Although copies of the missal-books according to the rubric of the diocese of Meissen have been caused by the most reverend Father in Christ and lord, the lord John of happy memory, formerly Bishop of Meissen, to be printed elsewhere with sufficiently exact diligence, yet inasmuch as the aforesaid copies omitted many necessary things which the present ones have published, and the number of them does not suffice for so wide a diocese as Meissen and for the multitude of persons of the household of God in it who ofttimes eagerly seek for books of this kind, Therefore, the most reverend Father in Christ and lord, the lord Johann von Salhusen, the Bishop, that now is, of the Church of Meissen, wishing to come to the aid of these and other wants and defects, caused the present missal-book, according to the rubric of his aforesaid diocese of Meissen, diligently corrected and arranged, to be begun by the industrious Conrad Kachelofen, a master of this art of printing and citizen of the town of Leipzig, in that same town, and on the approach of the plague to be accomplished and happily finished in the town of Freiberg. The which missal-book will be found most suitable for the institutions also of new festivals for the increase of the divine worship, the lessons for these being very defective in the former copies, while in the present ones they are noted with many other special votive masses in their proper order, so that those who compare these volumes with the preceding ones will count them as necessary rather than superfluous. In the year of salvation 1495, on Monday, November 9th. EPIGRAM OF JOHANNES CUBITENSIS This gift French Conrad brought unto our age; His wit and skilful hand achieved the task. Meissen’s good, faithful bishop blessed the page: Of book or author need none further ask. From Hain 10425 we learn that a Machasor, or Compendium of Prayers, for the use of the Italian synagogues was begun at Soncino in September, 1485, and finished at Casal Maggiore in August, 1486; but to what this change of scene was due the colophon does not say. One would have thought that in the fifteenth century war as well as pestilence must often have interrupted the printer at his work; and indeed the sack of Mainz in 1462 was a very notable event in the history of printing. Yet the only two references to war I can remember in contemporary colophons hardly view it as an interruption—the first Paris printers (Gering, Krantz, and Friburger), indeed, tried to use it as an advertisement for their Sallust, where the verses at the end run: