The verse tradition was also complied with by Jacobus de Fivizano in a Virgil of 1472, by Jacobus Rubeus in an Ovid of 1474, and by Erhard Ratdolt and his companions on the title-page of the Calendar of Johannes de Monteregio in 1476. Two years later, when printing was becoming so great an industry at Venice that such toys as colophons in verse must have begun to appear a little undignified, an editor in the service of John of Cologne, ordinarily a man of quite commercial colophons, burst out into this song in his praise, at the end (of all places in the world) of the Commentary of Bartolus de Saxoferrato on a section of the Justinian Code:
Sacrarum occiderant immensa uolumina legum,
Proh scelus! et uanos damnabat menda labores,
Tantus in ora hominum calamosque influxerat error.
Nullus erat tantam auderet qui uincere molem,
Et dubium nullus posset qui nauibus equor
Scindere foelici cursu; nulli hec uia uiuo
Insuetumne patebat iter; mortalia nondum.
Ingenia aptarant scribendis legibus era.
Ergo noua est primus celebrandus laude Ioannes