Si te forsan, amice dilecte, nouisse iuuabit quis huius voluminis Impressorie artis productor fuerit atque magister, Accipito huic artifici nomen esse magistro Iohanni Veldener, cui quam certa manu insculpendi, celandi, intorculandi, caracterandi [sic] assit industria: adde et figurandi et effigiandi et si quid in arte secreti est quod tectius oculitur: quamque etiam fidorum comitum perspicax diligentia, ut omnium litterarum imagines splendeant ad gratiam ac etiam cohesione congrua gratiaque congerie mendis castigatis compendeant, tanta quidem concinnitate quod partes inter se et suo congruant universo, ut quoque delectu materie splendoreque forme lucida queque promineant, quo pictionis et connexionis pulchre politure clarique nitoris ecrescat multa uenustas, sunt oculi iudices. Idnam satis facies huius libelli demonstrat, quem multiplicatum magni numeri globo sub placidis atramenti lituris spreto calamo inchoauit, anni septuagesimi sexti aprilis primus perfecitque dies ultimus! Quem artis memorate magistrum si tibi hoc predicto aprili mense cure fuisset querere, facile poteras eundem Louanii impressioni uacantem in monte Calci inuenire. Hoc ideo dixisse uelim ne eius rei inscius permanseris, si forsitan ambegeris. Ubi ars illi sua census erit Ouidius inquit. Ubi et etiam uiuit sua sic sorte et arte contentus, tam felicibus astris, tantaque fortune clementia, ut non inducar credere quod eidem adhuc adesse possit abeundi, ne cogitandi quidem, animi impulsio: id etiam adiecerim quo tam quid poteris quam quid potuisses agnoscas. Vale.
Dear friend, if perchance you would fain know who was the producer and master of this volume of the printing art, learn that the craftsman’s name is Master Jan Veldener. Your eyes will tell you what industry he possesses, how sure his hand in cutting, engraving, pressing and stamping, add also in designing and fashioning and whatever secret in the art is more closely hid; how keen-eyed, again, is the diligence of his trusty comrades, so that the shapes of all the letters are pleasantly clear and harmonious, hanging together, with all faults corrected, in a delightful mass, and with such skilful arrangement that the parts are in agreement both with each other and with their whole, so that both by choice of material and splendor of form everything is strikingly distinct, while by his method of inking and joining the letters there is a great increase in the charm of beautiful polish and shining clearness. All this the appearance of the book sufficiently shows, and the multiplying of this in a mass of great number by the gentle spreading of ink, leaving the pen despised, the first day of April, 1476, began, and the last completed. Should you have been anxious to find this master of the commemorated art in this aforesaid month of April, you could easily have found him at Louvain, with leisure for printing, on Flint-hill. This I am anxious to say lest, if haply you are in doubt, you should remain ignorant of the fact. “Where he works there will be his wealth,” says Ovid. There also he lives so content with his lot and craft, under such happy auspices, and with so much favor of fortune, that I cannot be induced to believe that any impulse to depart, or even to think about it, can have come to him. I would also add that by which you may recognize what you will be able to do as well as what you could have done. Farewell.
As Veldener’s device is here added, the meaning of the last cryptic sentence appears to be either that authors with books to print who had not found his shop in April might find it by its sign in May, or that readers would be able to recognize the printer’s handiwork in the future books they would have a chance of purchasing, as well as in those already sold out. What Conrad of Westphalia made of it is doubtful, since, without affixing his own mark, he cribbed this sentence with all the rest of the colophon, only substituting his own name and address (“in platea Sancti Quintini”—“in St. Quentin’s Street”) for Veldener’s, altering the date of the inception of the book from April to December, and saying nothing as to when it was completed. A more disgraceful trick for one printer to play another living in the same town can hardly be imagined, and Holtrop may be right in considering it a deliberate attempt to annoy Veldener and the cause of his leaving Louvain the next year. Strange to say, however, the history of the colophon does not stop here. M. Claudin has shown, in the first volume of his “Histoire de l’imprimerie en France,” that a copy of Maneken’s “Formulae” exists printed in the types of Guillaume Balsarin of Lyons, but with the name of the Paris printer Caesaris substituted for that of Veldener in the colophon. It is clear, therefore, that in an edition now lost to us Caesaris must have played Veldener the same trick as Conrad of Westphalia had already played him, and that this Paris edition must have been reprinted by Balsarin at Lyons without troubling to alter the colophon. Truly there are pitfalls for the unwary in dealing with early books!
