Ioh. Faber. Breuiarium super codice. Louvain: John of Westphalia, c. 1475.
So, in 1475, Sensenschmidt and Frisner at Nuremberg issued their Latin Bible “suis signis annotatis”; and at Cologne, in 1476, Conrad Winters ends an edition of the “Fasciculus Temporum”: “Impressum per me Conradum de Hoemberch meoque signeto signatum” (printed by me, Conrad de Hoemberch, and signed with my signet); and in the same year we find Veldener at Louvain using nearly the same phrase (proprio signeto signata) in his edition of the “Fasciculus Temporum.”[7] As an amusing variation on this we have the custom adopted by John and Conrad of Westphalia, in some of the books they printed at Louvain, of placing their own portraits after their colophons and referring to them as their “solitum signum.” Thus in an edition of Laet’s “Pronosticationes euentuum futurorum anni lxxvi” John of Westphalia writes in this very interesting fashion:
Hec ego Ioannes de Paderborne in Westfalia, florentissima in uniuersitate Louaniensi residens, ut in manus uenerunt imprimere curaui: nonnullorum egregiorum uirorum desideriis obsecutus, qui prenominatum pronosticantem futura uere, inculto quamuis stilo, compluribus annis prenunciasse ferunt. Non reuera quo utilitatem magnam ipse consequerer (utilius enim opus eam ob rem suspendi) sed quo simul plurimorum comodis ac uoluptati pariter inseruiens, stilum meum nouum, quo posthac maiori et minori in uolumine uti propono, signi mei testimonio curiosis ac bonarum rerum studiosis palam facerem.
These things have I, John of Paderborn in Westphalia, residing in the most flourishing University of Louvain, caused to be printed as they came to hand, following the desires of some noble gentlemen who say that the aforesaid prognosticator has in many years truly foretold future things, though in an uncultivated style. Of a truth my object was not to obtain any great advantage for myself (for I held over, on account of this, a more profitable work), but that, while at the same time serving alike the convenience and pleasure of many, I might make publicly known to the curious and connoisseurs my new style which hereafter, both in greater and smaller size, I propose to use as a witness of my sign.
Laet’s Prognostications were the Moore’s Almanacs of the fifteenth century, and by putting his new device (which he used again about the same time in the “Breviarium super codice” of Iohannes Faber) on such a publication John of Westphalia secured a wide advertisement.
The arts of advertisement must assuredly have been needed by the early printers when they came as strangers and aliens to a new town and began issuing books at their own risk. Even with the help of Latin as a universal language, and with the guidance of native patrons and scholars, pushing their wares must have been a difficult matter. Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome tried to make their names known, and to express at the same time their obligations to their patron, by a set of verses which recur frequently in their books:
S. Cyprian. Epistulae. Rome: Sweynheym and Pannartz, 1471 (and in many other of their books).