Terminat sed diuus presul ex Werdemberg altus.
Cum paulo secundo papa, imperante fridrico.
Deo Gratias.
The parts of grammar and the proper meanings of vocables you will truly find in this codex. If you also ask his name who printed the text in the book, you will quickly discover it by the capital letters. Hence you will be able for certain to know openly his surname. He is called Zainer of Reutling, in truth a most learned master of the present art. To reveal the name of the book, as it is taken from various authors and poets it is called Catholicon, and it is said to have been compiled by the John whose place-name is given by Janua with Ensis joined to it. The last day of April completed the work, while fourteen hundred, to which you must add sixty-nine, years are running since the Creator was born into the world. It is finished in the town of the Wendels (Augusta Vindelicorum=Augsburg), where resided he who gave the book its prologue, Schowenberg, called Cardineus, a distinguished moderator; and it is finished by a divine president who comes from Werdenberg, Paul II being pope and Frederick emperor. Thanks be to God.
Not every one could be expected, even at a time when interest in the new art must have been very keen, to identify the printer of a book from the type or initials used in it; and, as has already been noted, the whole reason for the existence of printers’ colophons was to identify the master-craftsman with any book of which he was proud, and so to advertise his firm. To make this advertisement more conspicuous many printers add their device at the end of the colophon, and five or six of them call special attention to this in their colophons, Peter Schoeffer leading the way in this, as already noted. Suis consignando scutis and cujus arma signantur are the phrases Schoeffer used (see Hain, 7885, 7999, 8006), and Wenssler of Basel, who was often on the lookout to follow Schoeffer’s leads, followed him also in this. The elaborate praise of his own work, which we find in his 1477 edition of the Sixth Book of the Decretals by Boniface VIII, is of a piece with this desire to hall-mark it as his own by affixing his device:
Boniface VIII. Decretals. Basel: M. Wenssler, 1477.
Pressos sepe vides lector studiose libellos
Quos etiam gaudes connumerare tuis.