Blockbooks,Woodcut and Metalcut
Single Sheets
N IGE L F. PA LME R
BI N DI NG DES CRIP T IONS BY A N DREW HON EY

Introduction1
It was in the years around1700 that attention ¢rst focused on the Bodleian’s small collection of blockbooks, the ‘small thin books in folio’, as they were called by the antiquaries Humfrey Wanley(1672^1726) and Thomas Hearne (1678^1735), in which text and pictures were printed from woodblocks on one side of the paper and bound up in codex form. One, a dramatically coloured
Apocalypse (BB-2) once owned by a leading o⁄cial at the Heidelberg court under the Elector
Palatine Frederick the Victorious (1451^1476), came to England with the opportunistic purchases
made by Archbishop Laud in Germany, pro¢ting from the terrible catastrophe of the Thirty Years
War, and was received by the Library in 1639. Two others, a Biblia pauperum (BB-6) and the lesswell-known Canticum canticorum (BB-7) with its sensitive depictions of the Song of Songs known
otherwise only as wall paintings in a Cistercian nunnery on the Vistula, had come to the Library in
1677 with the collections of the distinguished antiquarian and philologist Franciscus Junius(1589^1677), which contained both manuscripts and printed books. Although we have no speci¢crecords, Junius cannot have been unaware of the signi¢cance such items had acquired in the wakeof the seventeenth-century controversy about the invention of printing in Haarlem or Mainz.2 The
Netherlandish blockbooks were at that time considered to be important evidence that the new technology had its origin in the workshop of Laurentius Coster of Haarlem. Both Wanley and Hearne
engaged in correspondence with that notable collector and disseminator of fragments John
Bagford (1650^1716), who had himself inspected the blockbooks kept at Haarlem, mentioning the
Bodleian blockbooks in the context of their discussion of early printing history. These were early
forays into the ¢eld of material bibliography, in which the blockbooks stood as witnesses for thehistory of printing ink, the use of colour in early printing, and the practice of pasting in the processof assembling the codex. Hearne included a fragment of the Biblia pauperum (BB-5) given to him by
Bagford as a specimen in his diaries.
The other blockbooks in the Bodleian are later acquisitions. Two came to the Library with thetestamentary bequest of Francis Douce (1757^1834), and had been acquired by him at the salesof the collections of signi¢cant private collectors, George Hibbert (1757^1837) and Sir Mark
Masterman Sykes (1771^1823). To these may be added Douce’s copy of the Speculum humanae
salvationis which previously belonged to Paul Girardot de Prefond (À after c.1800) and other notable
1

The author has incurred a debt of gratitude to a host of friends, colleagues, librarians, curators, and correspondents ^more than can be adequately expressed in an introduction.Within the Library Martin Kau¡mann has always been available,in his capacity as both art historian and manuscript librarian, to give advice on a host of individual issues, just as Steven
Tomlinson has been of special assistance in seeking out material from Library Records. A special debt is due to Sabine
Griese, formerly of Mu«nster but currently at the University of Zurich, for making available her draft descriptions of woodcut
and metalcut single sheets containing text, which is shortly to be published in a comprehensive repertorium.
2
L. and W. Hellinga,‘Die Coster-Frage’, in Der gegenwa« rtige Stand der Gutenberg-Forschung, ed. H.Widman, Bibliothek
des Buchwesens, 1 (Stuttgart, 1972), 232^42.

1

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block b o oks, wo odcut an d m etalcut si ngle sh e ets

French collectors and which is partly printed as a blockbook and partly with movable type, a work
which had played a major part in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century discussion of the inventionof printing;3 in the catalogue it is treated as an incunable (S-268). Two leaves from a xylographic
Donatus (BB-8) were purchased as part of a collection of typographic Donatuses which had been
put together by the German collector Georg Franz Burkhard KloÞ (1787^1854) at the sale of thebooks of Samuel Butler (1774^1839) in 1841. The only complete West European blockbook ever purchased as a single item by the Bodleian is the Apocalypse edition V (BB-3), which the Libraryacquired as a duplicate from the Imperial Library inVienna in 1851/3.
These items, although a small collection by comparison with the much more numerous holdingsof blockbooks in London, Munich, Paris, and New York, are of exceptional importance for our
understanding of early woodcut printing and its function. The Laudian Apocalypse (BB-2) is one ofthe very few surviving blockbooks whose early ownership is attested, and in which, despite the seventeenth-century rebinding, the original assembly of woodcuts and manuscript text, which may havebeen so planned by the printer, is preserved.The Bodleian copy of Apocalypse editionV (BB-3) documents a unique response to the problem of designing a book in which the paper is printed on one side
only, as was generally required by the blockbook printing technique. It belongs to an issue, of which
three copies are preserved, designed to be assembled with blank rectos and printed versos. That
blockbook printing could serve purposes other than providing multiple copies of an illustrated text
in book form, in imitation of the manuscript codex, is apparent from the Bodleian Biblia pauperum
edition III (BB-4), which appears to have been ¢rst used as a set of posters, most likely nailed andpasted to a wooden support, before it came to be bound up as a book. The Bodleian blockbooks
also provide new evidence relating to the workshops in which these items were produced. That
Apocalypse edition I/II is printed on a paper stock also attested in the ¢rst edition of the Dutch
Speculum humanae salvationis in The Hague suggests a workshop association with Netherlandish
prototypography which has hitherto not been documented. The Canticum canticorum edition II(BB-7) and Biblia pauperum edition XI (BB-6) provide evidence that there was a workshop thatheld the blocks for a number of blockbooks, and that they were not only marketed as single items
but also as ‘Sammelba«nde’.
In addition to the eight (or nine) medieval blockbooks, two of which are fragments, the Librarypossesses at least ¢ve blockbooks dating from after 1500. They form part of the stock of post-1500
printed books and on these grounds are excluded from the catalogue:
Breton almanac.4 [Conquet: G. Brouscon, c.1550]. Parchment. 110 ¿ 76 mm (printed
area 88 ¿ 65 mm). 11 leaves. Collation: [1^22 32 wants 4]. Printed on both sides of theparchment in a press. Coloured in red, green, and purple. Portolan charts of the coastline of France, Brittany, Flanders, England, and Ireland, wind charts, tables, and acalendar with pictures of the saints. Inscriptions in French and Breton. The name ofthe designer and/or printer is indicated by painted letters at the centre of the windcharts: ‘G’,‘B’,‘R’,‘O’,‘S’,‘C’,‘O’,‘N’ (fols 5 r ^8v) and the monogram ‘GB’on fol. 4v, withhis printer’s mark on fol. 1v. Shelfmark: Ashmole 1352.
A collection of woodcuts depicting sites in the Holy Land.5 [Italy, sixteenth century].
Paper. 155 ¿ 214 mm (woodcut on fol. 1v : 90 ¿ 142 mm). 154 leaves. Collation: [1^35 4 43Meerman I 122; Heinecken, Ide¤e, 443; Schreiber, Manuel, IV 117.
The Bodleian copy corresponds exactly to the description of that at Chantilly, in the collection of the Duc d’Aumale, by
J. P. Berjeau, Catalogue illustre¤ des livres xylographiques (London, 1865), 114^16. See also Dutuit I 293^7; E. Ernault,‘Noms
bretons des points de l’espace’, Revue celtique, 12 (1891), 413^19; G. Marcel,‘Sur un Almanach xylographique a' l’usage desmarins bretons’, Revue de ge¤ographie, 47 (1900), 267^78; Schreiber, Manuel, IV 415^17.
5
Probably for one of the many illustrated editions of the Viaggio da Venezia alla santa Gerusalemme e al monte Sinai(Bologna: Justinianus de Ruberia, 6 Mar.1500: C 5965 = 4576; Sander 4998; BMC VI 850), which was reprinted throughout
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and later attributed to Noe« Bianchi OFM; see R. Ro«hricht, Bibliotheca geographica
Palestinae. Chronologisches Verzeichnis der von 333 bis 1878 verfaÞten Literatur u«ber das Heilige Land mit dem Versuch einer
Kartographie. Preface by D. H. K. Amiran. Augmented edition (Jerusalem, 1963), 158^60; Essling 1982^9 (Venetianeditions).
4

