
1798).
21 Gascoigne, ‘Catalogue of Books from the Library of William Guild’, , accessed 30 May 2020.
https://www.edinburghbibliographicalsociety.org.uk/publications/journal-of-the-edinburgh-bibliographical-society-no-4-2009/
https://www.edinburghbibliographicalsociety.org.uk/publications/journal-of-the-edinburgh-bibliographical-society-no-4-2009/
https://www.edinburghbibliographicalsociety.org.uk/publications/journal-of-the-edinburgh-bibliographical-society-no-4-2009/
170 Henderson
enough to be definitive on its own. The Auctarium lists ‘The Booke intituled 
Eracles And alſo of Godefrey of Boyloyne, of the Conqueſt of Ieruſalem’.22 
MacDonald was unable to trace Drummond’s copy of this but could confi-
dently identify it as Caxton’s 1481 edition.23 An entry which reads in its entirety 
‘Scotus. foll.’, on the other hand, can only be matched to a particular edition 
if a shelfmark or other evidence ties it to a surviving copy, or if a subsequent 
catalogue provides further details.24 A final methodological difficulty is what 
to include in the data set when an exact date of printing cannot be assigned 
to an edition. Drummond of Hawthornden5 See Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier, The Promised Lands: The Low Countries under 
Burgundian Rule, 1369–1530 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 93, 116.
6 See Hanno Wijsman, Luxury Bound. Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely 
Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400–1550) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), p. 10.
13Early Printing along the IJssel
The opposite was true for the Northern Netherlands, which was divided 
among a number of de facto independent principalities. Tensions between 
these regional powers were high, prompting intermittent shifts in geopoliti-
cal loyalties and boundaries. The Burgundian rulers, aspiring to extend their 
sphere of influence, intervened in various such political disputes, most nota-
bly those of the Duchy of Brabant and the respective counties of Holland and 
Zeeland in the Western Low Countries. After 1430, this diplomatic strategy 
resulted in Duke Philip the Good (1396–1467) being named heir to all three 
territories, thereby extending the Burgundian sphere of influence further 
northwards.
The most sizable polity in the Northern Netherlands comprised the 
(prince-)bishopric of Utrecht, whose bishops acted as both secular and 
ecclesiastical rulers.7 Having gained and lost territories to the westward 
county of Holland and the eastward Duchy of Guelders for many years, its 
temporal borders had mostly stabilised by the early fifteenth century to only 
include the episcopal enclave of the Sticht. This area encompassed both the 
Nedersticht (Lower Sticht), roughly analogous to the modern Dutch province 
of Utrecht, and the Oversticht (Upper Sticht), whose territory encompassed 
the present-day provinces of Drenthe and Overijssel.8 In addition to exercising 
spiritual and temporal authority over the Sticht, the bishop’s diocesan author-
ity reached across the counties of Holland, Zeeland and the northern Flemish 
territories of the so-called Four Offices.9
Scholars have generally assumed the dominant political force over the bish-
opric of Utrecht to have been Burgundian from 1456, when Philip the Good 
managed to secure the appointment of his illegitimate son, David of Burgundy, 
to the episcopal seat.10 Whilst having to share his authority with the city’s 
influential guilds and councils, the newly appointed bishop – over the course 
of his tenure – embodied the centralist demeanour of the Burgundian hegem-
ony within the episcopal jurisdiction of the Sticht.11
7 See Frank van der Pol, ‘The Middle Ages to 1200’, in Herman J. Selderhuis (ed.), Handbook 
of Dutch Church History (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), p. 51.
8 See Peter Nissen and William den Boer, ‘The Middle Ages after 1200’, in Herman J. 
Selderhuis (ed.), Handbook of Dutch Church History (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 
2015), p. 107; Blockmans and Prevenier, Promised Lands, p. 110.
9 See Blockmans and Prevenier, Promised Lands, p. 109.
10 See L. M. J. Delaissé, A Century of Dutch Manuscript Illumination (Berkeley: University of 
California Press, 1968), p. 8; A. J. van den Hoven van Genderen, ‘Op het toppunt van de 
macht, 1304–1528’, in R. E. de Bruin (ed.), ‘Een paradijs vol weelde’. Geschiedenis van de stad 
Utrecht (Utrecht: Matrijs, 2000), p. 179.
