This gift French Conrad brought unto our age;
His wit and skilful hand achieved the task.
Meissen’s good, faithful bishop blessed the page:
Of book or author need none further ask.
From Hain 10425 we learn that a Machasor, or Compendium of Prayers, for the use of the Italian synagogues was begun at Soncino in September, 1485, and finished at Casal Maggiore in August, 1486; but to what this change of scene was due the colophon does not say. One would have thought that in the fifteenth century war as well as pestilence must often have interrupted the printer at his work; and indeed the sack of Mainz in 1462 was a very notable event in the history of printing. Yet the only two references to war I can remember in contemporary colophons hardly view it as an interruption—the first Paris printers (Gering, Krantz, and Friburger), indeed, tried to use it as an advertisement for their Sallust, where the verses at the end run:
Nunc parat arma uirosque simul rex maximus orbis,
Hostibus antiquis exitium minitans.
Nunc igitur bello studeas gens Pariseorum,
Cui Martis quondam gloria magna fuit.
Exemplo tibi sint nunc fortia facta uirorum,