Catholicon (1286)

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The Summa grammaticalis quae vocatur Catholicon ( Catholicon ) is a Latin dictionary that was compiled in 1286 by the Dominican Johannes Balbus († 1298) and served until the 16th century to interpret the Bible “correctly”. A grammar supplemented the dictionary, some of which contained encyclopedic entries. The clergy and the citizens who knew Latin were able to extract the essential knowledge of their time and use it like a kind of conversation dictionary.
In the manuscript era, it was one of the books that were often copied and thus also promised a paragraph as a print.

The Catholicon was one of the first printed books ( incunabula ). A Gotico-Antiqua - an easily readable, Gothic-influenced pre-form of today's Antiqua fonts - was cut for its printing . This was significantly smaller than the font styles used previously. The print comprised 744 two-column folio pages. 66 lines with an average of 40 letters each could be accommodated on one page. There were editions on parchment and paper. The estimated print run was 300 copies.

content

The extensive work (approx. 670,000 words) is divided into five sections, the first four of which deal with orthography , accents, etymology , syntax and idioms. The fifth and largest part comprises an alphabetically arranged dictionary with more than 14,000 entries. For the grammatical remarks Balbus used both ancient ( Priscian , Aelius Donatus ) and contemporary grammarians (Eberhard von Béthune, Bene von Florenz, Alexander de Villa Dei , Petrus Riga ) as sources. The lexical part draws on the lexicons of Papias ( Elementarium doctrinae erudimentum , c. 1053) and Uguccione da Pisa ( Derivationes , c. 1190), as well as the classical authors, the Church Fathers, Isidore of Seville , Thomas Aquinas and Bernhard von Clairvaux . The dictionary also contains biblical quotations, examples, and memorabilia.

The work has a compilatory character, but an independent achievement of the author is to have converted the content into a strictly alphabetical order , which facilitated the consultation. Also noteworthy are back references from the dictionary to the grammar section.

distribution

The Catholicon caught on immediately, and copies spread throughout much of Europe. Today around 170 manuscripts are still preserved. Examples were in the possession of church institutions and wealthy private individuals: scholars, princes and church dignitaries. Due to its size, it was often shortened and reworked and served as the basis for several bilingual dictionaries, including a. of the Catholicon latin-français , the Promptorium parvulorum (Latin-English), the Ortus vocabularum (Latin-English) and the Gemma gemmarum (Latin-German). After the first Mainz print edition from 1460, 23 further editions appeared in the 15th century. The last printed edition is that of Lyon in 1520, the most extensive that of Paris in 1506 (printed by Josse Bade ).

While Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) still counted the Catholicon among his favorite books, the work was beginning with Lorenzo Valla ( Elegantiae latinae linguae , 2nd book, foreword; originated in 1441, EA 1471) at the end of the 15th century. and placed in a row by the humanists in the 16th century with other medieval textbooks, which were now increasingly regarded as barbaric and ignorant, and which were sharply criticized (e.g. by Erasmus von Rotterdam , Martin Luther ).

The Mainz print

Two pages of the Catholicon (1460) (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek)

In the colophon , the city of Mainz is given as the place of printing and the year 1460 as the date of printing. The paper contains various watermarks that made dating possible. The Catholicon therefore appeared in three editions, which can be assigned to the years 1460 , 1469 and 1472 respectively . The set of these three editions is almost identical and seems to have been printed on two lines.

To explain this phenomenon , the printing researcher Lotte Hellinga argues that the Catholicon was produced in the same year (1469), only on different presses by different printers who have formed a kind of joint venture . The double lines were created by a standing sentence wrapped with wire , which was exchanged between the printing workshops. Possible printers for them are the Bechtermünze brothers (Eltville), Peter Schöffer (Mainz), Ulrich Zell (Cologne), and Johann Sensenschmidt and Heinrich Keffer (Nuremberg). According to Hellinga's thesis, there must have been a misprint in the colophon and a logistical masterpiece must have been achieved in transporting the heavy standing sentence.

The counter-position is taken by Paul Needham , who takes the revolutionary view that the Catholicon was printed by clichés or stereotypes , i.e. by solid printing forms cast from the original typesetting that could be reused. This enables time and cost savings in type production and would explain the differently dated types of paper. With that, however, this form of printing would have been known three centuries before its official invention and the question arises as to why this technology did not spread directly, but was only used again in the 19th century.

A puncture study in the 1990s should contribute to the Catholicon's further assessment. Dots were created during the printing process. The needles, with which the paper / parchment was fixed in the press, left marks with which the printing of the reverse side could follow precisely. By comparing the punctures in several incunabula, an edition (1469) could be assigned to Peter Schöffer. For the edition of (1472) printers in Strasbourg, Cologne and Basel come into question. The parchment and paper edition from 1460, on the other hand, points to Mainz and could have been printed by Johannes Gutenberg .

The printing history of the Catholicons could not be fully clarified until today. Correct allocation is one of the major problems in early printing research .

See also

literature

  • Lotte Hellinga: The Mainz Catholicon and Gutenberg's estate. Updating and Impact. In: Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens , 40, 1993. P. 395–416.
  • Paul Needham: Johann Gutenberg and the Catholicon Press. In: The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 76, 1982. pp. 395-565.
  • City of Mainz (Ed.): Gutenberg - Aventur and Art. From secret company to the first media revolution . Mainz, 2000.
  • A summary of the problem can be found in: Andreas Venzke : Johannes Gutenberg - The inventor of book printing and his time . Piper-Verlag, Munich 2000.
  • Gottfried Zedler: The Mainz Catholicon. Publishing house of the Gutenberg Society, Mainz 1905 ( archive.org ).
  • The 1460 edition is reprinted by Gregg, Farnborough 1971 ISBN 0-576-72240-5 .
  • Ferdinand Pauly in: Germania Sacra , The Dioceses of the Church Province of Trier. The Archdiocese of Trier 2. The monasteries St. Severus in Boppard, St. Goar in St. Goar, Liebfrauen in Oberwesel, St. Martin in Oberwesel . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin - New York 1980

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ferdinand Pauly in: Germania Sacra, Liebfrauen in Oberwesel . P. 287
  2. ↑ http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~wulfric/edicta/shaw/a134.htm
  3. ↑ Cf. Gerhardt Powitz: The "Catholicon" - outlines of the handwritten tradition. In: Litterae medii aevi: Festschrift for Johanne Autenrieth on her 65th birthday . Sigmaringen 1988, p. 211 online .
  4. ↑ Gerhardt Powitz: The "Catholicon" in book and text historical perspective . In: Wolfenbütteler Notes on Book History: WNzB, 13, p. 126 f. online .
  5. ↑ List of Petrarch's favorite books: "libri mei peculiares". Berthold Louis Ullman: Studies in the Italian Renaissance. 2nd ed., Roma 1973, p. 113 ff .; P. 123. [1]