block b o oks, wo odcut an d m etalcut si ngle sh e ets

3(wants 2 leaves) 5^145 15^16 4 ]. Printed on one side of the paper in a press. Handwritten
inscriptions in Italian. Shelfmark: Douce Prints f.1.
Opera nova contemplativa.6 Copy 1.Venice: Zoan (Juan) AndreaVavassori, [ c.1530/1].
Paper.153 ¿ 100 mm (printed area135 ¿ 79 mm). 52 of originally 64 leaves (wants B1^3,
B6^8, H1^3, H6^8). Collation of a perfect copy: A ^ G8 H8 (H8 blank). Printed on bothsides of the paper in a press. Issue 2 or 3, as de¢ned by Schreiber. Uncoloured.
Shelfmark: Broxb. 23.2.
Opera nova contemplativa. Copy 2.Venice: Zoan (Juan) AndreaVavassori, [ c.1530/1].
Paper. 153 ¿ 95 mm (printed area 135 ¿ 79 mm). 63 of originally 64 leaves (wants H 8).
Issue 2. Uncoloured. Shelfmark: Douce B 148.
Russian picture calendar.7 [Kiev: Monastery of the Caves, c.1626^9]. Paper. 400 ¿320 mm (printed area 374 ¿ 303 mm). 12 full sheets. Printed on one side of the paper
in a press. The leaves are dated variously 1626, 1628, and 1629. Coloured in green, red,
yellow, and purple. Pasted to support leaves and made up into an album. Purchased in
1679 from a donation by Edward Reynolds, D.D., Archdeacon of Norwich. Former
Bodleian shelfmarks: Arch. C. 43; Arch. A.V. 103. Shelfmark: Arch. B b.4.
The two calendars, despite their di¡erent size and format, contain elements that are directly comparable to an English xylographic almanac in the Douce collection dating from c.1522/3. This item,
which consists of a single strip of parchment designed to be folded into a small rectangular pocketbook, can be classi¢ed either as a (post-1500) single-sheet blockbook, or as a woodcut single sheet.
Here it is included in the catalogue of woodcut and metalcut single sheets as XYL-2. The woodcutsof the Holy Land, not previously recorded as a blockbook, would appear to be printed from a set ofblocks intended for use in an unidenti¢ed typographic edition of a guidebook to the Holy Land, andare printed on one side of the paper on bifolia assembled in quires, so that in the ¢rst halfof each quire
the printed pages are versos and in the second half rectos. In addition to the post-1500 blockbooks
printed in relief from wood blocks it must be expected that a collection the size of the Bodleian will
possess further ‘eccentric’ items similar to the blockbooks, even though they vary in their method of
production and codicological design. One item which deserves mention here is a Russian ‘lubok’or
chap-book, in which text and pictures are combined on the page and printed on one side of the paper
from engraved metal plates:
Shemyakin sud.8 [Russia, c.1747]. Paper. 185 ¿ 118 mm (printed area 151 ¿ 92 mm).
Bound as 12 single sheets with horizontal chain-lines, the printed pages as rectos,
with interleaving. Intaglio prints from engraved copper plates, printed on one side of
the paper in a press. Uncoloured. Formerly owned by Fedor Vasil’evich Karzhavin(1745^1812). Bequeathed by Francis Douce (1757^1834). Old shelfmark: Douce Prints
145. Shelfmark: Douce Prints e.7.
Borderline cases such as these and the typographic/xylographic Speculum humanae salvationis
mentioned above serve as a reminder that the categories into which manuscripts, incunabula, blockbooks, post-1500 printed books, drawings, painted single sheets, woodcut single sheets, metalcut single sheets, engravings, and sets of single sheets (such as the Sto«ger-Passion XYL-1 and the Russian
picture calendar) are conventionally divided, on the basis of handbooks such as Meerman,
Heinecken, Proctor, Schreiber, and Lehrs, as well as the traditional categories used by the Bodleian6
Schreiber, Manuel, IV 105^13; Essling I 201^11 no. 206; D.V. Reidy,‘Du«rer’s Kleine Passion and aVenetian Block Book’,
in The German Book 1450^1750. Studies Presented to David L. Paisey in his Retirement, ed. J. L. Flood and W. A. Kelly(London, 1995), 81^93.
7
J. D. A. Barnicot and J. S. G. Simmons,‘Some Unrecorded Early-printed Slavonic Books in English Libraries’, Oxford
Slavonic Papers, 2 (1951), 98^118, at 112^13 no. 16. See also: Macray 429; R. Cleminson and others, Cyrillic Books Printed
before 1701 in British and Irish Collections. AUnion Catalogue (London, 2000), 79 no. 76.
8
J. S. G. Simmons, ‘Shemyakin sud: the Karzhavin-Douce lubok in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’, Oxford Slavonic
Papers, n.s. 17 (1984), 57^61, pls 1^13.

