Incunable (Redirected from Incunables)

Page from Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia, printed in red and black by Peter Schöffer (Mainz, 1471). The page exhibits a rubricated initial letter "U" and decorations, marginalia, and ownership stamps of the "Bibliotheca Gymnasii Altonani" (Hamburg).
Illumination with doodles and drawings (marginalia), including an open-mouthed human profile, with multiple tongues sticking out. Copulata, "De Anima", f. 2a. HMD Collection, WZ 230 M772c 1485
Image of two facing pages from "Phisicorum", fols. 57b and 58a, with doodles and drawings. HMD Collection, WZ 230 M772c 1485

An incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively) is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were produced before the printing press became widespread on the continent and are distinct from manuscripts, which are documents written by hand. Some authorities on the history of printing include block books from the same time period as incunabula, whereas others limit the term to works printed using movable type.

As of 2021, there are about 30,000 distinct incunable editions known. The probable number of surviving individual copies is much higher, estimated at 125,000 in Germany alone. Through statistical analysis, it is estimated that the number of lost editions is at least 20,000. Around 550,000 copies of around 27,500 different works have been preserved worldwide.

Terminology

Incunable is the anglicised form of incunabulum, reconstructed singular of Latin incunabula, which meant "swaddling clothes", or "cradle", which could metaphorically refer to "the earliest stages or first traces in the development". A former term for incunable is fifteener, meaning "fifteenth-century edition".

The term incunabula was first used in the context of printing by the Dutch physician and humanist Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe, 1511–1575), in a passage in his work Batavia (written in 1569; published posthumously in 1588). He referred to a period "inter prima artis [typographicae] incunabula" ("in the first infancy of the typographic art"). The term has sometimes been incorrectly attributed to Bernhard von Mallinckrodt (1591–1664), in his Latin pamphlet De ortu ac progressu artis typographicae ("On the rise and progress of the typographic art"; 1640), but he was quoting Junius.

The term incunabula came to denote printed books themselves in the late 17th century. It is not found in English before the mid-19th century.

Junius set an end-date of 1500 to his era of incunabula, which remains the convention in modern bibliographical scholarship. This convenient but arbitrary end-date for identifying a printed book as an incunable does not reflect changes in the printing process, and many books printed for some years after 1500 are visually indistinguishable from incunables. The term "post-incunable" is now used to refer to books printed after 1500 up to 1520 or 1540, without general agreement. From around this period the dating of any edition becomes easier, as the practice of printing the place and year of publication using a colophon or on the title page became more widespread.[citation needed]

Types

There are two types of printed incunabula: the block book, printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page (the same process as the woodcut in art, called xylographic); and the typographic book, made by individual cast-metal movable type pieces on a printing press. Many authors reserve the term "incunabula" for the latter.

The spread of printing to cities both in the North and in Italy ensured that there was great variety in the texts and the styles which appeared. Many early typefaces were modelled on local writing or derived from various European Gothic scripts, but there were also some derived from documentary scripts like Caxton's, and, particularly in Italy, types modelled on handwritten scripts and calligraphy used by humanists.

Printers congregated in urban centres where there were scholars, ecclesiastics, lawyers, and nobles and professionals who formed their major customer base. Standard works in Latin inherited from the medieval tradition formed the bulk of the earliest printed works, but as books became cheaper, vernacular works (or translations into vernaculars of standard works) began to appear.[citation needed]

Famous examples

First incunable with illustrations, Ulrich Boner's Der Edelstein, printed by Albrecht Pfister, Bamberg, 1461

Famous incunabula include two from Mainz, the Gutenberg Bible of 1455 and the Peregrinatio in terram sanctam of 1486, printed and illustrated by Erhard Reuwich; the Nuremberg Chronicle written by Hartmann Schedel and printed by Anton Koberger in 1493; and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili printed by Aldus Manutius with important illustrations by an unknown artist.[citation needed]

Other printers of incunabula were Günther Zainer of Augsburg, Johannes Mentelin and Heinrich Eggestein of Strasbourg, Heinrich Gran of Haguenau, Johann Amerbach of Basel, William Caxton of Bruges and London, and Nicolas Jenson of Venice. The first incunable to have woodcut illustrations was Ulrich Boner's Der Edelstein, printed by Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg in 1461.

A finding in 2015 brought evidence of quires, as claimed by extensive research, printed in 1444–1446, possibly assigned to Procopius Waldvogel in Avignon, France.

Post-incunable

Many incunabula are undated, needing complex bibliographical analysis to place them correctly. The post-incunabula period marks a time of development during which the printed book evolved fully as a mature artefact with a standard format. After about 1540 books tended to conform to a template that included the author, title-page, date, seller, and place of printing. This makes it much easier to identify any particular edition.