11 See Hoven van Genderen, ‘Toppunt’, p. 180; Nissen and Boer, ‘Middle Ages’, p. 109.
14 Cooijmans-Keizer
Figure 1.1 Map of places mentioned in the text (Low Countries)
2 The Rise of Regional Book Production in the Sticht
Both the Northern and Southern Netherlands played host to many vibrant 
centres of cultural endeavour over the course of the late medieval period. 
From the fourteenth century, the production of manuscripts – no longer an 
exclusively ecclesiastical endeavour – became increasingly realised by secular 
15Early Printing along the IJssel
workshops, a majority of which were based in urban centres.12 The Southern 
Netherlands witnessed higher levels of production than any of the more lim-
inal principalities of the north, owing to a higher population density and sus-
tained patronage from regional nobles, foremost among whom were the dukes 
of Burgundy and their surrounding court.13 Both regions, however, witnessed a 
decline in manuscript production after the 1470s.14 As printing began to gain a 
firmer foothold in Netherlandish book production, the majority of texts, with 
the notable exception of prayer books and liturgical manuscripts, were now 
being set to type in the workshops of the emerging printers.15
Utrecht, as a centre of worship, had become a prominent nucleus of artistic 
endeavour. Up to the middle of the fifteenth century, the city was the most 
important centre of book production in the Northern Netherlands.16 Book 
decoration, in particular, flourished during the fifteenth century, as the city 
offered livelihoods to many renowned schools of illuminators, including the 
Masters of Zweder van Culemborg and Catherine of Cleves.17 Concurrently, 
Utrecht had become famous for its penwork decorations: in addition to its idi-
osyncratic local style featuring dragon-inhabited initials, the city played host 
to a wide array of other regionally distinct designs.18 Upon his accession as 
bishop of the Sticht, David of Burgundy’s presence is thought to have spurred 
a renewal of interest in the art of book illumination, offering a rationale for the 
sudden revitalisation and improved workmanship of locally produced manu-
scripts during the late 1450s.19
In addition to being a thriving centre of manuscript production, Utrecht is 
the first Northern Netherlandish city to which books printed with moveable 
type can be attributed.20 As early as 1473, Nicolaus Ketelaer and Gerardus de 
12 Whereas monastic book production was considerably higher in the Northern Netherlands 
than in its neighbouring regions, non-religious texts, in particular, were increasingly pro-
duced by lay scribes. See J. P. Gumbert, The Dutch and Their Books in the Manuscript Age 
(London: The British Library, 1990), p. 22; Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 47.
13 See Gumbert, Dutch and Their Books, p. 12; Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 39, 49–50.
14 See Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 39.
15 See Delaissé, Dutch Manuscript Illumination, p. 49.
16 See Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 49.
17 See Koert van der Horst, Illuminated and Decorated Medieval Manuscripts in the University 
Library, Utrecht. An Illustrated Catalogue (Maarsen: Gary Schwartz, 1989), p. ix.
18 See Gumbert, Dutch and Their Books, pp. 35, 43.
19 See Delaissé, Dutch Manuscript Illumination, p. 7.
20 Although evidence exists of earlier types of printing (for instance, woodblock prints and 
proto-typographical editions), this chapter focuses on attributable editions printed using 
16 Cooijmans-Keizer
Leempt are known to have printed an edition of Petrus Comestor’s Historia 
Scholastica, in whose colophon they recorded their names.21 De Leempt, 
a letter cutter by trade, appears to have resided in Utrecht for only a few 
years, whilst Ketelaer is known to have hailed from a prominent and wealthy 
Utrechtian family.22 Nonetheless, at least 33 editions can be attributed to their 
joint press  – a high number, considering all but three were printed as folio 
editions within the space of, at most, two years.23 In 1474 or 1475, Ketelaer and 
De Leempt’s fount was acquired by Wilhelmus Hees, who may have been asso-
ciated with their press from the outset. Few details survive on Hees’s press, 
and only a handful of books from 1475 can be (tentatively) attributed to him.24 
In 1477 or early 1478, a third printer, Johan Veldener, briefly settled in Utrecht 
before relocating to Culemborg in 1481, conceivably in a bid to escape growing 
political tensions surrounding (anti-)Burgundian loyalties within the town.25 
Between 1479 and 1480, a fourth unidentified printer appears to have been 
active in Utrecht, possibly operating in conjunction with Veldener’s press. 
Nowadays styled the ‘Printer with the Monogram’, his editionsare luxuri-
ously presented but provide no additional clues as to their creator’s identity.26 
Following Veldener’s relocation to Culemborg, printing activity appears to 
moveable type only. See Lotte Hellinga-Querido, ‘Prototypografie’, in De vijfhonderd-
ste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. Catalogus (Brussels: Koninklijke 
Bibliotheek, 1973), pp. 67–78; Lotte Hellinga-Querido, ‘Blokboeken’, in De vijfhonderd-
ste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. Catalogus (Brussels: Koninklijke 
Bibliotheek, 1973), pp. 79–89.
21 ISTC ip00459000; USTC 435206; GW M32182. See Gisela Gerritsen-Geywitz, ‘The Utrecht 
Printer Nicolaus Ketelaer’, Quaerendo, 31 (2001), p. 137; Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing 
Types vol. I, p. 10.
22 See Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, p. 10; Lotte Hellinga-Querido and 
Wytze Hellinga, ‘Nicolaus Ketelaer & Gherardus de Leempt. Willem Hees’, in De vijfhon-
derdste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. Catalogus (Brussels: Koninklijke 
Bibliotheek, 1973), p. 91; Paul Begheyn, ‘Gherard van der Leempt: ca.1450–ca.1491, eerste 
Nederlandse boekdrukker’, in J. A. E. Kuys et al. (eds.), Biografisch woordenboek Gelderland: 
Bekende en onbekende mannen en vrouwen uit de Gelderse geschiedenis vol. 4 (Hilversum: 
Verloren, 2004), p. 80.
23 See Gerritsen-Geywitz, ‘Nicolaus Ketelaer’, p. 146.
24 See Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, p. 14; W. Heijting, ‘Relationship between 
Publisher and Author’, in Marieke van Delft and Clemens de Wolf (eds.), Bibliopolis. 
History of the Printed Book in the Netherlands (Zwolle: Waanders, 2003), p. 27.
25 See Lotte Hellinga-Querido, ‘Johan Veldener’, in De vijfhonderdste verjaring van de boekd-
rukkunst in de Nederlanden. Catalogus (Brussels: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1973), p. 144.
26 See Lotte Hellinga-Querido and Wytze Hellinga, ‘De Drukker met het Monogram’, in De 
vijfhonderdste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. Catalogus (Brussels: 
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1973), p. 338; Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, p. 47.
17Early Printing along the IJssel
have stalled for well over 30 years.27 As such, Utrecht’s printing activity can be 
characterised by its relatively rapid succession of printing presses, all seem-
ingly short-lived.
Whereas Utrecht appears to have been the only locale in the Nedersticht to 
host printing presses during the final quarter of the fifteenth century, several 
centres in the Oversticht are known to have accommodated such ventures at 
the same time. Akin to Utrecht, albeit on a smaller scale, manuscript produc-
tion flourished in IJssel-region cities like Zwolle, Hasselt, and Deventer before 
and during the time when early printers practised their trade.28
In Zwolle, printing appears to have started around 1478–79, although names 
associated with the earliest local press do not survive. Only from 1480 onward 
is it possible to connect the name of Peter van Os van Breda to a new print-
ing venture.29 A brief intermission followed after 1481, presumably to per-
mit the acquisition of new type. Hence, when Van Os’s business restarted in 
1483, he appears to have discarded his older founts for a type acquired from 
Gheraert Leeu, a Gouda-based printer with whom he kept in close contact 
throughout his second phase of printing.30 At least 160 editions have been 
attributed to Van Os’s press between 1480 and 1510, the year of his death.31
Only seven miles from Zwolle, Hasselt likewise played host to a printer: 
Peregrinus Barmentlo. A member of the noble Barmentlo family, his press 
appears to have functioned less as a commercial venture and more as a means 
of advancing religious and moral values.32 Characterised by two short stints of 
printing between 1480 and 1481, and 1488 and 1490, Barmentlo’s press appears 
27 See Lawrence S. Thompson, ‘Printers and Printing, Fifteenth Century’, in Allen Kent et al. 
(eds.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1978), 
p. 355.
28 See Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 49.
29 Hellinga and Hellinga suggest that Van Os was likely also involved in the first unidentified 
press, albeit not in a position where he was ‘financially responsible’ for its outputs. See 
Printing Types vol. I, p. 43.