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block b o oks, wo odcut an d m etalcut si ngle sh e ets

Library and the Ashmolean Museum to structure their collections and inform their collection policy,
may obscure connections that are essential to a proper understanding of this material.
Whereas the ¢rst part of the present catalogue describes the blockbooks which form part of the
Bodleian’s collection of ¢fteenth-century printed books, with a sharp divide at 1501, the second partis devoted to the early woodcut and metalcut single sheets. For this part of the catalogue a less rigorous approach has been adopted with respect to date, partly in recognition of the fact that certain
impressions may be signi¢cantly later than the printing blocks (see the Rom weg map XYL-20),
partly because of the subjective element involved in dating certain items before or after 1500 on stylistic grounds alone, but above all to avoid leaving a small number of sixteenth-century printed sheets
unrecorded among the vast holdings of the collection of printed books. One group of woodcuts
whose presence might not be expected in a catalogue devoted primarily to the ¢fteenth century is
the collection of extremely rare sixteenth-century Italian woodcut book covers that came to the
Bodleian from the Broxbourne Library (XYL-3, XYL-4, XYL-6, XYL-23).Whereas there do notappear to be any single-sheet engravings dating from the ¢fteenth century in the Bodleian Library,such material usually having been passed to the Ashmolean Museum, the Library does possess laterengravings, such as the large collection of sixteenth-century Netherlandish prints from John Selden’s
library (B 4.6 Th. Seld., see under BB-6) and several albums in the Douce Prints collection. These
items lie beyond the scope of the present catalogue.
Woodcut leaves or cuttings taken from typographic books, in which they served as illustrations,are excluded from the catalogue, but it should be noted that the original context of the items catalogued as XYL-6 (an Assumption of the Virgin also known from an Italian incunable), XYL-26(also attested on a typographic broadside), and XYL-28, which consists of printed cuttings used in
the border decoration of a manuscript, cannot be established with absolute certainty.The same holds
for XYL-1, which consists of two leaves with pictures on both sides of the paper from the so-calledSto«ger-Passion, a cycle of German metalcuts which was as a rule printed on bifolia and made up as acodex together with a handwritten or typographic text; the Bodleian leaves most likely derive froman Italian typographic edition, the earliest printed Italian book with illustrations and otherwise
known only from fragments in New Orleans, but as this context in a metalcut-typographic assemblyis not preserved, it seems better to treat the item as a pair of single sheets rather than as a fragment of ahypothetical incunable edition. In the codicological context in which they were preserved until thelate nineteenth century, the metalcuts served as devotional images pasted inside the boards of a
Greek book of hours printed inVenice.
Impressions from the same blocks could be put to quite di¡erent uses. It is also striking just how
often the woodcuts and metalcuts, though preserved in the context of a ¢fteenth- or sixteenthcentury (printed or manuscript) codex, show signs of having been reused and thus given a new function. As a rule it was only when woodcuts and metalcuts which had originally served as mementoes,
gifts, place markers, devotional images, wall posters, or collector’s items were pasted or sewn into abook that they had any signi¢cant chance of survival, and it is predominantly in this context that thematerial catalogued here has come down to us.The catalogue must therefore pay special attention to
the codicological context, which in a collection such as that of the Bodleian, where most of the rare
items have passed through the hands of book collectors rather than art collectors, is unusually wellpreserved. But it is also necessary to assemble whatever clues may still exist as to the original function of the single sheets.
Most of the single sheets catalogued here have taken their place in the university library (theBodleian), rather than in the university museum (the Ashmolean), by virtue of their survival pasted
or sewn into a manuscript or printed book. The ten single sheets (or sets of single sheets preserved
within a single volume) that entered the Library before the arrival of the Douce collection in1834 are
all individual items.Their host volumes either entered the Library as part of a named collection, such
as Marshall (XYL-36), Barlow (XYL-14), Rawlinson (XYL-13), Gough Missals (XYL-15, a printedbook), and Canonici (XYL-18), or they were incorporated c.1760 into the newly created MSS. Bodl.
sequence (XYL-11, XYL-12, XYL-24, XYL-27, XYL-35). XYL-11and XYL-36 have in more recent
times been extracted from the context in which they were preserved and given Arch. shelfmarks.
Seven of the single sheets came to the Bodleian with the bequest of the library of Francis Douce inblock b o oks, wo odcut an d m etalcut si ngle sh e ets

