Peter Amelung's Johann Zainer the Elder & Younger. Translated from the German by Ruth Schwab-Rosenthal. Introduction by Bernard M. Rosenthal. With an Original Leaf from Compendium Theologiae Veritatis [c. 1478-81]

Los Angeles: Printed by Patrick Reagh for] Kenneth Karmiole, Bookseller, Inc., 1985 One of 159 copies. Blue cloth with a printed paper spine label. . Quarto. Title page printed in red and black. Original leaf from Compendium Theologiae Veritatis [c. 1478-81] inserted in a folder between the last leaf of the introduction and the half-title. Illustrated with four reproductions from Zainer's other works. Cloth has a few minor stains, else a fine copy. The leaf which accompanies our volume is from Hugo Ripelin of Strassburg's Compendium theologiae vertatis, printed by Johann Zainer in Ulm, c. 1478-81 (the text is generally attributed to, and listed under, Albertus Magnus, a misattribution...). Incidentally, the fact that Zainer, between 1473 and 1482, printed a dozen editions of works by Albertus Magnus (or works attributed to him) is striking evidence of the influence of the Dominican Order on the output of his press. There is no date in the colophon, but our volume must have been printed...between 1478 and 1481. The text type used by Zainer in this work is his no. 4, the one he used most frequently from 1477 onward. The display type used in the headings and column titles is his no. 5, which he almost always employs in combination with type 4...Data on the life of...Hugo Riplein, is scant: born in Strassburg...in the first decade of the thirteenth century, he entered the Dominican monastery there in 1224; he then spent thirty years in the Order's house in Zurich... Essentially, [Compendium] is a summary of theological thought, addressed chiefly to the practicing priest or the student of theology...The success of the book was enormous - so much so, in fact, that it far surpassed in circulation a work of the same title by Thomas Aquinas" (from Bernard Rosenthal's Introduction, pp. v-vi).