SPECULUM EXEMPLORUM OMNIBUS CHRISTICOLIS SALUBRITER INSPICIENDUM UT EXEMPLIS DISCANT DISCIPLINAM

Strassburg: [Printer of the 1483 Jordanus de Quedlinburg (Georg Husner)], 1 March 1490. Fourth Edition. 277 x 198 mm. (11 x 7 3/4"). [285] leaves (of 286, lacking final blank). Double column, 52 lines plus headline in rounded gothic type.
19th century Italian half vellum over paper boards marbled to resemble marbled calf, smooth spine with two tan morocco labels, newer endpapers. Title page with faded inscription beneath printed title and two-inch paper repair, no doubt to remove a previous owner's signature. A very few early ink markings and marginalia (faded). Goff S-654; BMC I, 139; ISTC is00654000. Spine lightly soiled, corners of lower board slightly bumped, but the binding perfectly adequate and inoffensive. Conceivably washed (note the faded annotations), but the leaves very strong and fresh, title page mounted on a stub and a bit soiled, second leaf with tail margin extended (though the leaf not supplied), occasional minor printing smudges or small stains, one page with portions of three words obscured by removal of (wax?) stain, isolated mild browning, other trivial imperfections, but still excellent internally--clean and bright and with ample margins.

This attractively printed incunable is an excellent specimen of one of the most popular genres in early printing: exemplary literature, intended to improve public morality by providing examples of right behavior. This "Mirror of Examples for Beneficial Inspection by All Christians, That They May Learn Discipline by Example" is composed of more than 1,200 short, moralizing stories divided into 10 sections, preceded by a prologue in praise of the art of printing (which facilitates the dissemination of such useful knowledge throughout the world) and an alphabetical index of topics. Intended for use in sermons and homilies, the exempla are drawn from the works of St. Gregory the Great, the Venerable Bede, St. Jerome, Church Father Peter Damian, and Lives of the Desert Fathers, among others. Among the wealth of examples, the tale in the 10th section of a young man corrupted by "sodomites" in the big city and now unable to free himself from the lure of that ingrained sin is doubly interesting, first because of the moral lesson it communicates and because of its origin in Dutch folklore. It was the Dutch origins of these lessons that helped identify the author of this work--traditionally thought to be Carthusian monk Aegidius Aurifaber (d. 1466)--as Johannes Busch (1399/1400 - after 1475), Dutch Augustinian canon and leading monastic reformer. A historian of the Brethren of the Common Life, Busch was a proponent of Devotio Moderna, a religious movement encouraging a personal relationship with God and efforts to follow the example of Christ in one's everyday life. Following the first printed edition in Deventer in 1481, ours is the fourth edition, and the second by our so-called "Printer of the 1483 Jordanus de Quedlinburg," now generally considered to be Georg Husner (d. 1505), a goldsmith-turned-printer who signed only four books during his career (one in 1473, two in 1476, and one in 1498). For reasons that have never been fully understood, books--like the present one--that are easily recognized as coming from his workshop do not contain his (or any other) name in their colophons. BMC notes, "there was enough anonymous printing done at Strassburg to keep several presses busy, and if Husner only signed three books at the beginning and one at the end of his career, he may, during a long period, have been active as a printer without signing any at all." Whatever the case, this anonymous press is distinguished especially by its types, described by Victor Scholderer as "more lively and attractive than the general run of Strasbourg faces of the 1480s." With crisp impressions of the type on thick and pleasingly fresh paper, our copy is an excellent example from this printer, whoever he was..