An Essay on Colophons, with Specimens and TranslationsPollard, Alfred W. (Alfred William)
History
An Essay on Colophons, with Specimens and Translations
Pollard, Alfred W. (Alfred William)
Books -- History -- 1450-1600; Colophons; Incunabula -- Bibliography
An author’s colophon must often have been omitted by the scribe or
printer who was copying his book precisely because a double colophon
seemed confusing, and the scribe or printer wished to have his own
say. Nicolaus de Auximo in his Supplement to the Summa of Pisanella
ingeniously forestalled any such tampering by linking his remarks to his
exposition of the word “Zelus,” the last which he had to explain. After
quoting from the Psalms the text “Zelus domus tue comedit me,” “The zeal
of thy house has eaten me up,” he proceeds:
et hic zelus me fratrem Nicolaum de Ausmo, ordinis minorum
indignum pro aliquali simpliciorum subsidio ad huius
supplementi compilationem quod struente domino nostro Iesu
Cristo, excepta tabula capitulorum et abbreuiaturarum et
rubricarum expletum est apud nostrum locum prope Mediolanum
sancte Marie de Angelis nuncupatum, et uulgariter Sancti
Angeli, M.cccc.xliiii, nouembris xxviii, die Sabbati ante
aduentum, hora quasi sexta. Et omnia quae in eo ac ceteris
opusculis per me compilatis compilandisue incaute seu minus
perite posita continentur peritiorum et praesertim sacrosancte
ecclesie submitto correctioni, et cetera.
And this zeal hath urged me, Nicholas of Osimo, an unworthy
brother of the order of Friars Minor, to the compilation, for
some aid of more simple men, of this Supplement, which by the
power of our Lord Jesus Christ, save for the table of chapters
and abbreviations and rubrics, has been completed at our abode
near Milan, called Saint Mary of the Angels, and vulgarly Sant
Angelo, in 1444, on November 28, the Saturday before Advent,
at about the sixth hour. And both in it and in the other works
which either have been or are to be compiled by me, all things
which are found stated incautiously or unskilfully I submit to
the correction of the better skilled and especially of the Holy
Church, etc.
The submission of a book, more particularly a theological one, to the
correction of the learned and the church was of course “common form”
while the Roman dominion was undisputed, and many colophons containing
such phrases could be collected. We must pass on now, however, from
authors to editors, taking William Caxton, by the way, as an editor and
translator who put so much of himself into his work that he deserves
honorary rank among authors. That he was his own printer and publisher
as well has certainly rather hindered the appreciation of his literary
merits, but gives to his colophons, prologues, and epilogues a special
flavor of their own. As to which of these opportunities of talking to his
readers he should use, Caxton seems to have cared little; but even if we
confine ourselves fairly strictly to colophons properly so called, there
is no difficulty in finding interesting examples, as, for instance, this
from his “Godefroy of Boloyne”:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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