• ARS MINOR [fragment]

Collections:
Curatorial Note:
  • The vellum strips glued inside the German binding of Princeton’s 1483 Venice edition of Horace, also acquired in 2017, are the only known Mainz Donatus fragments still intact within the binding that utilized them. Printed in the 1460s with the Gutenberg Bible types and one of Fust and Schoeffer’s Psalter initials, this copy of Donatus served as a schoolbook for only a few years before it was discarded as binding waste.
Author:
  • Donatus, Aelius
Provenance:
  • Princeton RBMS fragment discovered and acquired 8/31/2017 from Liber Antiquus.
  • Bound within Horace, Opera (with commentary by Cristoforo Landino). Venice: Johannes de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, et Socii, 17 May 1483 (Goff H-448, HSVR copy); binding waste, cut into two pieces, folded for use as guards for the first and last quires, respectively, and pasted down onto the front and back boards. Fragments revealed by lifting the old paper pastedowns (conservation treatment by Ted Stanley, October, 2017).
  • The 1483 Horace bears ownership inscription of Johann Ogier (Freiherr) Faust von Aschaffenburg (1577-1631), of Frankfurt am Main.
  • The 1483 Horace bears old institutional stamp of the Herzoglicher S. Meiningischer Bibliothek on the blank recto of the first leaf.
Former owner:
  • Faust, Johann Ogier, von Aschaffenburg, 1577-1631
  • Herzoglicher S. Meiningischer Bibliothek
Creator:
  • Donatus, Aelius
Language:
  • Latin
Extent:
  • 2 parts of 1 leaf ; 29 x 10 cm (each), folio.
Format:
  • Book
Description:
  • Princeton RBMS fragment is two entire halves of one vellum leaf (f. 11 of 13) of an otherwise unknown 33-line edition, printed with Gutenberg's 42-Line Bible types; probably printed by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer between 1457 and 1466, or somewhat later by Schoeffer alone.
  • Two-line initial A printed in blue (this initial introduced in the Mainz Psalter of 1457); rubricated in red.
  • Schwenke (Donatus text) 32:42-34:29.
Publisher:
  • [Mainz : Type of the 42-line Bible (second state), ca. 1457-1470].
Subject:
  • Latin language—Grammar—Early works to 1500
  • Type and type-founding—Specimens
  • Incunabula—Specimens
References:
  • GW 0871750N
  • Goff Not in Goff.
  • Eric White, 'Binding Waste as Book History Patterns of Survival Among the Early Mainz Donatus Editions,' in Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500, edited by Cristina Dondi (Venice, 2019), p. 253-277.
Printer:
  • Fust, Johannes, 1400-1466
  • Schöffer, Peter, approximately 1425-approximately 1502
Created:
  • 1457-01-01T00:00:00Z/1470-12-31T23:59:59Z
Date:
  • 1457-1470
Identifier:
  • ark:/88435/sn00b323p
Edm rights:
  • No Known Copyright
Range label:
  • Logical
View in catalog:
Relation:
  • Multi-title collection including Ars minor [fragment] and 1 other(s).
Available online: