Different, the Same, then Different Again

We have been doing some work to enhance access to our collection of 'incunabula,' the term used for books printed in the 15th century. We have around 165 of these books, and it is a fun period of book history because the printers were still figuring out this newfangled technology. They were doing some lovely work bringing the design and aesthetic of the manuscript world into a new era of print and every copy of every book has its own idiosyncrasies.

Oddly, we recently discovered that we have two copies of Saint Bonaventure's commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, both printed by Anton Koberger in 1491. This in itself isn't that odd; the book was very popular, and issued multiple times. However, because they were so differently cataloged, we didn't realize they were the same thing until we took a closer look at them. Also, although they are the same book, they are still two very different objects. One of our copies is made up from two issues so they are not the same in that way but, more interestingly, their decorative embellishments vary. Not willing to leave the past behind them completely, early modern printers would leave blank spaces for fancy initial letters to be drawn in by hand after the printing was done. Clearly our two copies went off to different artists to be finished off.

To see them ask for Incunabula 31 and Incunabula 152.