51834: XYL-2, XYL-7, XYL-9, XYL-21, XYL-22, XYL-31, XYL-32. Douce had a special interest invisual material, and in the contribution which the study of such items could make to cultural history,
and these leaves form just a tiny part of a complex ensemble of medieval and early modern illustrated
manuscripts, printed books, collections of leaves, albums, individual drawings, prints, and engravings, which are now divided between the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum. Single
sheets in the Douce collection, which were originally kept in the Bodleian under the shelfmark
Douce Prints, were passed over to the Ashmolean Museum in1863. Some of the loose prints, including incunable cuttings and a good deal of later material (but no items relevant to the present catalogue), were returned by the Ashmolean to the Bodleian in 1915, and transferred back again in
2003, leaving only the numerous published collections of prints and some albums at the shelfmark
Douce Prints in the Bodleian. During the middle years of the nineteenth century further single
sheets were acquired. Only one, the woodcut Turris sapientiae attributed to Johannes Metensis(XYL-25), was acquired as a separate item, and subsequently given an entry in the catalogue of
printed books and by Proctor. The others all came to the Library pasted into incunables: XYL-1,
XYL-25, XYL-29, XYL-34 copies 2^3. The two leaves from the Sto«ger-Passion (XYL-1) were
removed from the pastedowns of their host volume and placed between glass to facilitate their use
as display items in the exhibition cases in the Arts End of Duke Humfrey’s Library. Several individual items, XYL-8, XYL-10, and XYL-34 copy1, were purchased during the librarianship of E.W. B.
Nicholson, Bodley’s Librarian from 1882 to 1912, who had a particular interest in this material andtook upon himself the task of preparing the ¢rst, handwritten catalogue of the Bodleian woodcuts
and metalcuts, entitled ‘Catalogue of Early Prints in the Bodleian Library’, in the years 1887^96.9 A
very signi¢cant addition to the range of woodcut single leaves was made when the Broxbourne collection, containing eight such items, was presented to the Library by John Ehrman, the son of thecollector Albert Ehrman (1890^1969), in 1978: XYL-3^ XYL-6, XYL-20, XYL-23, XYL-26,
XYL-34 copy 4.
The cataloguing of blockbooks and early prints has involved some modi¢cation of the method
used in presenting descriptions of typographic books in the incunable catalogue. Most of the di¡erences in approach, or in the citation of references, can be left to speak for themselves, but a few need
to be highlighted here. First, references to handbooks and to the volumes of illustrations, which areessential in working with this kind of material. The main points of reference for the identi¢cation ofwoodcuts and metalcuts are the handbooks published by Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber (Manuel I ^ III,
1891^3, and Handbuch I ^ VIII, 1926^30), which both use the same sequence of numbers (abbreviated as ‘Schr.’ when used to identify an individual item, as distinct from pointing to Schreiber’s
description of that item, for which volume and page numbers are used).Wherever possible a description will begin with a Schr. number. Schreiber’s numbers determine the sequence of reproductions in
Richard S. Field’sThe Illustrated Bartsch, vols 162^5 (Supplement), which provides a convenient andcomprehensive set of plates for Schr.1^1383. Further illustrations of single leaves in the Bodleian arecollected in the volumes published by Campbell Dodgson (‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, 1928/9,
and English Woodcuts, 1936). Dodgson’s catalogue of woodcuts in the Ashmolean Museum of 1929
contains descriptions of ¢fteenth-century woodcuts in the Bodleian, but not illustrations. For theblockbooks the principal point of reference is Schreiber’s Manuel, vol. IVof 1902 (reprinted as vol.
XI of the Handbuch, 1969), whose numbering of the editions is adopted here. It should be noted,
however, that the sequence of roman numerals used by Schreiber does not in all cases correspondto the chronological sequence in which modern scholarship would place the editions.
A fundamental principle of the method of analysis adopted for the woodcuts and blockbooks isthe comparison of each item with all other extant impressions or copies, insofar as this proved practical, especially with regard to the paper stocks employed, the state of the blocks, colouring, anythingwhich might point to date or provenance, and with the blockbooks the method of assembly. In referring to the names of libraries the system of the ISTC has been adopted; a convenient statement of theabbreviations used for American libraries can be found in Go¡.
9

Library Records d. 1888.The entries were originally written on slips, which were mounted and laid down in the present
volume in 1916.

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block b o oks, wo odcut an d m etalcut si ngle sh e ets

With printed inscriptions care has been taken to indicate, by round brackets, where abbreviations
are used in the original, as di¡erences in the presentation of text are often an important guide to distinguishing between di¡erent blocks.Where manuscript inscriptions are reported the abbreviations
are expanded silently, in accordance with the practice adopted in the incunable catalogue.
The assessment of watermark and paper evidence is fundamental to the study of metalcuts andxylographic printing, and every e¡ort has been made to identify the watermarks accurately wherever
they are visible, sometimes with surprising results.10 In addition to information about watermarks
and, where appropriate, identi¢cation of paper formats, with the single sheets an indication has
always been given as to whether the chain-lines run vertically or horizontally.With xylographic printing the alignment of the paper is not directly related to imposition, as it is in typographic books, but itshould be borne in mind that vertical chain-lines correspond to folio and octavo, whereas horizontal
chain-lines correspond to quarto in a typographic book.
The date given for an item refers always to the cutting of the block or blocks, not to the date of theimpression, which can be very much later (e.g. BB-1 and XYL-20). Indications of the assumed placeor country of origin are given in simpli¢ed form and provided with a question mark only where there
are special grounds for questioning the most commonly cited localization.The truth is, however, thatstatements about the place of origin of xylographic materials are even more tenuous than statements
about date, and all such statements should be treated with extreme caution where no particular arguments are cited.What was pointed out by Wytze and Lotte Hellinga with respect to Netherlandish
prototypography, that it is an essential characteristic of such printing that it cannot be considered
to have existed in one place, holds equally for early xylographic and metalcut printing.11
In the course of the project it became increasingly clear that the blockbooks, because of their unusual codicological structure, posed particular problems for bookbinders, ancient and modern, and it
became necessary to seek expert help in handling this aspect of the material. I am particularly grateful to Andrew Honey of the Bodleian Library for his willingness to join forces with me, at a relatively
late stage, to assist in analysing all the evidence that might shed light on early bindings, and for providing precise technical descriptions of the present bindings in which the blockbooks, metalcuts, andwoodcuts are housed. In these descriptions the term ‘inboard binding’, coined by Nicholas
Pickwoad, is used to denote a binding structure where the boards are attached to the textblock before
the volume is covered.

