First edition of ancient mnemotechnical compendium of the four Gospels

28 Ars Memorandi per figuras Evangelistarum, block-book

[Southern Germany, Nuremberg?, c. 1470.] First print of first edition.

2°, 287 x 201 mm. 30 leaves. Printed anopistographically; i.e. on one side of the sheet only, leaves 2-29 pasted together in pairs against their blank versos. Watermarks:Two versions of bull’s head (not in Piccard XIII), quire signatures a-p at the end of each text-page. – Text rubricated, twelve initials coloured in red. Woodblock print with 15 full-page illustrations. Lips and tongues, some hat-tops and roofs likewise coloured in red. – The leaves were, probably in the course of binding, separated and put on guards. Slightly stained, with few traces of water. Leaves 1 (text) and 30 (illustration) doubled revealing small (worm-) holes, outer margin of leaf 1 remargined. – Dark brown, marbled German 18th-century calf-leather binding, spine on six raised bands with floral gilding and label. Front cover with thin gold border, cover edges gilt, red edges, marbled endpapers, in a canvas box signed “The Lakeside Press, Chicago”.

PROVENANCE: 1. Fürstliche Bibliothek Gotha. Stamp “Bibliotheca Ducalis Gothana” on recto of first leaf. Label “1.” on spine, signature “Xylogr. pag. I. no. 1”, on first flyleaf, bibliographical notes of the 18th century on second flyleaf. 2. Louis H. Silver (1902-1963), renowned Chigaco collector. His leather ex-libris on the inside of front cover, canvas box dating from his lifetime. His collection was sold en-bloc in 1964 to 3.The Newberry Library, Chicago. An important portion of the Silver-collection was sold at Sotheby’s, 8-9 November 1965, this copy as lot 32. 4. H. P. Kraus, Catalogue 131, no. 15. 5. Collection Otto Schäfer, Schweinfurt, OS 1032.

CONTENT: The Ars memorandi addresses young theologians of moderate education.With the help of illustrations, the block-book is intended to serve as an aide-memoire to the content of the four Gospels. In contrast to the Biblia Pauperum with c. 14 editions, the Ars memorandi was printed in only three editions (the first of which in three issues) with only very minor differences. However, the useful aidememoire was adapted by the pioneers of printing with movable type. Incunabula editions with copies of the illustrations of the Ars memorandi include, for example, the Memorabiles evangelistarum figurae, which combines the images with mnemotechnical verses by Petrus of Rosenheim. It was republished in several editions under the title Rationarum Evanglistarum at Thomas Anshelm’s press in Pforzheim between 1502 and 1522. Images and text are presented opposite one another so as to be mutually explicable. The texts, on the left-hand side contain short surveys of some chapters of each Gospel, while the right-hand side shows a full-page image of the respective Evangelist’s symbol.The additional decoration comprises the chapter numbers and is intended as a guide to remembering the principal characters and subjects of the relevant Gospel. Mnemotechnical tools of this kind go back to the Venetian Jacobus Publius and were especially popular with the Dominicans.To the members of this order it was important to memorise each chapter of the Bible in order to quote from the Scriptures in sermons and disputations.The places where copies of the Ars memorandi are found imply a Southern German origin for this genre. Manfred von Arnim suggests the city of Nuremberg for our book, after having compared the quality of the woodcuts, the draperies and the crosshatchings with the woodcut of Creussners’s Simon Tridentinus (Schramm XVIII, fig. 344).

PRINT: Our block-book is the first print of the first edition. The production of block-books is entirely based on the technique of carving wood: illustrations as well as text are cut into a wood panel (‘block’) which is then covered with water-based ink (distemper) rather than with printer’s ink and printed onto paper. Block-books are characterized by a close relationship between images and explanatory texts. This technique was used especially for popular religious literature of an edifying and moralizing kind, such as the Biblia pauperum, the Canticles, the Ars moriendi, the Heilsspiegel (Mirror of Salvation) and the Apocalypse, but also calendars, books on the planets, chiromancy and pilgrims’ guides for Rome. Both the richly illustrated contents and the technique of production lend a special appeal to block-books in general. Prior to Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable metal type the woodcut technique allowed for reproduction of illustrated texts of some length. In order to make them look like ‘real books’, the leaves were pasted together against their blank versos. Only the use of a printing press allowed the production of opistographical block-books, i.e. books in which the leaves were impressed on both sides. Due to this more ‘archaic’ printing technique block-books were long regarded as the forerunners to Gutenberg’s inventions. The earliest reliable date of a block-book, however, is 1470, while later editions can be dated until around 1530 and it is now generally accepted that the two reproduction methods existed side by side. One important advantage of block-books was the fact that the wood-blocks could be stored over a long period, while the typeset of a book printed by Gutenberg’s technique had to be disassembled after printing, storage being too expensive. Block-books, therefore, allowed for new copies to be made to order – comparable to the principle of ‘publishing on demand’ today. The majority of the surviving copies were printed in German, Dutch or Latin.The centres of block-book production seem to have been in the Netherlands and in the southern part of Germany.

RARITY: Extremely rare. Only one other copy of the first print of the first edition is recorded (Vienna, Albertina). On the whole, about 30 block-book copies of the Ars memorandi survive worldwide (Census in Blockbücher des Mittelalters).
Schreiber IX (manuel IV), p. 135f, ed. Ia; Arnim 1984, Xylo-C.; exh. cat. Nuremberg 1987, no. 3.; exh. cat. Mainz 1991, No. 35f. BMC I, p. 4 (compare Schreiber’s ed. II); Hind 1935, p. 254; Rost 1939, p. 250;Volkmann, 1929, pp. 119ff.