Petrus de Ancharano. Repetitio. Bologna: Jo. Jac. de Benedictis for Benedictus Hectoris, 1493.
Opus pene diuinum celeberrimi vtriusque censure interpretis d. Petri de Ancharano in materia statutorum super caput canonum statuta de constitutionibus, quod prius Rome tum Bononie Impressum fuerat, adeo corruptum atque inemendatum fuerat vitio scriptorum et impressorum incuria vt vix tanti viri opus obtenebratum foret: nunc vero per Benedictum Hectoris librarium prius magna arte castigatum, demum originali proprio reperto enucleatius emendatum, editum est, quo si vera fateri licet et multa frustra addita detraxit et maiora detracta addidit impressitque fideliter in eadem ciuitate Bononie. Anno Domini M.cccc.lxxxxiij. tertio nonas Augusti.
The little less than divine work of the most famous interpreter of both codes, Dom. Petrus de Ancharano, in the matter of the statutes, on the chapter “Canonum statuta de constitutionibus,” which first at Rome, afterwards at Bologna, had been printed, by the fault of copyists and the carelessness of the printers, so corruptly and with so little correction that the work of so great a man was hardly shadowed out, now, on the other hand, by Benedictus Hectoris, stationer, has first with great skill been corrected and then by the discovery of the author’s original more purely emended, and so published, whereby, if truth may be told, he has both removed many vain additions and has added more things that had been removed, and has faithfully printed it in the same city of Bologna in the year of the Lord 1493, on August 3d.
Legal works are usually crabbed reading in themselves, and in the fifteenth century were made infinitely more so by the multiplicity of contractions used in printing them. It might seem natural, therefore, that there should be a special difficulty in obtaining correctness in these texts. But, as a matter of fact, to whatever department of knowledge we turn, we shall still find the fifteenth-century editor exclaiming against the wickedness of his predecessors. Thus, if we go to divinity, we may find as loud complaints as any law lecturer could formulate in the colophon to the Hagenau edition of Gabriel Biel’s sermon on the Lord’s Passion.
Dominice passionis trium partium notabilium sermo preclarus domini Gabrielis Biel supranotati. Qui olim negligenter: ex mendoso exemplari: et sub falso titulo impressus, postea emendatus ex originali et per prefatum Florentium diel diligenter revisus: in laudem altissimi innovatus clariusque interstinctus atque emendatus: non modo in sententiarum quarundam defectibus: verum etiam in orthographia. Et in imperiali opido hagenau impressus.
The excellent sermon of the above-mentioned Dom Gabriel Biel on the three noteworthy parts of the Lord’s Passion, which formerly was carelessly printed from a faulty copy and under a wrong title, afterwards corrected from the original and diligently revised by the aforesaid Florentinus Diel, unto the glory of the Most High has been renovated, more clearly divided, and emended, not only in the defects of certain sentences but also in the spelling, and printed in the imperial town of Hagenau.
To print a book (i) carelessly, (ii) from a faulty copy, and (iii) under a wrong title was really reprehensible, yet after all this detraction there is something quite pleasing in coming across a colophon like that to S. Augustine’s Exposition on the Psalms, in which Johann von Amerbach of Basel, instead of vilifying his predecessors, is content to appeal to the judgment of experts in matters of editing and textual criticism.
Post exactam diligentemque emendationem. Auctore deo: perfectum est insigne atque preclarum hoc opus explanationis psalmorum: Diui ac magni doctoris Augustini. Opus reuera maiori commendatione se dignum exhibens legentibus, quam quibusvis verbis explicari possit: vt ex prefatione et prologo ipsius evidenter colligi potest. Quanto vero studio et accuratione castigatum: emendatum: et ordinatum sit: hi iudicent qui illud aliis similibus sibi: siue manuscriptis: siue ere impressis litteris contulerint. Consummatum Basilee per magistrum Ioannem de Amerbach Anno Domini M.cccc.lxxxix.