10

The Incunable Cataloguing Project provided beta-radiographs of most of the watermarks in the Bodleian blockbooks.
Thanks are also due to a number of individual scholars, in particular to Paul Needham in Princeton and to Peter Ru« ckert, thecustodian of the Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, who repeatedly provided information
relating to paper.
11
HPT I 8.

Blockbooks
signatures and the excision ^ all other copies). As will be shown
below, the paper stocks used for the Bodleian copy are late, andthe deterioration of the blocks shows that this copy must havebeen printed at a later date than the complete, or near complete,
50-leaf copies in Munich UB and New York, e¡ectively ruling out
the hypothesis that the Bodleian copy represents an earlier state.
It is not evident for what reason the two anomalous plates were
rejected or discarded in this copy. Pls (3) and (4) are also lacking
in edition IV, and in its derivatives Vand VI, which must therefore
most likely have been based on an early state of edition I/II.
Whereas the order of the 25 bifolia that make up edition I/II
state II is determined by the alphabetical signatures, there is considerable variation in the arrangement of facing pages in the different extant copies. These di¡erences could be due to uncertainty
about the sequence of the facing plates on the part of the printers,
as the individual plates appear to have been printed from separate
blocks (Kristeller, Apokalypse, 5; Donati ‘Libri xilogra¢ci’,
213^14), or to transposition of the printed pages in individual
copies of the blockbook in more recent times. There are major disruptions to the biblical sequence of the revelations in all copies ofthis edition, most notably in the ordering of the seven seals (pls
8(8)^7(11)), and in the sequences 21(20)^19(23)(Apo 11,15^12,7)
and 42(37)^27(43)(Apo 18,1^20,9, 14,6^10). For facsimiles of edition I/II, see Kristeller, Apokalypse; Mu«ller and Lengenfelder,¢che 5 (both reproducing the Munich UB copy of state II). For atranscription of the text, see Kristeller, Apokalypse, 27^55. For aconcordance of signatures and the numbering systems used by
Schreiber and Kristeller, see Mu«ller and Lengenfelder 52.

BB-1 Apocalypse[Edition I/II state II]. Incipit: ‘Conuersi ab ydolis p(er) predicatione(m) b(ea)ti joha(n)nis drusiana (et) ceteri’. A cycle of 96 (or92) pictures illustrating the Apocalypse, arranged in two registers
on 50 (or 48) leaves, except for the full-page representations on pls
3(5)^5(7) and 32(32)^33(33) (Schreiber’s counting), and derivingfrom the tradition of the English illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts. The blockbook can be associated with a group of manuscripts known as the ‘picture-book’ Apocalypses, in which therevelations granted to St John the Evangelist on Patmos areframed by scenes portraying his persecution, banishment, miracles, last mass, and death (pls 1(1)^2(2), (3)^(4), 47(49)^48(50)),
and which also contain, as an interpolation, a series of scenes
from the life of Antichrist (pls 15(17)(b)^17(19)). These manuscripts, like the blockbook editions, lack the continuous text andcommentary, but have short blocks of Latin text incorporated
into the pictures, often inscribed on banderoles or charters.
The inscriptions are mostly biblical, or derived from the
Berengaudus commentary (with a few additions from the later
commentary tradition). The most important ‘picture-book’manuscripts are Brussels BR, Ms. IV. 834 (model sheet); London
BL, Add. MS. 19896 (copied from blockbook edition I/II); Add.
MS. 38121; London Wellcome Institute, MS. 49; Manchester
JRL, MS. 19; Moscow SL, 4>. 1678 / Berlin Kupferstichkab, Inv.
1237 (cuttings); New York PML, M. 524; New York NYPL, Ms.
15; Oxford Bodley, MS. Auct. D. 4. 17. Schreiber distinguishes six
editions of the blockbook, of which I and II, being printed fromthe same blocks, are better described as two states of a single edition I/II (cf. Kristeller, Apokalypse, 6). State I was printed before
signatures were added to the blocks, and also lacks pls (3) and (4).
These two plates, whose content forms an essential part of thenarrative of St John’s banishment to Patmos, are anomalous inthat, although evidently the work of one of the three wood engravers thought to have been responsible for the original set of 48
plates (Kristeller’s ‘Meister III’, Apokalypse, 18^19), they repeat
the signature ‘a’ of pls 1(1)^2(2). It seems likely that they were
wanting in the manuscript model for edition I/II state I, andonly became available to the designers of the blockbook subsequently. The illustrations contained on these two plates are also
omitted in two Apocalypse manuscripts that are particularly
close to the blockbook tradition, Wellcome MS. 49 and NYPL
Ms. 15. Schreiber suggests that there could have been an intermediate state of 48 plates, with signatures, printed before the two
extra leaves were added, and draws attention to the Bodleian copy
as the only witness to state II that lacks these leaves. Purpus postulates four states of edition I/II: A (48 plates, without signatures^ no copies extant), B (the same, but with an excision in line 4 of
the text on plate 45(47) ^ Manchester copy), C (48 plates, withsignatures and the excision ^ Bodleian copy?), D (50 plates, withrefs. A. Firmin Didot, Des Apocalypses ¢gure¤es manuscrites etxylographiques: Deuxie'me appendice au Catalogue raisonne¤ desLivres de la Bibliothe'que (Paris, 1870); Dutuit I 101^54;
Schreiber, ‘Holztafeldrucke’; Schreiber, Manuel, IV 160^216;
Hind I 218^24; T. Musper, ‘Die Urausgabe der Apokalypse’, Diegraphischen Ku« nste, n.F. 2 (1937), 81^5; Musper, ‘Urausgaben’;Bing, ‘Apocalypse’; L. Donati, ‘Osservazioni sperimentali
sull’Apocalisse xilogra¢ca (I^II, III)’, Biblio¢lia, 58 (1956), 85^124; Donati, ‘Nota supplementare alle osservazioni
sull’Apocalisse xilogra¢ca (I^II, III)’, Gb Jb (1958), 47^8;
Musper, Urausgaben (facsimile); E. Fischer, ‘Johannes
Aabenbaring som blokbog’, Fund og forskning i det Kongelige
Biblioteks samlingar, 9 (1962), 9^37, 187^9; Donati,‘Libri xilogra¢ci’, 207^15, 230^4, 250^1; Donati, ‘L’Apocalissi’; L. vonWilckens, ‘Hinweise zu einigen fru«hen Einblattholzschnitten undzur Blockbuchapokalypse’, Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums (1978), 7^23; R. Emmerson and S. Lewis, ‘Census andBibliography of Medieval Manuscripts containing Apocalypse
Illustrations ca. 800^1500’, parts I, II and III, Traditio, 40 (1984),
337^79, 41 (1985), 367^409, 42 (1986), 443^72; Blockbu«cher
des Mittelalters, 396^9, 430^2; Purpus, ‘Blockbu« cher der7

