Catholicon

Royal folio (402 x 278 mm). 328 leaves (of 328, first and last blanks used as flyleaves). A few initial spaces filled by a later reader. Contemporary Nuremberg blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards, five wooden bosses each cover, brass corner and edge pieces, remains of two leather straps.

410 x 280 mm.

Second printing of the Catholicon by Anton Koberger, the prolific Nuremberg printer and publisher of the most popular and important encyclopedia of the later Middle Ages. Balbus, a Dominican friar from Genoa, completed this work in 1286. It contains treatises on orthography, etymology, grammar, prosody, and rhetoric, but is best known for its etymological dictionary of the Latin language, which occupies the greater part of the text. This was apparently the first lexicographical work to achieve complete alphabetization from the first to the last letter of each word. It remained the standard Latin dictionary into the sixteenth century. Many manuscripts survive, and there were no fewer than 24 incunable editions. The first edition, sometimes attributed to Johann Gutenberg and extant in three issues, was printed by a revolutionary technique using two-line “stereotyped” slugs, but the subsequent editions were printed using moveable type in the standard manner.

The binding of this copy is typical of many commissioned by Koberger from shops in Nuremberg. HC 2258* ;

Provenance : marginal annotations by an early hand – “Tobias Kleselius [ ?] Anno domini 1592" (inscription).

BMC II 430 ; GW 3192 ; BSB-Ink-B15 ; CIBN B-20 ; Goff B-28 ; ISTC ib00028000.