THE LAYING OF A GHOST?
Observations on the
1483 Ratdolt Edition of the Fasciculus
Temporum
Curt F. Bühler
EVER since the middle of the eighteenth century, a 1483
edition of the Fasciculus temporum
from the press of Erhard Ratdolt has appeared in the
annals of Venetian printing history. We have it on the
excellent authority of Georg Wolfgang Panzer,[1] who quotes Georg Wilhelm Zapf's
notation[2] that this edition was
listed in the Bibliotheca
historicocritica librorum opusculorumque
rariorum (Nürnberg, 1736) by Georg Jacob
Schwindel,[3] writing under the
pseudonym of Theophilus Sincerus. If Schwindel actually
saw the book, he appears to have been the first and last
person who ever examined such an edition. There is,
however, an exceedingly persuasive suggestion that, in
this case, Schwindel (either consciously or otherwise) was
simply living up to his name. The 1483 edition by Ratdolt
was nevertheless duly noted by Hain, Pollard, Essling,
Diehl and the British Museum's incunabula catalogue;[4] furthermore it is
listed with reservation by Redgrave and Sander.
[5] Yet it is curious beyond measure that
no copy of this edition has ever been located! Through the
kind offices of Dr. Elisabeth von Kathen, I have recently
been informed that not even the manuscript of the
unprinted sections of the
Gesamtkatalog
der Wiegendrucke records the existence of a
single example of Ratdolt's 1483
Fasciculus temporum.
If this Schwindel notation were the only evidence for such a
production, one would quite properly set down this edition
as an error (perhaps a misreading by the cataloguer of the
roman date "M.cccc.lxxxiiij" of a known Ratdolt printing).
But, as the BMC duly points out,[6] there is a
statement made by Ratdolt himself which postulates an
edition no copy of which has survived to our day. At
present there are four extant editions credited to
Ratdolt: those of 24 November 1480 (Hain 6926), 21
December 1481 (Hain 6928), 28 May 1484 (Hain 6934) and 8
September 1485 (Hain 6935). In the 1484 edition (PML 334,
folio 1v),[7] Erhard Ratdolt
remarks, in his dedicatory letter to Niccolò
Mocenigo "il grande", as follows:[8]
In these circumstances, since I have undertaken to
print with greater care and labor the Fasciculus temporum, which
thrice before this I alone have printed in these
parts of Italy having set figures and images in
their due order, I have decided to dedicate this
work and my labors to you.
In the following
year, Ratdolt speaks of the 1485 edition as having been
preceded by four earlier printings.
[9]
Since this statement was made by the printer himself, one is
certainly required to believe that Ratdolt printed three
editions before that of 1484, though only his editions of
1480 and 1481 are evidenced by actual copies. While this
appears to point directly to a 1483 printing, it is indeed
amazing that, in the past 215 years, no one has seen an
example of such a production. The other Ratdolt editions
may, without exaggeration, be called quite common works,
and some edition by this printer is almost certainly to be
found in even the most modest collection of
fifteenth-century books. Such
large
European libraries as those in Berlin, Florence, London,
Madrid, Munich, Oxford and Venice (among others) possess
all four Ratdolt printings. For North America alone, Miss
Margaret B. Stillwell
[10] lists no fewer than
sixteen copies each for the 1480 and 1484 editions,
fifteen of that of 1485, and twenty-one for the 1481
production. And yet no one can find a copy of the 1483
Ratdolt edition anywhere in the wide world! Is there
another explanation for Ratdolt's very explicit
statements?
In order to present a possible (and plausible) solution for
these some-what contradictory pieces of evidence, it will
be necessary to review briefly some biographical details
which may not be too familiar to the reader.[11] Erhard Ratdolt of Augsburg seems to
have arrived in Venice about the year 1476, and shortly
afterwards formed a partnership with Bernhard "Maler" (a
native of the same Swabian city) and Peter Löslein of
Langenzenn (near Fürth in Bavaria). Ratdolt was
apparently in charge of the press, while the painter
Bernhard may have been the head of the firm and its art
director;[12] Löslein was certainly the
"corrector et socius."[13] This press had a
successful career until 1478 when Löslein dropped out
and shortly thereafter Maler and Ratdolt dissolved their
partnership. Following the dissolution of the firm,
Ratdolt's name disappears from our sight until 1 April
1480, on which day he completed and signed (by himself) a
Breviarium Benedictinum
congregationis S. Iustinae (GW 5181).
Shortly after the disappearance of the house of Maler,
Ratdolt, and Löslein in 1478, a new press made its
appearance in Venice under the sponsorship of yet another
German, Georg Walch.[14] This press employed a
gothic type very similar to one subsequently found in the
hands of Ratdolt (his type 4:76G). The woodcut capitals
used by Walch were not unlikely the identical ones
employed by Ratdolt before 1479 and after the reopening
of his own press. In all Walch
printed but four books known to us, the last of which (the
Rationale divinorum
officiorum by Guillelmus Duranti—GW
9124) is dated 18 May 1482. But it is surely worthy of
note that the very first of these four productions is a
Fasciculus temporum, dated
1479, which, the colophon assures us, was "printed with
the extraordinary diligence and expense of Georg Walch, a
German."
[15] This book, among the earliest of
Venetian illustrated works,
[16] is one which
must have required considerable technical skill.
[17] Is it reasonable to suppose that
Walch, as his very first venture, could turn out such a
work without the assistance of outside and experienced
help? Or could we be justified in assuming that Ratdolt
had a hand in this undertaking, as the practical printer;
that his were the labors which actually produced the 1479
Fasciculus temporum while
Walch's contribution was limited to supplying the text and
the very necessary capital?
This Fasciculus temporum with its
numerous technical difficulties was obviously produced by
a professional and can hardly have been the trial effort
of a novice.[18] Moreover, it was
printed with equipment certainly forming part of Ratdolt's
stock-in-trade and was taken in hand just about the time
that Ratdolt disappears from our view. To this
investigator anyway, it seems an altogether likely
solution for the conflicting evidence cited above to
assume that Ratdolt was employed by Walch to print the Fasciculus temporum for him,
though he received no credit for his share in the work in
the colophon of the 1479 edition. Perhaps this irked
Ratdolt, though so long as Walch was still in Venice,
Ratdolt made no mention of his part in the production of
this first Italian printing and no statement to that
effect is found in Ratdolt's 1480 and 1481 editions. But
Walch probably left Venice for his homeland some time
after May 1482—and in his first printing of the Fasciculus temporum subsequent
thereto (28 May 1484), Ratdolt made the claim set forth
above.
Until a copy of the 1483 printing can actually be produced, it
is my belief that one may treat this edition as a "ghost."
The five editions printed by
Ratdolt can be identified as the four issued on his own
initiative, plus the 1479 printing for which Walch allowed
him no credit. The theory set forth here would completely
set at rest the problems discussed in this study
and explain the known facts relative
to the editions now credited to Erhard Ratdolt. It does
not seem essential, to the present writer anyway, to
postulate the existence of a 1483 Venetian
Fasciculus temporum; this can be
deferred until such a time as a copy may be presented for
the inspection of the bibliographical world.
Notes