8

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets
Apokalypse’; Purpus, ‘Die Vorla«ufer der Blockbu«cher der
Apokalypse’, in Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 99^118; S. Lewis,
Reading Images: Narrative Discourse and Reception in theThirteenth-Century Illuminated Apocalypse (Cambridge, 1995);
N. Morgan, ‘A Model Sheet of Apocalypse Drawings, theFifteenth-century Netherlandish and German Manuscript
Apocalypses, and the Early Block Books’, in New O¡erings,
Ancient Treasures. Studies in Medieval Art for George
Henderson, ed. P. Binski and W. Noel (Stroud, 2001), 389^414; J.
Hamburger, in Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at the New York Public Library (in press: Turnhout, 2005),
with a description of NYPL, Ms. 15.
[Netherlands or Germany, mid-1460s, impression c.1466^70].
Chancery folio.
A complete copy of edition I/II state II has 50 leaves, all withwoodcuts and xylographic text printed on one side of the paper.
Collation: [1^252]. Each plate appears to have been engraved on
an individual block, with the grain running vertically, and printed
in pairs. Pairs of signatures, consisting of the letters a, a(repeated), b^u, x^y, +, and ¿, have been added in the upper register on the facing pages of every bifolium. The Manchester JRL(Spencer) copy is the unique witness to state I. State II is known
from 2 complete copies, in Munich BSB and New York
PierpMorg. In addition there are 7 imperfect copies, including
the Bodleian copy (48 leaves) and those in Glasgow UL (32leaves), The Hague MMW (38 leaves), Munich UB (48 leaves,
two leaves double), Paris BnF (38 leaves), Louvre (42 leaves), and
St Petersburg NL (30 leaves); fragments in Dresden LB (2 leaves),
New Haven Beinecke (1 leaf), New York PML (10 leaves), Paris
BnF (2 single leaves from di¡erent copies). The dating and localization of the blockbook editions have been the subject of controversy. The extreme position postulated by Musper, who dated the
Apocalypse to c.1420, plus or minus a decade, and followed theNetherlandish scholarship of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in situating the early blockbook production in Haarlem,
has found no favour in more recent studies. Musper’s claim, on
stylistic grounds, that the editio princeps is edition III, rather
than I/II, has similarly found no acceptance. The Manchester
copy of state I of Apocalypse I/II is datable on watermark evidence to c.1450/2 (Stevenson 240^1, see Fischer, ‘Johannes
Aabenbaring’, plate p. 24; PiccP V 351^77 [1450^5] and one
further attestation in the Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard,
Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart Best. J 340, not included in theprinted volumes, apparently identical with PiccP V 373, on paper
used in Louvain in 1450 [ex informatione Peter Ru«ckert]). The
numerous copies of state II, however, document the reuse of theblocks more than ten years later, perhaps not before the mid1460s. The anchor watermark of the Paris BnF copy, which U.
Baurmeister dates to c.1462, is combined in the Bodleian copy
with the datable shield-of-Troyes watermark from c.1466 andbull’s head watermarks attested in the Netherlandish Speculum
humanae salvationis, weakening the case for an early date forstate II. Kristeller dates the blocks, on the basis of a comparison
with a woodcut Mass of St Gregory (Schr. 1462, Schreiber,
Handbuch, XI pl. 69) and a group of woodcuts now in Cologne(Schr. 602, 1790, and 1168, Schreiber, Handbuch, XI pl. 68), tothe period before the mid-century, and contemplates a dating ofc.1425 on the basis of the style of costume (Kristeller, Apokalypse,[bb -124). More recent scholarship has placed the woodcut style in the
1440s (Purpus, ‘Blockbu«cher der Apokalypse’, 94). There is no¢rm evidence to suggest that the blockbook Apocalypse emerged
signi¢cantly earlier than c.1450. The blocks and the early
Manchester copy are likely, on stylistic grounds as well as on
paper evidence, to be Netherlandish. The provenances of the surviving copies of state II, however, point to distribution, and thus
possibly production, in Germany. That the Bodleian copy, like all
but one of edition III, is uncoloured is a weak indicator that it
might be Netherlandish rather then German; Schreiber suggests
Cologne, Aachen, or Lie'ge as the likely places of production forthis edition. The use of a very precisely identi¢able paper stockthat was also available to the printer of the Dutch Speculum
humanae salvationis makes it very likely that this copy was
printed in the Netherlands, most likely in a centre such as
Louvain or Utrecht. The use of a common watermark in three different blockbooks, as documented below, indicates that the revival of edition I/II state II in the 1460s took place in a workshop
which was in a position to print and market the Apocalypse alongside examples of more recent blockbook production such as
Biblia pauperum edition III and Canticum canticorum edition I.
ills. Heinecken, Ide¤e, pl. 11; Sotheby I pls I (Manchester copy),
II^III (Bodleian copy); Schreiber, Manuel, VII pl. L (Munich
BSB copy); VIII pl. LXXVIII (Manchester copy); Bouchot II no.
186 pl. 105 (Paris BnF, Estampes Ea 5 re¤s. bo|“ te 13); Kristeller,
Apokalypse, pls VI and IX (Munich BSB copy); Sotheby’s catalogue, 18 July 1919 (Fairfax Murray sale), plate of lot 11 (NewYork copy); Hind I 219 ¢g. 92 (Manchester copy); Bing,‘Apocalypse’, pls 37(b), 38(b), 41(b, e) (Bodleian copy); Blum,
Primitifs, pls XLI^XLIV (Paris copy); Fischer, ‘Johannes
Aabenbaring’, 33 ¢g. 4 (Manchester copy); Donati,‘Libri xilogra¢ci’, pls 1^2, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22^3 (Paris BnF copy); Purpus,‘Blockbu«cher der Apokalypse’, 86 ill. VII.6 (Paris BnF copy);
Purpus, ‘Vorla«ufer’, 103^5 ills VIII.3^7, 107 ill. VIII.9, 113 ill.
VIII.15, 115^16 ills VIII.16^17 (Manchester copy); Baurmeister
160 ill. 6 (Paris copy); Palmer, ‘Biblical Blockbooks’, ill. 8(Manchester copy).
refs. Meerman I 234^9; Heinecken, Ide¤e, 358^62 (‘edition 3’);
Sotheby I 3^17 (‘edition 2’); Firmin Didot 46 (‘edition B’);
Dutuit I 125^8; Schreiber, Manuel, IV 163, 167^216; Hind I 222;
Purpus, ‘Blockbu«cher der Apokalypse’, 83^4; Stevenson 241^2;
CIBN I pp. iii^iv (AA-1); Mu«ller and Lengenfelder 50^4.
COPY