As noted above, the end date for identifying a printed book as an incunable is convenient but was chosen arbitrarily; it does not reflect any notable developments in the printing process around the year 1500. Books printed for a number of years after 1500 continued to look much like incunables, with the notable exception of the small format books printed in italic type introduced by Aldus Manutius in 1501. The term post-incunable is sometimes used to refer to books printed "after 1500—how long after, the experts have not yet agreed." For books printed in the UK, the term generally covers 1501–1520, and for books printed in mainland Europe, 1501–1540.

Statistical data

Printing towns
Incunabula distribution by region.
Incunabula distribution by language.

The data in this section were derived from the Incunabula Short-Title Catalogue (ISTC).

The number of printing towns and cities stands at 282. These are situated in some 18 countries in terms of present-day boundaries. In descending order of the number of editions printed in each, these are: Italy, Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, England, Austria, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Hungary (see diagram).

The following table shows the 20 main 15th century printing locations; as with all data in this section, exact figures are given, but should be treated as close estimates (the total editions recorded in ISTC at August 2016 is 30,518):

Town or city No. of editions % of ISTC recorded editions
Venice 3,549 12.5
Paris 2,764 9.7
Rome 1,922 6.8
Cologne 1,530 5.4
Lyon 1,364 4.8
Leipzig 1,337 4.7
Augsburg 1,219 4.3
Strasbourg 1,158 4.1
Milan 1,101 3.9
Nuremberg 1,051 3.7
Florence 801 2.8
Basel 786 2.8
Deventer 613 2.2
Bologna 559 2.0
Antwerp 440 1.5
Mainz 418 1.5
Ulm 398 1.4
Speyer 354 1.2
Pavia 337 1.2
Naples 323 1.1
TOTAL 22,024 77.6

The 18 languages that incunabula are printed in, in descending order, are: Latin, German, Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Catalan, Czech, Greek, Church Slavonic, Portuguese, Swedish, Breton, Danish, Frisian and Sardinian (see diagram).

Only about one edition in ten (i.e. just over 3,000) has any illustrations, woodcuts or metalcuts.

The "commonest" incunable is Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle ("Liber Chronicarum") of 1493, with about 1,250 surviving copies (which is also the most heavily illustrated). Many incunabula are unique, but on average about 18 copies survive of each. This makes the Gutenberg Bible, at 48 or 49 known copies, a relatively common (though extremely valuable) edition. Counting extant incunabula is complicated by the fact that most libraries consider a single volume of a multi-volume work as a separate item, as well as fragments or copies lacking more than half the total leaves. A complete incunable may consist of a slip, or up to ten volumes.

In terms of format, the 30,000-odd editions comprise: 2,000 broadsides, 9,000 folios, 15,000 quartos, 3,000 octavos, 18 12mos, 230 16mos, 20 32mos, and 3 64mos.

ISTC at present cites 528 extant copies of books printed by Caxton, which together with 128 fragments makes 656 in total, though many are broadsides or very imperfect (incomplete).[citation needed]

Apart from migration to mainly North American and Japanese universities, there has been little movement of incunabula in the last five centuries. None were printed in the Southern Hemisphere, and the latter appears to possess less than 2,000 copies, about 97.75% remain north of the equator. However, many incunabula are sold at auction or through the rare book trade every year.[citation needed]

Major collections

The British Library's Incunabula Short Title Catalogue now records over 29,000 titles, of which around 27,400 are incunabula editions (not all unique works). Studies of incunabula began in the 17th century. Michel Maittaire (1667–1747) and Georg Wolfgang Panzer (1729–1805) arranged printed material chronologically in annals format, and in the first half of the 19th century, Ludwig Hain published the Repertorium bibliographicum— a checklist of incunabula arranged alphabetically by author: "Hain numbers" are still a reference point. Hain was expanded in subsequent editions, by Walter A. Copinger and Dietrich Reichling, but it is being superseded by the authoritative modern listing, a German catalogue, the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, which has been under way since 1925 and is still being compiled at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. North American holdings were listed by Frederick R. Goff and a worldwide union catalogue is provided by the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue.

