Incipit solemne opus expositionis Euangeliorum dominicalium tocius anni…Cum concordancia quatuor evangelistarum in passionem dominicam.
Ulm, Johann Zainer 1480.
Folio (300 x 205 mm.). [ii blank], [xxii], [672], [2 blank], [71]p. Gothic type, index double-column, two initials supplied in manuscript.
Contemporary Augsburg blind-decorated brown calf over wooden boards (EBDB w002141; some loss at the extremities and on the rear board, front hinge cracked; 17th/18th-century rebacking with blind-tooled calf), remnants of two leather straps, brass catchplates (lower strap replaced at an early date), 17th/18th-century manuscript-lettered paper spine labels, contemporary manuscript titles on the fore- and bottom edge.
PROOF-SHEET PASTEDOWNS IN GERMAN PRINTED BY GÜNTHER ZAINER AT AUGSBURG (discolored from adhesive, wormed, 11 cm. tear in the front pastedown with no loss).
Second Edition of this Gospel commentary by the Augustinian professor of theology at Paris, with the second printing of an anonymous concordance of biblical references to Christ’s Passion. Johann Zainer introduced printing to Ulm. A distinctive feature of his books is THE CLEAR IMPRESSION OF THE WARP AND WEFT OF CLOTHS USED TO DAMPEN THE SHEETS’ TYPE AREA PRIOR TO PRINTING — here affecting at least thirty sheets. This shop practice suggests that Zainer was working with a one-pull press.
In original condition, one inky handprint (eight bifolia on poorer paper, some stains and foxing, minor worming in the blank margins of the first and last few leaves). Like many of Johann Zainer’s editions, this book suffers poor registration, occasional inked furniture and smeared ink from careless handling. An early reader underlined and marked one quire in red ink, and another added over a hundred marginal notes, manicules and other marks in brown ink; Fabutator in red ink on the first recto in an early hand, 18th-century ownership inscription of the Bolzano Franciscans; on the final leaf is a reference to Adam Haslmayr (1562-?1630), rector of the parish school in Bolzano and a Paracelsian and Rosicrucian scholar.
¶ISTC ia00340000; Goff A-340; see Bolton’s The Fifteenth-Century Printing Practices of Johann Zainer passim.
The once conjugate front and rear pastedowns are A PROOF SHEET FROM THE FIRST AUGSBURG PRESS, ESTABLISHED BY GÜNTHER ZAINER, JOHANN’S BROTHER. Printed on one side only (i.e., never perfected), our pastedowns are the outer forme of the outer bifolium of the first quire of Günther’s folio Spiegel des Sunders (Mirror of the Sinner, c. 1478). The two pages have more than ninety changes from the proof to the published version. A third of these shift the orthography from the Early New High German of his 1476 edition — undoubtedly what the compositors had before them — in favor of the Austro-Bavarian spellings. The remainder involve abbreviation and word and letter spacing.
¶Frey, “Makulatur aus der Presse Günther Zainers” in Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1944/9 94-6; ISTC is00675000 (erroneously 8vo); Goff S-675 (the source of this error).
Price: $28,000.00