281 ¿ c.214 mm (woodcut on a1: 261 ¿ 202 mm). Watermarks:
Bull’s head with eyes, nostrils, single-contoured sta¡ and cross,twin watermarks; not listed in the printed edition of Piccard, cf.
PiccO VII 221^722, but identi¢ed by Stevenson in the Archives
de l’Aube at Bar-le-Duc (accounts for 1465^7, Stevenson 241) andidentical with the twin watermarks attested in the ¢rst Dutch-language edition of the Speculum humanae salvationis ([TheNetherlands: Prototypography, c.1471], The Hague MMW copy),
see WILC (http://watermark.kb.nl, last accessed 2 July 2004),
WM I 02414/60236^7 and WM I 02416. Shield of Troyes, type
Briquet 1045^7, this variant ¢rmly identi¢able in the
Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart Best.
J 340 (http://www.piccard-online.de, last accessed 26 May
2004) as no. 24440 (Kleve 1466), cf. the shield of Troyes recorded
alongside anchor watermarks for the St Petersburg copy of the
Canticum Canticorum edition II (Kroll, ‘Bruchstu« ck’, 168).

bb-1]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

Eleven distinct anchor marks (including at least two pairs oftwins), all surmounted by a Latin cross, including PiccAn types
II 339 (Xanten 1457), II 351^2 (Utrecht 1445^6), II 391(Rhineland 1464), II 412 (Upper Rhine 1467^8), II 811 (Louvain
1462), II 826 (Freiburg 1465), II 988^96 (Louvain 1460^3), cf.
Stevenson 241. The anchor on n2 is identical with that observedby U. Baurmeister in the Paris copy of Apocalypse edition I/II
state II (CIBN I, AA-1.1, pl. I no. 2; PiccAn II 811), also found in
the Berlin SB copy of Biblia pauperum edition II, Libri impr. rarifol. 135, fol. 35, which contains an added Low German(Westphalian) translation, and most likely the same as thatfound by von Ho«Þle in the Munich BSB and UB copies of
Apocalypse edition II and Canticum Canticorum edition I (F. vonHo«Þle, ‘Wasserzeichen xylographischer Werke der Kgl. Bayer.
Hof- und Staats- bibliothek’, Der Papier-Fabrikant, Fest- und
Auslandsheft 1910, 32^8, at 34 no. 4 (pl. I)); cf. WILC (http://
watermark.kb.nl, last accessed 2 July 2004),WM I 02795, attesting a very similar watermark in an edition of Ludovicus Pontanus,
Singularia iuris [The Netherlands: Prototypography, not after
1472?], ILC 1794. Stevenson notes anchors ‘apparently from thesame moulds’ in the Zurich ZB copy of Biblia pauperum edition
I. See Sotheby III pl. A, for reproductions from the Bodleiancopy. Taking all the evidence into account, Stevenson’s dating of
the paper stocks for this copy to c.1466 remains possible, but theassociation with early Netherlandish prototypography might
point to a later dating. Printed in greyish-brown ink on one sideof the paper by rubbing. The state of the blocks shows that this isa relatively late impression, as they show signs of wear, with somebroken borders; demonstrably later than the Munich UB copy,
and probably also later than the copies in New York and Paris;
cf. pls t2, u1, and u2. For the Paris copies see Baurmeister’s
remarks in CIBN I p. iii. This is one of only two copies of edition
I/II to have remained uncoloured, except for some yellow for the
beast, the thuribles, crowns, and angels’ wings on pls k1^l1; thedetail of the woodcut printing is much more clearly visible thanin the Munich UB copy on which the facsimiles are based.The versos, which show signs of once having been pasted together, areblank. Some leaves, most notably h1/2 and n1/2, have been closely
trimmed during the process of repair; the outer edges of n1/2 havebeen made good with added strips of paper. The order of theplates in this copy is, in Schreiber’s numbering: (1), (2), (5)^(16),(18), (17), (19), (20), (22), (21), (24), (23), (25), (26), (28), (27),(29)^(42), (44), (43); it is possible that in some cases the two halvesof a bifolium have been transposed in more recent times. The
sequence of bracketed numbers inscribed at the head of eachplate, partly cut away by the binder, indicates that previous to theearly nineteenth-century rebinding pls d 2 and e1 ((10) and (11)),which may be presumed to have been pasted together, werepositioned out of order after pl. c1 ((7)). Handwritten annotationin an early hand, indicating the biblical chapter numbers, on pls
e2, k1, n2, o2, and u2; on r2 the full text of Apo 16,21 is supplied byhand (‘et magna sicut . . . vehementer’).
This volume and an uncoloured copy of the editio princeps of theblockbook Biblia pauperum (edition IV), now in Washington LC,
Rosenwald Collection Incun. X. B 562, were at one time boundtogether, along with an as yet untraced Ars moriendi, as a‘Sammelband’. Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s report of 1814, basedon information provided by the dealer Alexander Horn ofRegensburg, who had broken the volume up and sold the threeparts as separate items, records an early binding with a tooled