30 See Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, p. 43; Lotte Hellinga-Querido and 
Wytze Hellinga, ‘Johannes de Vollenhoe, Peter van Os van Breda’, in De vijfhonderdste verjar-
ing van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. Catalogus (Brussels: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 
1973), p. 329. For the relationship between Peter van Os van Breda and Gheraert Leeu, see 
Aafje Lem, ‘De Zwolse drukker Peter van Os en zijn relatie met Gheraert Leeu’, in Koen 
Goudriaan et al. (eds.), Een drukker zoekt publiek: Gheraert Leeu te Gouda 1477–1484 (Delft: 
Eburon, 1993), pp. 184–192.
31 See Hermans, Zwolse boeken, p. 30.
32 See Lotte Hellinga-Querido and Wytze Hellinga, ‘Peregrinus Barmentlo’, in De vijfhonderd-
ste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. Catalogus (Brussels: Koninklijke 
Bibliotheek, 1973), p. 343.
18 Cooijmans-Keizer
to have retained close ties with Van Os’s, as the two associates traded expertise, 
printing materials, and presumably personnel whenever Barmentlo’s press 
became active.33
3 Early Printing in Deventer
Deventer was another city to host a printing press in the Oversticht.34 As has 
been the case for Zwolle, the city and its surrounding region accommodated 
a thriving culture of manuscript production, not least due to the influence of 
the Modern Devotion. Since the start of the movement in the late fourteenth 
century, books came to hold a central place within its followers’ devotional 
practices, spurring scholarly and book producing endeavours both within 
and outwith their immediate circles. This emphasis on the written word and 
learning likewise tied in with wider societal changes: as urbanisation devel-
oped and traditional socioeconomic hierarchies were transformed, a middle 
class of merchants, craftsmen, and inn keepers began to emerge. As increas-
ingly literate burghers, they often employed writing to manage their respective 
businesses.35 Expanding literacy, in turn, increased the demand for books, a 
requirement which gradually outstripped services rendered by local scribes, 
thereby opening a door to innovative technologies with a potential to speed 
up production.36
Deventer’s increased local demand for books was met by the arrival of its 
first printer, Richard Pafraet, whose first attributable edition was published in 
1477 (see Fig. 2 below). Hailing from Cologne, Pafraet went on to produce a 
sizeable yield of printed works during the final quarter of the century.37 When 
discussing the printer’s output, scholars often distinguish between two periods 
of activity. Pafraet’s first press, active between 1477 and 1485, was character-
ised by folio-sized editions, of which as many as 81 were produced, altogether 
comprising around 18,000 printed sheets. This would imply that his workshop 
produced more than 2,000 sheets per year, a considerable number, which, at 
33 See Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, pp. 91–92.
34 Several other small presses can potentially be situated, but not localised, within the 
territory of the Sticht, as in the case of the Printer of Correctorium and the Printer of 
St. Rochus. See Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I.
35 See Jeroen Benders, Bestuursstructuur en schriftcultuur: Een analyse van de bestuurlijke 
verschriftelijking in Deventer tot het eind van de 15de eeuw (Kampen: IJsselacademie, 2004), 
p. 290.
36 See Biemans, ‘Handschrift en Druk’, p. 20.
37 See Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, p. 39.
19Early Printing along the IJssel
the time, would have constituted the largest output of any printer in the entire 
Low Countries by a substantial margin.38
38 See Dinand Webbink, ‘Anna Mater’, in Suzan Folkerts and Garrelt Verhoeven (eds.), 
DeventerBoekenstad: Twaalf eeuwen boekcultuur aan de IJssel (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 
2018), p. 78; Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 325.
