Lot 562
Gregory I, Saint, Pope
Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographss | 10 May 2007
Description
Epistolae. [Augsburg: Gunther Zainer, not after 1476], large folio (403 x 279mm.), 163 leaves of 164 (without 5/7), 59 lines and headline, double column, headings and colophons printed in red, lavishly rubricated with red filling to small capitals and printed paragraph signs, red capital strokes and underlines, various flourishes and ornaments, nineteenth century half mottled sheep, marbled sides, 6/12 and 11/5.6 supplied from a shorter copy, 14/7 rehinged, reinforcements to inner margins of 17/4-6, tear to 17/5 repaired without loss of text, several wormholes to blank margins, some with old repairs, rebacked and repaired with spine laid down
Footnote
Note: First and only incunable edition of the letters of Pope Gregory the Great. The edition is dated from a rubricator's inscription in a Munich copy. Zainer was the first printer of Augsburg (1468), the first after the "R printer" (Adolf Rusch) of Strassburg to use Roman type in Germany, and the first to introduce woodcut capitals as a regular feature of book production. Goff G-415 (9 copies); Hain 7991*
Provenance: rubricated in 1477 by someone who signed "V" on 1/10r, "C.W.E.G." on 6/8v, "W.S.D.L. A.M.S." on 6/9r, and "W.S.D.L. A.S.M.S." on 17/8r; two versions of the same coat of arms, coloured, on 2/1r, in outline on 17/8r; dated on 5/6r, 6/8v, 17/8r; John Hadmar Sticht, bookplate dated 1947