Missale speciale (formerly Constantiense)

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Missale speciale (Basel), beginning of the Canon Missae

The Missale speciale is an incunable missal printed north of the Alps , previously erroneously designated with the addition " Constantiense ". The more recent incunabula research suspects the printing, due to the watermark findings , in Basel not before 1473.

Ownership history

The print and graphics researcher Otto Hupp (1859–1949) bought an old book from Friedrich Roehm in the Munich antiquarian bookstore at a low price in 1880. He designated the book as a missal, printed with Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer's small type of the Mainz Psalter from 1457. For typographical reasons, he concluded that Gutenberg was a test print from around 1450. This increased the value: the book had been with the company since 1900 Ludwig Rosenthal in Munich for sale at a price of 300,000 gold marks. But it was not acquired by the Bavarian State Library in Munich until after Hupp's death .

Meanwhile, more specimens had been found. The researcher François Ducrest found a second copy in the autumn of 1915 in the library of the Capuchin monastery in Romont (Canton of Friborg, Switzerland); this was sold in 1954 via the antiquarian Hans Peter Kraus (1907–1988) to finance the repair of the monastery roof to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. The high price of $ 100,000 shows that the buyers were convinced of the book's old age.

The third copy was identified by the Swedish incunabula researcher Isak Collijn (1875–1949) during a research visit to the Zurich Central Library ; it came from the library of the Rheinau monastery , which had come to Zurich when it was abolished in 1862. The missal had been in the printed catalog of the Zurich Cantonal Library since 1901 and was dated to the 15th century without any further details.

The librarians found a fourth copy in 1961 in the duplicate room of the Augsburg State and City Library . An original edition of 100 to 200 copies can be expected.

Research history

As is often the case in the incunabula, this incunabula also lacks any information on the place and time of manufacture. After the first description of a copy in 1896, researchers discussed its origin for decades: some saw Johannes Gutenberg's oldest print in it , starting before the 42-line Bible, while others assumed it was printed between 1470 and 1480 in Basel.

On the basis of an expert report prepared by Eugène Misset in 1899, the Missale speciale was often referred to as "Constantiense" until the 1950s, which the researcher WH James Weale (1832-1917) refuted in 1900. It is the greatly abbreviated version of a Latin missal for chapels or for smaller altars in cathedral and collegiate churches. The designation "speciale" means that it does not contain any mass forms from religious orders and no masses from local saints. Handwritten missals from Basel served as a template for the print. As in the Gutenberg Bible, two-color printing (red and black) was used, sometimes in a single printing process.

The findings of paper research solved the mystery of the place and time of printing: Gerhard Piccard (1909–1989), the founder of the Stuttgart watermark collection, and Theo Gerardy (1908–1986), a German paper historian, simultaneously and independently of one another proved that the printing would go away Paper that was not made before 1473.

The American incunabula researcher Allan Stevenson (1903–1970) confirmed the printing in Basel on the basis of his own research and named Johann Koch called Meister (around 1430–1487) as the presumed printer. Through Gutenberg's assistant Berthold Ruppel , who worked as a printer in Basel, the types from the workshop of Fust and Schöffer from Mainz to Basel could have got into the hands of Johann Koch.

expenditure

  • Missale speciale [Basel: Johann Koch, called master, not before 1473/1474]. - 191 sheets of 18 lines each, in folio 30.8 × 21.5 cm; Copinger 4075; Goff M-655.

literature

  • Otto Hupp: A Missale speciale, forerunner of the Psaltery from 1457. Contribution to the history of the oldest printed works. Munich 1898 ( archive.org ).
  • Otto Hupp: On the dispute over the Missale speciale Constantiense: a third contribution to the history of the oldest printed works. Verlag Heitz, Strasbourg 1917.
  • Isak Collijn: Ett nyfunnet exemplar av det L. Rosenthalska Missale speciale. In: Nordisk tidsskrift för bok- och biblioteksväsen. Vol. 12, 1925, pp. 189-204.
    German version: Isak Collijn: A newly found copy of L. Rosenthal's Missale speciale. In: Gutenberg yearbook. 1926, pp. 32-46.
  • Gerhard Piccard: The dating of the Missale speciale (Constantiense) through his paper stamps. In: Börsenblatt for the German book trade. Frankfurt edition, February 22, 1960, pp. 259–272.
  • Theo Gerardy: The watermarks of the Missale speciale printed with Gutenberg's small psaltery type. In: history of paper. Vol. 10, 1960, pp. 13-22.
  • Paul Geissler: A fourth copy of the Missale speciale in the Augsburg State and City Library. In: Gutenberg yearbook. 1962, pp. 86-93.
  • Allan Stevenson: The problem of the Missale speciale. The Bibliographical Society, London 1967 (basic).
  • Alfons Schönherr: Missale speciale, a testimony to early book art from the 15th century. Facsimile printing; Private print by Dietrich Schwarz and Conrad Ulrich for their bibliophile friends, Zurich 1970, [17] pages (with 13 selected pages facsimile from the copy of the Zurich Central Library).
  • Severin Corsten : The Missale speciale. In: Hans Widmann (Ed.): The current state of Gutenberg research. (= Library of the Book Industry. 1). Verlag Anton Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-7772-7225-6 , pp. 185-199 (summarized).
  • Martin Germann: A missal around 1473/1474: riddles from the early days of printing. In: Alfred Cattani , Bruno Weber: Zurich Central Library, Treasury of Tradition. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-85823-252-1 , pp. 34–37 and 154–155, with 1 plate.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Christian Scheidegger with the collaboration of Belinda Tammaro (Ed.): Incunable catalog of the Zurich Central Library. (= Bibliotheca bibliographica Aureliana. 220, 223). 2 volumes. Valentin Koerner Verlag, Baden-Baden 2008–2009, ISBN 978-3-87320-720-2 , ISBN 978-3-87320-723-3 , No. 939.
  2. ↑ Martin Germann: A missal around 1473/1474: Riddles from the early days of printing. In: Zurich Central Library, Treasury of Tradition. Zurich 1989, p. 36.
  3. ^ WH James Weale: The newly discovered "Missale speciale". In: The Library. ns, 1, 1, 1899, pp. 62-67. doi: 10.1093 / library / s2-I.1.62 .
  4. ↑ Alfons Schönherr: Missale speciale, a testimony to early book art from the 15th century. Zurich 1970, pp. [10-11].
  5. ↑ Image segments from "Missale speciale". Bavarian State Library, accessed on March 11, 2016 .