Figure 1.2 Colophon of the Liber bibliae moralis by Petrus Berchorius, the earliest book 
printed by Pafraet. ISTC ib00338000; USTC 435327; GW 03864
Deventer, Athenaeumbibliotheek, 113 C 9 KL
20 Cooijmans-Keizer
This period of intensive production was followed by a three-year lull, nota-
ble for its absence of attributable works from Pafraet’s workshop. By 1488, 
however, his press was once more in operation, albeit with a different type of 
output. Whereas the first period of printing was characterised by large tomes of 
sermons and reference works, this subsequent phase largely abandoned folios 
for quartos, which often contained less than a hundred leaves. Their contents 
had also changed, now consisting of grammars and other books for instruc-
tional use.39 Several scenarios have been put forward to explain this abrupt 
hiatus and change of direction in Pafraet’s printing activity. One such hypoth-
esis states that it may have been a cost-cutting exercise, as his sizeable earlier 
works had become a drain on resources. Another proposal relates to the change 
in printing types between the first and second presses. Although Pafraet’s first 
fount had travelled with him from Cologne when he first established himself 
in Deventer, he had acquired a new set of type for his second press – one that 
had become increasingly popular in Germany.40 It is possible to imagine that 
Pafraet ceased his printing for a number of years to obtain more modern types, 
ensuring the longer-term viability of his business. His old founts would not go 
to waste, however: the same year Pafraet ended his first phase of activity, Jacob 
van Breda, another local printer, produced his first attributable edition, having 
used Pafraet’s old founts. Although little is known about Van Breda, contempo-
rary records acknowledge his work from the moment he acquired his citizens’ 
rights in 1483. Van Breda continued to use Pafraet’s old founts for an additional 
three years, before he, too, exchanged them for more modern type.41
Rather than being competitors, the two printers appear to have been on 
good terms with one another despite their shared target audience. Prior to set-
ting up his own establishment, Van Breda may have even been an associate 
of Pafraet’s printing business.42 From 1489, when both businesses were oper-
ating, their respective outputs closely resembled one another: both printed 
quarto editions focused predominantly on the educational market. Likewise, 
both printers were highly productive, jointly representing over 40% of the 
entire printing output of the Northern Netherlands, and as much as 25% of 
39 See Dinand Webbink, ‘Deventer: de pers van Jacob die Prenter. Meer dan vijf eeuwen 
“wonderbaarlijke boekdrukkunst”’, in Wim Coster and Jan ten Hove (eds.), Overijssel. 
Plaatsen van herinnering (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2011), p. 112.
40 See Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, pp. 39, 108; Slechte, Geschiedenis van 
Deventer, pp. 325–326.
41 See Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, p. 108.
42 See Lotte Hellinga-Querido and Wytze Hellinga, ‘Jacob van Breda’, in De vijfhonderd-
ste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. Catalogus (Brussels: Koninklijke 
Bibliotheek, 1973), p. 403.
21Early Printing along the IJssel
the Low Countries overall.43 These percentages warrant investigation into how 
such productivity could be achieved. What defined the success of these print-
ers, and how were they able to use the prevailing political, economic, and cul-
tural climate to their advantage?
43 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 326.
Figure 1.3 The printing device of Jacob van Breda, (c.1515) containing the text Prelu[m] 
Jacobi, ‘Jacob’s press’. USTC 420503
Deventer, Athenaeumbibliotheek, 11 E 106 KL
22 Cooijmans-Keizer
4 Political Reasons for Success
As mentioned above, when David of Burgundy was anointed Bishop of 
Utrecht, the entirety of the Sticht would have presumably become part of the 
Burgundian area of influence. In practice, however, would this have been true 
for Deventer? Both cities – each functioning as de facto politico-administrative 
centres for their respective subregion within the Sticht – initially opposed the 
appointment of a bishop with Burgundian ties, causing David’s father, Philip 
the Good, to take military action against both cities, leading to their surrender 
in 1456.44 As the new bishop took up (near-)permanent residence in Utrecht, 
its distance from the Oversticht would have curbed the control he was able to 
exert over the latter region, despite his temporal influence officially extending 
there. In fact, Hellinga and Hellinga have gone as far as asserting that ‘[p]olit-
ically speaking Deventer did not belong to the Burgundian area which at this 
period of the fifteenth century we usually think of as the Low Countries’.45 
With this in mind, continued conflicts surrounding the bishop’s tenure would 
have been less pronounced in Deventer than they were in Utrecht, which, sit-
uated at the centre of such struggles, became more economically volatile.46 
As a result, Utrecht’s early printers may have struggled to market their trade 
further afield, and may have even run afoul of anti-Burgundian sentiment by 
selling books in supposed ‘enemy territory’.47 Deventer, conversely, would have 
been in a more politically resilient position, lending stability to its commercial 
network. As a result, when its printers became active during the final quarter 
of the fifteenth century, their trade would have been largely unencumbered 
by political contentions.48 Whereas the city’s formal connection to the incum-
bent bishop would have facilitated trade with regions within his sphere of 
influence, as well as those under more established Burgundian control such as 
the county of Holland and the Southern Netherlands, the lack of direct epis-
copal oversight in the Oversticht would have also allowed it to nurture closer 
ties to regions beyond the Burgundian sphere of influence. Deventer’s proxim-
ity to neighbouring Guelders might have further facilitated such connections, 
for example.
