Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
Two years later (29 August, 1459) Fust and Schoeffer produced another
Psalter, in the same types and with the same capitals, with twenty-three
instead of twenty lines to a page. This was stated in the colophon to
have been printed "ad laudem dei ac honorem sancti Jacobi," and was thus
apparently commissioned by the Benedictine monastery of S. James at
Mainz. Its arrangement is that generally in use at the time in German
monasteries. Thirteen copies of this edition are preserved, all on
vellum, viz. four in England (British Museum, Bodleian, John Rylands
Library, and the Earl of Leicester's library at Holkham), two at Paris,
one at the Hague, five in Germany, and one in Mr. Morgan's collection at
New York. This last was bought by Mr. Quaritch at the sale of the
library of Sir John Thorold for L4950.
Between the production of these two Psalters Fust and Schoeffer printed
in the same types on twelve leaves of vellum the Canon of the Mass only,
obviously that it might be bought by churches which owned Missals
otherwise in good condition, but with these much-fingered leaves badly
worn. The unique copy of this edition of the Canon was discovered at the
Bodleian Library in a Mainz Missal of 1493 and identified by Mr. Gordon
Duff. It is described by Mr. Duff in his _Early Printed Books_, and by
Dr. Falk and Herr Wallau in Part III of the Publications of the
Gutenberg Gesellschaft, with facsimiles of ten pages.
In October, 1459, Fust and Schoeffer took an important step forward by
printing in small type the _Rationale Diuinorum Officiorum_ of Gulielmus
Duranti, a large work explaining the meaning of the various services of
the Church and the ceremonies used in them. The text is printed in
double columns with sixty-three lines in each column, and the type
measures 91 mm. to twenty lines. A copy at Munich is printed partly on
paper, partly on vellum. All the other forty-two copies described by Mr.
De Ricci are entirely on vellum. The book has also one large and two
smaller capitals printed in two colours, and the first of these has been
reproduced as a frontispiece to this chapter, together with a piece of
the neat small type which, by demonstrating the possibility of cheap
printing, set up a real landmark.
In 1460 Fust and Schoeffer gave another proof of their skill in their
edition of the _Constitutions_ of Pope Clement V with the commentary of
Joannes Andreae. The text of the Constitutions is printed in two columns
in the centre of each page in a type measuring 118 mm. to twenty lines,
with the commentary completely surrounding it in the 91 type used in the
_Duranti_. Headings and colophon are printed in red, and the general
effect is extremely rich and handsome. All the fourteen copies known to
Mr. De Ricci are printed on vellum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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