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Notes
Once again it is my pleasant duty to acknowledge, with my most sincere thanks, the very real help provided by the critical comments of Professor Fredson Bowers. "Numquam ad eum accedo quin abeam doctior"!
Konrad Haebler, Die deutschen Buchdrucker des XV. Jahrhunderts im Auslande (München, 1924), pp. 159-160, gives a good short account of this printer's activity.
Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century now in the British Museum (Lithographic Reprint; London, 1963), VI, 625. From his study of a copy then in the possession of the antiquarian bookseller Leo S. Olschki, Enrico Rostagno ("Di un esemplare del De christiana Religione di Marsilio Ficino," La Bibliofilia, II [1900/01], 399) was aware of the repetition in the seventh quire but offered no explanation for the presence of the repeated text.
If the text had twice been set from the manuscript quite independently, then there surely would have been some differences in the line-endings through the differing use of contractions.
Proper names are either capitalized or not in identical fashion in both settings, and both have identical major contractions at the same places. The chapter-heading on the verso is entirely in capitals in both settings, whereas elsewhere (save for that of chapter 18 on [e]2) the headings are in upper and lower case. All this could scarcely be the result of simple coincidence.
I have consulted the Columbia University Library copies of the editions of Venice, 1518 (878 F44 P5); Basel, 1561 (B 878 F44 I); and Basel, 1576 (facsimile reprint, Torino, 1959—878 F44 I3). The text of the Venice: Otinus de Luna, 1500, edition has been made available through photostats of the copy in the Walters Art Gallery (Census F134). All these copies have sanctio, elegit, denunciat and permittit.
In line 20, recto, of [g]2, a turned "n" provides the misprint "uudecies," this being the only major difference between the two texts.
That Laurentii was still quite inexperienced at his trade is shown by the fact that, in these books, he made no use of signatures or register, foliation or pagination, title-page and colophon, running-heads, etc.
In my article "Caxton Studies" (Gutenberg Jahrbuch, 1940, pp. 169-176), I set forth reasons for suggesting that Caxton, for his smaller folios, might have been able to print two pages with but one pull of the lever—and that thereby bearer-type might have received ink by mistake. Similarly, Laurentii could certainly have printed two quarto pages with a single pull—and a careless press-man might have inked the type where he should not have done so. [Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of war and the consequent break in communications, the figures which were meant to illustrate the points I was seeking to make were never printed with the Caxton article. For the same reasons, I was unable to read proof and a few gross misprints have crept into the printed text.]
Compare also my articles: "A Note on a Fifteenth-Century Printing Technique," The Library Chronicle, XV (1949), 52-55 and "A Misprinted Page in a Fifteenth-Century Book," ibid., XXI (1955), 3-5.
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