In addition to its secular ties to Utrecht, Deventer also benefitted from a 
strong historical bond to the episcopate itself, having acted as a safe haven 
44 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 208.
45 Hoven van Genderen, ‘Toppunt’, pp. 179–180; Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types 
vol. I, p. 39.
46 See Hoven van Genderen, ‘Toppunt’, pp. 180–181.
47 Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, pp. 48–49.
48 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 272.
23Early Printing along the IJssel
for the Utrechtian bishop following viking antagonism during the ninth cen-
tury. Although the city would not become an official suffragan see until 1559, 
it nonetheless functioned as a secondary seat to incumbent bishops during 
the intermediate centuries.49 This status led Deventer to become an important 
node in the ecclesiastical network of the diocese and the Oversticht in particu-
lar, allowing it to develop its administrative infrastructure.50
5 Economic Advantages
As its favourable ecclesiastical position had made Deventer the most impor-
tant centre of the Oversticht, its ties to the Church represented only one side of 
the coin; the other was the city’s well-disposed economic infrastructure, being 
strategically situated along important trade routes. Originally established near 
a fording place in the IJssel, the settlement had long enjoyed a principal posi-
tion within a wider (inter-)regional network of overland trade and was further 
enhanced by a bridge built across the IJssel during the early fifteenth century. 
Whilst connecting Deventer with Utrecht in the west, local land routes linked 
the city to important eastbound centres like Bremen, Osnabrück and Münster, 
and further onwards to Braunschweig,Magdeburg and Southern Germany.51 
The River IJssel likewise facilitated waterborne trade, connecting the city 
to other economic entrepôts throughout Northwestern Europe. Whilst not 
accommodating large seafaring ships, the river enabled goods and people to 
be conveyed at a much higher rate than overland alternatives could. Its posi-
tion alongside this waterway therefore further enhanced Deventer’s status a 
leading hub for (inter-)regional trade.52
Peak trading seasons coincided with Deventer’s renowned annual markets, 
which are known to have attracted merchants from across Europe.53 The city 
49 See E. H. Bary, ‘Excentriek in het bisdommenlandschap. Deventer als bisschopsstad in 
de rooms-katholieke en oud katholieke traditie’, in E. H. Bary et al. (eds.), Lebuïnus en 
Walburgis bijeen: Deventer en Zutphen als historische centra van kerkelijk leven (Delft: 
Eburon, 2006), pp. 15–17.
50 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 39.
51 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 11; Job Weststrate, In het kielzog van moderne 
markten: handel en scheepvaart op de Rijn, Waal en IJssel, ca. 1360–1560 (Hilversum: 
Verloren, 2008), pp. 171–172.
52 See Weststrate, Kielzog, pp. 19, 157, 170–171.
53 See Peter M. H. Cuijpers, Teksten als koopwaar: vroege drukkers verkennen de markt. Een 
kwantitatieve analyse van de productie van Nederlandstalige boeken (tot circa 1550) en de 
‘lezershulp’ in de seculiere prozateksten (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1998), p. 30; Weststrate, 
Kielzog, pp. 157–158.
24 Cooijmans-Keizer
hosted as many as five markets throughout the year and had over the preced-
ing centuries developed the appropriate supporting infrastructure, which 
Weststrate has deconstructed into three interconnected components. The judi-
ciary, first of all, oversaw the implementation of market peace, offering pro-
spective traders military protection to safely reach markets. Dealing with local 
disputes in an efficient manner, it employed an expedited tribunal headed by 
city officials.54 The city also boasted a physical infrastructure to facilitate trade, 
ranging from the provision of a harbour, crane and transportation to town by 
cart, to ample accommodation, storage facilities and a sizeable market square. 
