Among its incunables, the Stadtbibliothek of Trier numbers a copy of
a Latin grammatical tract, the commonplace text of which is probably
matched only by the rarity of this edition. This is the Exercitium
puerorum grammaticale printed in Antwerp by Claes Leeu in 1488
(VT 2351),[1] of which only four
other copies (one quite fragmentary) are known to us.
The precise date as given by the colophon is: "xxviij. kalendas
marcias
[2] Anni octogesimioctaui". In
regard to this, the
Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (GW
9497)
[3] makes the following
observation: "Mit dem Datum der Schlussschrift kann der 3. II.
[4] nicht gemeint sein, da er 1488 ein
Sonntag war. Vermutlich ist der 28. III. 1488 gemeint". It is a matter of
record that, in 1488, February 3rd fell on a Sunday.
[5] The emended dating of the
Gesamtkatalog was accepted by Dr. Maria E. Kronenberg
[6] and by Professors Wytze and Lotte
Hellinga,
[7] in both cases with such
reservations as an added "?" implies.
To the present writer, the statement in the great German bibliography
seemed rather like a gratuitous assumption, especially since a number of
books bearing a Sunday date came to mind. Chief among these was the
book for which William Caxton's press will always be remembered, the
Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. The colophon of this
work sets forth that it was "fynysshed in thabbey westmestre the last day
of Juyl the yere of our lord /M/CCCC/lxxxv/".[8] In 1485, July 31st fell on a
Sunday.
Similarly, the Cicero, Of Old Age (etc.), was printed by
Caxton
on "the xij day of August the yere of our lord .M. CCCC. lxxxj".[9] Chronological tables show that
August
12th was the second Sunday of that month in 1481.
The opinion expressed by the Gesamtkatalog in regard
to
the date of the Belgian incunable raises, of course, the entire question of
what is meant by the dates given in such colophons. Certainly, no one will
suggest that the fifteenth-century printer was able to complete much more
than the printing (say) of a "sheet-per-press-per-day" — obviously
nothing so extensive as a folio book of 862 printed pages. What, then, does
the date of the
colophon represent? It has often been assumed that this precise date
indicated the day of the machining of that sheet which contained this
information — and this, indeed, seemed perfectly reasonable and
logical.
If the Gesamtkatalog was correct in the assumption that
the printing of a book would not have been completed on a Sunday, then
such mundane tasks would certainly never have been undertaken on any of
the recognized holy days of the Church. In order to determine whether any
incunabula were in fact provided with such dates, the writer made a quick
survey of the incunabula produced in the Low Countries,[10] England[11] and Bologna.[12]
Quite a few books, indeed, bear the dates of the first four days of
Holy Week.[13] Similarly, in the
Netherlands, Italy and England, books were occasionally dated as of
Christmas Eve.[14] All these may be
allowed as suitable dates for the completion of a book — but it seems
highly improbable that printing would have been performed on Palm
Sunday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter or Christmas Day,[15] yet we know of a few incunables
which
do exhibit such dates:
- Palm Sunday: 27 March 1491 (GW 1159) —
"vicesimaseptima
Martij"
- Good Friday: 5 April 1493 (Hain 8683[16] and Bühler 36.A.1) —
"quinta
Aprilis; Nonis Aprilibus"
- Holy Saturday:[17] 14 April
1487 (BMC IX:166 — IA. 49349) — "xiiij Aprilis" 6 April
1493
(Bühler 33.A.3) — "a di .vi. de Aprile"
- Easter: 30 March 1483 (Bühler 6.A.14) — "adi. 30.
de
marzo"
- Christmas Day:[18] 1496
(Bühler 36.A.15) — "octauo Kalendas Ianuarii"
How, then, shall one account for such dates? Perhaps it may be true
that, in certain circumstances, the printer simply selected some remote
target, choosing an arbitrary date about the time when he believed the
printing might be completed. This could explain the dates in Holy Week,
assuming that the printer set up his type for the colophon quite some time
before actual printing began and hit upon some important date without
happening to note its special significance.[19] This explanation, however, would
be
impossible for a Christmas date,[20]
since it was not a movable feast.
Again, it may be that incunabulists have been too much influenced by
the modern respect for accurate dates — and that those found in
fifteenth-century books were considered, on occasion and in their own day,
merely as approximations. Such an hypothesis may be underscored by the
presence of "circiter", which certain Augsburg printers (especially
Schüssler and Sorg, early in their careers)[21] prefixed to the exact dates.
If, then, dates must occasionally be regarded as mere approximations,
it would seem wise not to tamper with a printed date, unless
some almost
incontrovertible proof for the correctness of the proposed alteration could
be advanced. The value of an approximate date would, indeed, be the same
as that of an exact one, since nothing more definite can, with any
confidence, be proposed to take its place.
To return to the Belgian incunable which provoked the present
inquiry, it is apparent that February 3rd or March 28th are equally possible
solutions for the improper date of the colophon, but it must remain a matter
of speculation as to which of these (and conceivably still other dates) the
printer actually had in mind. It might, therefore, be wise to date the book
as Voulliéme did: "28. Kal. Mart. 1488".
