As to boasting, there is more than enough of it to be found wherever we turn; but it will not be amiss to collect some instances of the special vaunts of the prototypographers,—the men who claimed to have been the first to practise their craft in any particular town,—as these are sometimes of importance in the history of printing. Thus, in the “Lectura super Institutionum libros quatuor” of Angelus de Gambilionibus de Aretio, printed by Joannes de Sidriano of Milan, we have a most precise statement of the day on which the first printed book was finished at Pavia:
Explicit prima pars huius operis revisa per me Angelum de Gambilionibus de Aretio die xvi octobris ferrarie. 1448. Fuit hoc opus impressum Papie per Ioannem de Sidriano Medioanensem [sic] huius artis primum artificem qui in urbe ticicensi [sic] huiusmodi notas impresserit et istud pro primo opere expleuit die xxx mensis octobris 1473.
Here ends the first part of this work revised by me, Angelus de Gambilionibus of Arezzo, 16th October, 1448, at Ferrara. This work was printed at Pavia by Joannes de Sidriano of Milan, the first practiser of this art who printed books of this kind in the city once called Ticinum, and who finished this as his first work on the 30th October, 1473.
Equally precise is Bartolommeo de Cividale in the short colophon he adds to his edition of Petrarch’s Trionfi, the first book printed at Lucca:
Impressus Lucae liber est hic: primus ubi artem
De Civitali Bartholomeus init.
Anno mcccclxxvii die xii Maii.
This book was printed at Lucca, where Bartolommeo de Cividale first inaugurated the art, on May 12, 1477.
In the “Manuale” or “Liber de salute siue de Aspiratione Animae ad Deum” of S. Augustine, printed at Treviso in 1471, we find Gerard de Lisa boasting, with more poetry, but less precision:
Gloria debetur Girardo maxima lixae,