Finally, the city benefitted from its financial infrastructure: Deventer had been 
granted rights to mint coins, and likewise employed money changers. Equally 
significant, if not more so, was the role of the city government, which prof-
ited from and therefore actively invested in the upkeep of the aforementioned 
physical infrastructure.55
All of the above allowed Deventer to have an early hand in the develop-
ment of the Hanseatic League, which, through shared negotiations, was able to 
offer privileges and protections to its members. Examples included reciprocal 
arrangements between towns to help market each other’s wares, whilst offer-
ing political and military support when local trade was threatened. Additional 
benefits involved more routine aspects of exchange, including agreements on 
standards of weights and measures, thereby largely dispensing with associated 
transaction costs.56 Local protections offered by the Hanse were important 
to Deventer, as it was better able to protect the city’s commercial interests – 
particularly those with the German hinterlands – than its own regional ruler 
could, whose lack of direct control over the Oversticht left the region politi-
cally disconnected and economically vulnerable.57
Despite these overarching measures, the Hanse did not have a fixed hierar-
chical structure, and did not tend to punish its members for non-compliance. 
As a result, merchants were mostly able to steer their own course, as long as 
agreements were not coded into affiliated towns’ bylaws. As a result, individ-
ual members often seem to have pursued their own economic interests before 
considering their collective ties to the Hanse, emphasising their alliance 
54 See Weststrate, Kielzog, p. 170; Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 169; Benders, 
Bestuursstructuur, p. 135.
55 See Weststrate, Kielzog, pp. 170–173.
56 See Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz, ‘The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe’, in 
Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz and Stuart Jenks (eds.), The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern 
Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 6, 8, 11.
57 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 169.
25Early Printing along the IJssel
only when it suited them individually.58 Deventer, situated on the fringes of 
the Hanse’s sphere of influence, did exactly this.59 As a central point of trade 
between Western Germany and the expanding economic influence of the 
county of Holland, the city government sought to protect its own economic 
interests by remaining impartial in the intermittent conflicts between Holland 
and the Hanse.60
Although the economic power of the Hanseatic League had begun to dimin-
ish during the second half of the fifteenth century, membership still carried 
status, signifying an implicit expectation of mutual trust, reliance and qual-
ity control.61 In attempting to attract as much trade as possible to the city, 
Deventer’s merchant class benefitted from these associations, emphasising 
them whenever profitable.62
Much like its merchants, Deventer’s printers were able to make use of the 
city’s established economic infrastructures and connections. Above all, print-
ing was a business, and one which often required substantial investment 
before sales could generate profitable returns. As such, printers would have 
heeded economic risks, putting stock in stable economies and relocating to 
preserve such conditions.63 Deventer’s connections to the Hanse and its profit-
able annual fairs provided its printers with wide-ranging opportunities for dis-
tribution from their doorstep.64 As both Pafraet and Van Breda predominantly 
printed in Latin, this would have further broadened potential markets for their 
output.65 In accordance, their editions were distributed across Europe, with 
copies turning up as far afield as Poland and Austria. Some of Pafraet’s editions 
are even known to have been tailored to the English market.66
58 See Wubs-Mrozewicz, ‘The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe’, pp. 6–7.
59 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 167.
60 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, pp. 196–197.
61 See Wubs-Mrozewicz, ‘The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe’, pp. 10–11.
62 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 169.
63 See Cuijpers, Teksten als koopwaar, pp. 28–29; Lotte Hellinga-Querido and Wytze Hellinga, 
‘Richard Pafraet’, in De vijfhonderdste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden. 
Catalogus (Brussels: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1973), p. 309.
64 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 327.
65 See Slechte, Geschiedenis van Deventer, p. 326; Lotte Hellinga, ‘The Bookshop of the 
World: Books and Their Makers as Agents of Cultural Exchange’, in Lotte Hellinga et al. 
(eds.), The Bookshop of the World: the Role of the Low Countries in the Book-trade, 1473–1941 
(’t Goy-Houten: Hes & de Graaf, 2001), p. 15; Cuijpers, Teksten als koopwaar, p. 28.
66 See Dinand Webbink, ‘Deventers eerste drukker’, in Suzan Folkerts and Garrelt Verhoeven 
(eds.), Deventer Boekenstad: Twaalf eeuwen boekcultuur aan de IJssel (Zutphen: Walburg 
Pers, 2018), p. 73; Hellinga and Hellinga, Printing Types vol. I, pp. 110–111.
26 Cooijmans-Keizer
Prior research has concluded that early printers preferred to establish 
themselves either in cities with a strong commercial infrastructure or those in 
which universities had been established.67 As explored above, the former held 
true for Deventer, which attracted merchants from far afield buying books to 
supply them elsewhere.68 The latter rationale might likewise hold true, how-
ever: even though the city did not host a university at this time, its established 
Latin school may well have offered comparable advantages.
6 Cultural Developments
From the late fourteenth century,