Of great rarity and illuminated by the Fust Master |
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Title Liber sextus decretalium. |
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Published, Date Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, Mainz,17 December 1465. |
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Description Folio (39.8 x 27.5 cm). 100 leaves (of 142), double column, 70 lines of commentary, red-printed headings, the major initial [2/1r] illuminated in green on a pink ground with head- and tail-pieces, 2- to 4- line initials in red and blue, rubricated with paragraph-marks in red and blue; early ms headlines and annotations, often trimmed, lacking first ([a]4) and four final quires ([m8 n-p10]) with Andreae's 'Super arboribus consanguinitatis et affinitatis' and chapters V-VI. Twentieth-century antiqued vellum with dark red morocco labels lettered in gilt. Provenance: Obliterated library stamp on first leaf; George Reid, 1897 (dated inscription on last leaf); J. Rosenthal, Munich (photocopy from Katalog 7 loosely inserted); Charles William Dyson Perrins (1864-1958, booklabel, sale Sotheby's, 10 March 1947, lot 580); Maggs (extract from sale catalogue pasted at front); Clifford Rattey (booklabel); J.R. Ritman (BPH bookplate, #59, acquired from Tenschert, 1989). |
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Note First edition of the first work of cannon law to be printed, and one of the first two books with commentary surrounding the text. The Dyson Perrins-Rattey copy illuminated by the Fust Master. Printed on vellum. Very rare: we could not trace any copy or fragment of more than three leaves at auction in the last 35 years. Not in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which owns all Fust & Schoeffer productions except the 1457 Psalter. Not in H.P.Kraus' catalogue 'The Cradle of Printing' part I and II. A complete illuminated copy was offered by Joseph Baer & Co. in 1910 for 20,000 marks, more than four times the price of a coloured 'tadellos sauber' 'Rudimentum novitiorum'. The 1298 'Liber sextus' was the second supplement to the 'Decretum' of Gratian, the first being the five 'Decretales' commissioned in 1230 by Gregory IX. However, editions of the 'Decretum' and 'Decretales' were not printed until the early 1470s, by Schoeffer and by Eggestein in Strassburg. But as an indispensable ingredient of medieval canon law the text had become so essential during the second half of the 15th century that some fifty-eight editions were printed by the year 1500. It is here published with the standard gloss of the period, due to Johannes Andreae Mugellanus (c. 1270-1348). Like the Munich copy, the beginning of the text was illuminated by the Fust Master, an anonymous Mainz artist who supplied illuminations of high quality to two copies of the Gutenberg Bible, and to various copies of Fust and Schoeffer's early editions, such as the BPH copy of the 1459 Durandus. All except two surviving copies of the 1465 Boniface were printed on vellum. There is a paper copy in Trier, and another in the Rylands Library, the latter, as Dr Hellinga has shown, being a collection of proof sheets. The present copy includes the full text of books I-IV of the 'Liber sextus decretalium'. |
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References HC*3586; GW 4848; BMC I, 23; Goff B-976; ISTC ib00976000; Van Praet, Vélins du roi II, 9; Joseph Baer & Co, Incunabula xylographica et typographica. 1450-1500. Suppl. sec., Lagerkatalog 585iii, 838 (with fold. ill.); Hellinga, 'The Rylands incunabula: an international perspective', Bulletin du bibliophile I, 1989, p.47. |
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Stock Number 84942 |
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