Perhaps one reason why colophons were sometimes reprinted as they stood was that a printer without a scholarly “corrector” to aid him had a wholesome dread of plunging into the middle of a Latin sentence. Those who rushed in hastily sometimes left very obvious footprints in the wrong places. Thus Ulrich Han, in printing from one of Schoeffer’s editions of the “Liber sextus decretalium,” changed his well-known “Alma in urbe Maguntina inclyte nacionis germanice quam dei clemencia tam alti ingenii lumine donoque gratuito ceteris terrarum nacionibus preferre illustrareque dignatus est” (see Chapter II), into “Alma in urbe Roma Totius mundi regina et dignissima Imperatrix [sic] que sicut pre ceteris urbibus dignitate preest ita ingeniosis uiris est referta.”
To call Rome “the Queen and most worthy Empress of all the world, which, as it takes precedence of all other cities in dignity, so is it filled with men of wit,” was quite a pleasing variation on Schoeffer’s tune. Unluckily Han did not note that his Queen and Empress ought to be in the ablative, and thus printed “Imperatrix” instead of “Imperatrice.” So again, when we look at the colophon to the third and fourth parts of the “Speculum” of Durandus printed at Venice in 1488, we find reason for suspicion:
Explicit tertia et quarta pars Speculi Guilhelmi Duranti cum additionibus Ioannis Andree et Baldi suis in locis ubique positis. Impressa Venetiis per Magistrum Paganinum de Paganinis Brixiensis, ac Georgium de Arriuabene de Caneto qui salua omnium pace est inter ceteros amandus ac uenerandus propter ipsius in hac arte curam in corrigendis operibus ac in imprimendo charactere. Anno domini M.cccc.lxxxviii. vi die Septembris.
Here ends the third and fourth part of the Speculum of Gulielmus Durandus, with the additions of Joannes Andreae and Baldus inserted everywhere in their proper places. Printed at Venice by Master Paganinus de Paganinis of Brescia, and Georgius de Arrivabene de Caneto, who, with due respect to every one, is, among all others, to be loved and revered for his care in this art both in correcting works and in printing them in type. In the year of our Lord 1488, on September 6th.
The slip of “Brixiensis” for “Brixiensem” is not reproducible in English, but the reader who notes how the two partners are treated as singular instead of plural will easily see that this colophon could not have been written for them. It appears, indeed, to have been borrowed from Bernardinus de Tridino.
Sometimes the inaccuracies introduced are not of a merely verbal kind. Thus at the end of an edition of the “Fasciculus Temporum” printed by Heinrich Wirzburg at the Cluniac monastery at Rougemont in 1481 we have the following colophon:
Chronica que dicitur fasciculus temporum edita in alma Universitate Colonie Agrippinae super Renum, a quodam deuoto Cartusiensi finit feliciter. Sepius quidem iam impressa sed negligentia Correctorum in diuersis locis a uero originali minus iuste emendata. Nunc uero non sine magno labore ad pristinum statum reducta cum quibusdam additionibus per humilem uirum fratrem Heinricum Wirczburg de Vach, monachum in prioratu Rubei Montis, ordinis cluniacensis, sub Lodouico Gruerie comite magnifico anno domini M.cccc.lxxxi. Et anno precedenti fuerunt aquarum inundationes maxime, ventusque [sic] horribiles multa edificia subuertentes.