Notable collections with more than 1,000 incunabula include:

Library Location Country Number of copies Number of editions Ref.
Bavarian State Library Munich Germany 19,717 9,381
British Library London UK 12,500 10,390
Bibliothèque nationale de France Paris France 12,000 8,000
Vatican Library Vatican City Vatican City 8,600 5,400 (more than)
Austrian National Library Vienna Austria 8,030
National Library of Russia Saint Petersburg Russia 7,302
Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart Germany 7,093
Bodleian Library Oxford UK 6,755 5,623
Library of Congress Washington, D.C. US 5,700
Russian State Library Moscow Russia 5,360
Huntington Library San Marino, California US 5,000 (more than)
Cambridge University Library Cambridge UK 4,650 (more than)
Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III Naples Italy 4,563
Danish Royal Library Copenhagen Denmark 4,500
John Rylands Research Institute and Library Manchester UK 4,500
Berlin State Library Berlin Germany 4,496
Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts US 4,389 3,627
National Library of the Czech Republic Prague Czech Republic 4,200
National Central Library of Florence Florence Italy 4,089
Leipzig University Library Leipzig Germany 3,800
Jagiellonian Library Kraków Poland 3,671
Library of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Munich Germany 3,598
Bamberg State Library Bamberg Germany 3,550
Yale University (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library) New Haven, Connecticut US 3,525 (all collections) [citation needed]
Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel Germany 3,477 2,835
University Library Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau Germany 3,448
Wrocław University Library Wrocław Poland 3,250 (more than)
Biblioteca Nacional de España Madrid Spain 3,159 2,298
Göttingen State and University Library Göttingen Germany 3,100
Library of the University of Würzburg Würzburg Germany 3,100
Palatina Library Parma Italy 3,042
Basel University Library Basel Switzerland 3,000 (more than)
Biblioteca Marciana Venice Italy 2,887
Frankfurt University Library Frankfurt Germany 2,800
Uppsala University Library Uppsala Sweden 2,500
Biblioteca comunale dell'Archiginnasio Bologna Italy 2,500 (circa)
Bibliothèque Mazarine Paris France 2,400 2,120
Braidense National Library Milan Italy 2,368
Library of the University of Cologne Cologne Germany 2,350
Les Dominicains de Colmar [fr] Colmar France 2,300
Newberry Library Chicago US 2,200 (more than)
Casanatense Library Rome Italy 2,200
National Library of the Netherlands The Hague Netherlands 2,200
Library of the University of Tübingen Tübingen Germany 2,148
Library of the University of Innsbruck (Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek) Innsbruck Austria 2,122 1,889
National and University Library Strasbourg France 2,120 (circa) (7,000 destroyed by fire in the 1870 Siege of Strasbourg)
Nuremberg Public Library [de] Nuremberg Germany 2,100
Library Angelo Mai Bergamo Italy 2,100
Morgan Library New York US 2,000 (more than) [citation needed]
Library of the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg Erlangen Germany 2,000 (more than)
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma Rome Italy 2,000
National Széchényi Library Budapest Hungary 1,800 (more than)
Heidelberg University Library Heidelberg Germany 1,800
Estense University Library Modena Italy 1,662
Turin National University Library Turin Italy 1,600 (more than)
Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt [de] Halle (Saale) Germany 1,600
Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal Lisbon Portugal 1,597
Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova [it] Padua Italy 1,583
Zentralbibliothek Zürich Zürich Switzerland 1,562
Strahov Monastery Library Prague Czech Republic 1,500 (more than)
Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève Paris France 1,500
Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg [de] Salzburg Austria 1,385
Baden State Library Karlsruhe Germany 1,365
University Library of Bonn Bonn Germany 1,338 1,307
Biblioteca Augusta Perugia Italy 1,330
University Library in Genoa Genoa Italy 1,321
Trivulziana Library Milan Italy 1,300
Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon Lyon France 1,300
Library of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt Eichstätt Germany 1,290
Walters Art Museum Baltimore, Maryland US 1,280
Verona Municipal Library Verona Italy 1,230
Bryn Mawr College Library Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania US 1,225 (more than)
Library Teresiana Mantua Italy 1,281 1,083
Ratsschulbibliothek Zwickau [de] Zwickau Germany 1,200
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Urbana, Illinois US 1,200 (more than)
Biblioteca Colombina Seville Spain 1,194
Queriniana Library Brescia Italy 1,158
Central Library of the Region of Sicily Palermo Italy 1,136
University of Graz Library Graz Austria 1,115
Angelica Library Rome Italy 1,100
University of Glasgow Glasgow UK 1,062
University Library in Bologna Bologna Italy 1,021
Bridwell Library Dallas, Texas US 1,000 (more than)
Library Passerini Landi Piacenza Italy 1,000 (more than)
Abbey library of Saint Gall St. Gallen Switzerland 1,000
Library Intronati Siena Italy 1,000 (circa)
National Library of Serbia Belgrade Serbia 1,000 (circa)
National and University Library in Zagreb Zagreb Croatia 1,000 (circa) [citation needed]
Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon Besançon France 1,000 (circa) [citation needed]

See also


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