UWM Libraries Research and Course Guides: Information Studies 603: Incunabula Project Guide: Sample Entry

In Class Exercise

In Class Practice Exercise
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Sample Entry

Here is a SAMPLE ENTRY:

Decretales cum summariis suis et textuum divisionibus ac etiam rubicaru continuationibus.

Venice: Baptistam de Tortis, 1491.

(AGSL-Rare) BX1238 .A6 1491

Physical Description:

303 numbered pages; approx. 40 cm (16.5 inches tall). Bound in what appears to be soft leather over boards? (not wood like some of the others). The leather is a light brown; the binding cords are raised on the spine. Binding in very good condition—I think this is a later binding; does not look contemporaneous with the book itself. The book is in Latin and appears to begin with a kind of index. Printed in black and red throughout; the initials appear to be printed throughout, rather than hand done. Main text is printed in double columns at the center of the page, with printed commentary printed around it. Both the central text and the commentary text are in a Gothic typeface, with the central text in a slightly larger font. The paper is still sturdy, with no wormholes, but it appears yellower than the other books I examined. The colophon seems to indicate that it was printed by De Tortis in Venice on September 20, 1491. But the book has a signature at the front by an individual named Vespucci (related to Americus?) with a date that seems to predate the publication identified in the colophon: July 15, 1491.

Catalog Records:

Search @ UW: indicates that this is a book of canon law established during the time of Pope Gregory IX (1170-1241).
WorldCat lists only one copy at the Huntington Library in California.
According to the ISTC, the vast majority of holdings (37 in total worldwide) are in Europe, especially in German libraries. It shows three holdings in the US: Milwaukee (AGSL), the Huntington, and the Bar Association of NYC.

Interesting Stuff:

ISTC shows 179 editions published by Baptista de Tortis in Venice between 1481 and 1500. According to an online exhibit at the University of London (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/library/speccoll/exhibitions/printerex/evenprint.html). De Tortis was active in Venice between 1481 and 1529, and he maintained the largest print runs of any 15th-century Venetian printer. He published two editions of Pope Gregory IX’s Decretales, in 1491 and 1494, each with a print run of 2300 copies. ISTC also lists editions for 1484, 1486, 1489, 1496, 1498, ca. 1499, and 1500 (the first in association with another printer, Franciscus de Madiis). According to the UWM online exhibit “The Infancy of Printing” (http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/special/exhibits/incunab/incpg10.cfm) the two distinct areas of printing as described above are general encyclicals at the center of the page, surrounded by papal decretals relating to the encyclical. This reminds me of glosses found in manuscript books.

According to ISTC, De Tortis also printed various editions of Decretales by Popes Boniface VIII and John XXII during this same period. Franciscus de Madiis, who published a 1484 decretal with Tortis, published only one edition under his own name (a breviary in 1486), but 9 other titles in association with various other Venetian printers. Besides printing in association with Madiis, Tortis also printed one title “et Socii.” This phrase also appears with other printers’ names in ISTC. According to Wikipedia, “Socii” in everyday usage means “associates.”