• BLOODLETTING CALENDAR FOR 1462 [Vienna: Ulrich Han? late 1461]

Collections:
  • Incunabula at Princeton
  • In Principio
  • Germany grouping
  • Collections Donated to Princeton University Library
  • The Scheide Library
  • Treasures of Rare Book Division
Curatorial Note:
  • It was a fundamental belief of ancient and medieval medicine that there are good and bad days for bloodletting and taking purgatives, governed by the phases of the Moon. Gutenberg printed a bloodletting Calendar for the year 1457 using his DK type, uniquely preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The present Calendar states that its New Moon and Full Moon times are calculated on the meridian of Vienna. These times are not printed, but added by hand, as Arabic numerals, in red ink, and they are of remarkable accuracy. It has been supposed that they were calculated by the famous astronomer-mathematician Regiomontanus, who at this time was in Vienna. The small images representing the opposite phases of the Moon are woodcuts. Thus printmaking, typography, and calligraphy are combined to create the calendar.
Abstract:
  • This unique broadside blood-letting calendar was discovered in the nineteenth century as binding waste in some unidentified manuscript in the Donauschingen Court Library. It states that it presents the times of new moons and full moons according to the true meridian of Vienna ("nach warn lauff auff wienn"). The printer left spaces for these times, and for the names of the months, to be entered by hand: they are supplied in red ink. Small woodcuts were used to represent the new moon and full moon. The lunar times are very accurate, and may have been calculated by the famous astronomer Regiomontanus, who was in Vienna in 1461. The printing type of the calendar is a later version of a type used also to print two unique prayer pamphlets at the Staatsbibliothek Munich, illustrated with metalcuts. Konrad Haebler argued that the likeliest candidate as printer was Ulrich Han, a citizen of Vienna, who by about 1464 had migrated to Rome, where he operated one of the two earliest printing shops of that city.
Language:
  • German
Call number:
  • 114.9
Extent:
  • Broadside : 40 x 28.5 cm (Chancery sheet).
Format:
  • Book
Type:
  • Calendars
Description:
  • Text in German.
Publisher:
  • [Vienna : Ulrich Han?, 1461].
Subject:
  • Phlebotomy—Calendars—Early works to 1800
Title sort:
  • [Blood-letting calendar for Vienna, 1462. German].
Alternative:
  • Aderlasskalender.
  • Laxierkalender.
  • Almanach für Wien auf das Jahr 1462.
References:
  • GW 1287.
  • VE 15 A-145
  • Einblattdrucke 115.
  • Schreiber 3146.
Printer:
  • Han, Ulrich, d. 1480
Created:
  • 1461-01-01T00:00:00Z
Date:
  • 1461
Identifier:
  • ark:/88435/w3763685g
Location:
  • WHS 114.9
Edm rights:
  • No Known Copyright
View in catalog:
Available online: