The Nuremburg Chronicle, printed in 1493
a Descriptive Bibliography by Margaret Finlay
A brief overview of the physical condition and provenance of the book.
The background image is of laid paper, one of the early developments of print culture in turning away from vellum.
All other images taken by the author of this bibliography
An outline:
Title Page:
Transcription:
Registrum
huius ope
ris libris cro
nicarum
cū figuris et imagi
bus ab inicio mūdi:
Description:
The title is centred on the page and is printed in black ink. The “R” and “e” of “Registrum” are highly flourished and decorative, and both are incorporated into the flourish above the title. There is another flourish of the same style beneath the title and centred to the text. The page is otherwise blank: there is no indication of the author, publishing house, or print shop at all on this page. The chains are visible in the paper in the blank space around the title. The page is unmarked save water damage on the page 14.6cm down from the top of the page, 4.3cm from the left edge, and is no bigger than a centimetre squared, and slight foxing on the right edge of the leaf.
Cover and Binding Condition:
This edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle was rebound in the early twentieth century by William Inglis Morse. It has been bound in brown leather, which has been worn with age and use along the edges of the spine, the cover and leather is bent and fraying along the edges of the book, the corners especially are fraying through to the thick cardboard of the cover. Rebinding is evident in the angle of some of the text, though margins on all sides are still wide enough for extant marginalia in full. There is fine gold tooling on the binding: three lines close together around the borders of the cover, with margins depicted in patterned gold tooling 3.4cm in from the border. This is true for both the front and back covers, though the back cover is slightly more worn. The spine is not quite flat, but the curve is slight. There are five horizontal bands with gold tooling along the spine as well. The title, depicted horizontally, is also gold. There is some blind tooling on the spine between each band. These designs are all the same. The bottom two are more worn in appearance than the first three, but all are well-defined to the touch. The pages seem to be held together with string, and those that are visible have been dyed green, brown, and cream.
Paper:
This paper is made from “laid” paper, as evidenced by clear chain lines. There are regularly eleven vertical chain lines, and on the last original leaf of the incunabulum, there are two watermarks visible in the top right corner and just left of the centre of the page. Additionally, “vatman’s tears” are visible on this leaf. There is regular foxing throughout the incunabulum on the outer edges of the leaves, especially on the long edge. There are a few corners of leaves, especially the bottom outer corner that have been fixed by attaching a new corner in a similar paper. Otherwise, the condition of the paper is very good. This incunabulum was printed on Royal size paper (44.5 x 61.5 cm, a single leaf thus being 44.5 x 30.75). As a result of this book being rebound in the early twentieth century, the size of the leaves are not exactly regulation standard, but are less than a centimetre off: the average leaf dimensions of this edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle are 43.8 x 30.7 cm.
Format:
The format of gathering was not able to be determined, due to the book’s age and relative fragility. There is a leaf number, or foliation, at the top of every leaf on the recto, save the title page and the last twenty-six pages of the incunabulum.
Contents:
Most pages of the Nuremberg Chronicle are composed of a mix of both text and images, depicting visually what the text describes. Most commonly, these images are of genealogies, cityscapes, or biblical scenes. There are several notable exceptions to the usual mix of text and images. The pages that contain only text are 1r, 7v-8v, 11v, 13v-14r, 19r, 36v, 38r-38v, 57v, 67r, 75r, 100v-101r, 178r, 183r, 247v, 262r, 263r-263v, 265r, 267r, 268r, 269r-270r, 272r-273r, 274r, 275v, 276v, 277v, 278v-279r, 280r, 281r, 282r-282v, 283v, 285v-286r, 287r-287v, 288v, 291r-297v, and 299r. There are a few blank pages comprising the verso of the title page, 266r, and 259r-261v are also blank save foliation and header reading “serta etas mundi.” Besides full-page illustrations, as discussed below, there are several pages that do not fit into one category: 264v’s top third is text and the bottom two thirds are blank, 266r is half text and half blank, the leaf that should be 298 but is instead a copy of the 218 leaf. Page 330v is the colophon, described in the preliminaries section. From 301r-305r, there is a copy of the “De samartia” which is mostly a mix of text and images on each page. The “registrum,” or index, is found on 306r-324v.
Examples of images integrated with text.
(1) found on fols. v139 and r140 (2) a recurring image of the sun and the moon
There are eleven full-page woodcut illustrations in this edition of the Nuremburg Chronicle. The first, found on 1v, is an image of God creating the cosmos. The next image is on 15r and is a depiction of the genealogy of Christ. On page 66v and 67v, there are floor plans of how one might build temples and churches. The following image, on pages 99v-100r, is a two-page image of the cityscape of Nuremburg. Page 101v is a woodcut of Jesus with the twelve disciples with the symbols of the four gospellers in the corners. The next image is a cityscape of Herbipolis on page 159v, which continues onto the bottom half of the next page. On pages 183v-184r there is another two-page depiction, and this one is of men bearing the coats of arms of regions underneath one man labelled the “imperator gloriolus.” There is a genealogy of the Ottonian dynasty on page 186v. The next woodcut is an image of a conflict between celestial and Hellish forces while mortals below listen to two different preachers, found on page 262v. Three leaves later, on page 265v, there is a depiction of Jesus with two supplicants above mortals in Purgatory on the bottom left, and mortals in Hell on the bottom right. The final woodcut in this incunabulum is a two-page map of central Europe found on 299v-300r.
Preliminaries:
The colophon:
Transcription:
A Sest nunc studiose lector fini libri Chronicarum per
viam epithomatis & breviarii compilati opus q dem
preclarum & a doctissima quoqȝ comparandum. Continet
ēm gesta quecūqȝ digniora sunt notatu ab initio mūdi ad
hanc usqȝ tēporis nostril calamitatem. Castigatūqȝ a viris
doctissimis ut magis elaboratum in lucem prodiret. Sebaldi Schreyer
& Sebastiani Kamermaister hunc librum dominus Antho
nius Koberger Nuremberge impressit. Ad hibitis tame vi
ris mathematicis pingendiqȝ arte peritissimus. Michaele
Wolgemut et Wilhelmo Pleydenwurff quarū solerti acu
ratissimaqȝ anima duersione tum civitatum tum illustrium
vivorum figure inserte sunt. Consummatū autem duodeci
ma mensis Julii Anno Salutis nre. 1493.
Description:
The title page, as mentioned above, has no indication of printer or publisher. Instead, there is a colophon on page 300v, which gives the people it was printed for (Schreyer and Sebastian Kamermaister), the printer (Antony Koberger), and the artists of the woodcuts (Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff). It also records the date that this incunabulum was completed as the 12th of July 1493. There are two marginalia in different inks. One is unclear and partly scratched out, the other is clearer and in Latin, though difficult to read.
Paste-downs:
There is one paste-in from Brentano’s Inc., which gives a brief description of this edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle. It summarizes the colophon in giving the names of the artists of the woodcuts, and the name of the printer. This paste-down categorizes the font as Gothic. It notes that some woodcuts have been coloured by hand. The price, written in the same hand as the bookseller’s address records that this incunabulum was listed for sale at $450.00.
There are three additional paste-downs on the rebound inside cover. The top-most sticker labels the incunabulum as a part of the William Inglis Morse Collection at Acadia University Library, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, but does not state the volume number, subject, or date. The second paste-down labels the book as part of Thomas Philip, Earl de Grey’s collection at his estate of Wrest Park, by way of his coat of arms impaled with another, unidentified coat of arms. The third and lowest paste-down marks the incunabulum as part of William Inglis Morse’s collection, by way of symbol with a “w” on top of an “m” sandwiching an ‘i’. There is a small handwritten poem and sketch of a deer below the symbol.
Layout:
The average page size is 43.8 x 30.7cm. The text blocks, on average, when filling the page, are in a single column measuring 38.2 x 22.8cm. When they are in two columns, the text block usually measures 35.2 x 10.0cm. The right-hand margin, on average is 43.8 x 5.4cm. The left-hand margin is 43.8 x 5.2cm, because of rebinding. The bottom margin is 6.1 x 30.7cm. The top margin is 2.3 x 30.7cm. It is difficult to average the number of lines, or indeed characters per line, per average page because of the varying combination of text and image in the Nuremberg Chronicle. The font is Gothic and standard throughout.
There are headers throughout the text, delineating the period of history that the Chronicle details in that particular section of text. The first header starts on 6v as “Prima etas mundi.” The next header, “Secunda etas mundi” begins on 11r. The next header starts on 22r as “Tercia etas mundi.” The next header, “Quarta etas mundi” begins on 46v. “Quinta etas mundi,” the next header, begins on 64r. The next header begins on 95r as “Sexta etas mundi.” The penultimate header, “Septima etas mundi,” begins on 262r. The final header is “Ultima etas mundi,” starts on 265v, and lasts only three pages. The Nuremberg Chronicle has foliation recorded on every recto side of the leaf until folio 300.
Provenance:
The colophon reveals that the book was made for Shreyer and Sebastian Kamermaister, and was printed by Antony Koberger. Past the time of the printing of the colophon, however, tracing the provenance is difficult until the mid-nineteenth century. Evidence of ownership of this incunabulum in the nineteenth century is from the bookplate with the crest and name of Thomas Philip, Earl de Grey. Thomas Philip de Grey (1781-1859) was the second Earl de Grey. He inherited Wrest Park, the location of the Nuremberg Chronicle according to his bookplate, in 1833, thus putting his ownership of this book somewhere between 1833 and 1859. After this period, there is no further indication of how this book might have gotten to Brentano’s Inc., the bookseller that sold it to William Inglis Morse. Brentano’s Inc. was established in the United States in 1853, and had many stores throughout the country, but this one was in the store at 1 West 47th Street in New York City, New York, according to an inserted page. This page gives a brief description of what the book contains details from the colophon, as well as unique markings of this copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle. The incunabulum was listed at $450 and was bought by William Inglis Morse sometime between 1897 (when he graduated from Acadia University) and 1929 (when the book was given to Acadia University). This incunabulum bears a bookplate from Morse’s own private collection and from Acadia’s “Wm. Inglis Morse Collection”. The Acadia archive records that the book was accessioned on February 1st, 1929. Acadia impressed a symbol of the library’s ownership on the second leaf at the top right-hand corner, marking is as property of Acadia University and the William Inglis Morse Collection.
There is scant marginalia in this copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle. There are only four instances of it outside the marginalia from the booksellers at Brentano’s Inc. on the first leaf. The first marginalia is on 224r in the middle of the right margin in illegible and fading brown ink. The next marginalia is found on 262r and is a curly bracket in blank ink highlighting four lines of text twenty-seven lines up from the bottom of the text. On the reprint of folio 218, between folios 297 and 299, on the recto side, there is long marginalia in Latin, written in brown ink, spreading from the middle of the right margin down through spanning the whole bottom margin. The difference in inks might suggest differing readers (or owners), and the long marginalia is in a vastly different hand than the other two. The final marginalia is found on 300v (the colophon) in two different hands – the first is illegible and in fading brown ink, the second is more legible, in Latin, and a darker brown ink. These two hands suggest a change in ownership of the book – the second certainly uses late mediaeval Latin shorthand. This second handwritten note contains the words “mihi” (mine) and “Augustus,” which indicate that this note is by Augustus or this person received the book from Augustus, but both options mean that the book had changed ownership by the time the marginalia was written.
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