University of Virginia Library

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 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