9

inscription ‘stamped, at the extremity of the binding, towards theedge of the spine’:‘Hic Liber Relegatus fvit per Plebanum ^Ecclesie ^ Anno domini 142[8]’; see T. F. Dibdin, Bibliotheca
Spenceriana (London, 1814^15), I p. iv. The Apocalypse and the
Biblia pauperum are now housed in identical bindings, made forJohn Bellingham Inglis some time before1826; that they must previously have formed parts of a single volume is suggested by identical brown vertical lines on some of the blank versos. That the
Washington volume, which passed through the hands of Inglis,
Lord Vernon (1803^1866), Robert Stayner Holford (1808^1892),
and the Rosenbach Company of Philadelphia and New York,
before coming into the possession of Lessing J. Rosenwald(1891^1979), is identical with the book attested for AlexanderHorn, is ¢rst recorded as a fact by Schreiber, Manuel, IV 5.
Samuel Leigh Sotheby, who claims to have seen the Apocalypse
in the sale room before it was rebound for Inglis, comments thatthe book had a remarkable binding, thus providing additionalcon¢rmation for the identi¢cation of this item as part of theHorn ‘Sammelband’; Principia typographica, I 17.
refs. Sotheby I 4; Dutuit I 128; Pr 40; Schreiber, Manuel, IV 163;
Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 383, 398; Purpus, ‘Blockbu« cher der
Apokalypse’, 83; Stevenson 241; Douce Legacy, 41 no. 66;
Sheppard no. 1.
Binding: Early nineteenth-century blind-tooled inboard ‘spring
back’account-book binding for John Bellingham Inglis, probably
dating from about 1820. 291 ¿ 230 ¿ 17 mm. Brown tanned morocco over millboard. New ‘made’ endleaves of green surfacecoated paper and bu¡ wove paper were added to the textblockfor the current binding. The textblock is sewn on three wide
(19 mm) parchment tapes and the volume is covered over a laminated-paper ‘spring back’ hollow to give a wide opening. The
trimmed printed leaves have been guarded into bifolia by the nineteenth-century binder, except n1/2, x1/2, +1/2, and ¿1/2, which
remain conjoint. The earlier spinefold of +1/2 can be clearly seen
with possible evidence of earlier sewing holes. The edges of the
textblock were ploughed and coloured red, now faded, possibly
for the current binding. The fore-edges of +2 and ¿1 were nottrimmed for the current binding and retain traces of an earlier yellow colouring. The last printed leaf is lined with paper which predates the current binding and may be part of earlier endleaves. All
tooling is blind, executed with 1 roll, 3 ¢llets, 2 gouges, and 9 small
tools. Three of the small tools are rectangular and were used toform a decorative border reminiscent of a roll; a stylized £ower(32 ¿ 10.5 mm), the face of a cherub (24.5 ¿ 10 mm), and a tall£ower £anked on either side by four leaves (18 ¿ 10 mm). The
spine has the title ‘Apocalypsis’ gold-tooled in black-letter typereading from tail to head. The same black-letter type and title layout is used on the spines of three Inglis books now in the Bodleian
Library: Auct. 7Q 3.33, Auct. 2Q inf. 1.11, and Auct. O 4.22 (seeA-513(2), C-092, and S-017). Two further items were bound for
Inglis by the same binder: Auct. Q sup. 2.25 and Douce 46 (seeA-149 and G-339). Sotheby comments in Principia typographica,
I 17 that this copy still had its original binding before it was
rebound.
Provenance: Alexander Horn (£. 1762^1820). John Bellingham
Inglis (1780^1870); sale (9 June 1826), lot 1664. George Hibbert(1757^1837); sale (16 Mar. 1829), lot 410. Francis Douce (1757^
1834); armorial book-plate. Bequeathed in 1834. An added bifolium, at one time tipped to the upper £yleaf but now kept loose
with the book, in the handwriting of Francis Douce, contains a

10

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

brief description of ‘Blockbooks at the Bodleian’, referring to BB2, BB-6, and BB-7. Formerly exhibited in a glass case in the Arts
End of Duke Humfrey’s Library; see W. D. Macray, Annals of the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, A.D. 1598^A.D. 1867 (Oxford, 1868),
321; List of Books, Manuscripts, Portraits, etc. exhibited in the
Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford, 1881), 4; Macray (2nd edn)263^4 [1890].
shelfmark: Douce 249.

BB-2 Apocalypse[Edition IV state E]. Incipit: ‘Conu(er)si ab ydolis p(er) predicacione(m) b(ea)ti ioha(n)nis drusiana et ceteri: . . .’ Edition IV
represents the second group in the sequence of blockbook
Apocalypse editions. It contains a cycle of 92 pictures on 48
leaves, wanting the two extra plates added in state II of edition I/
II. The blocks were recut in a distinctive ‘German’ style on thebasis of a copy of edition I/II. Bing, whose hypotheses are developed by Purpus, argues that a number of iconographical details inedition IV result from the consultation of a picture-book
Apocalypse manuscript close to Wellcome MS. 49 as a secondary
source; cf. the important counterarguments by Donati,‘L’Apocalissi’, arguing that Wellcome MS. 49 was derived directlyfrom blockbook edition IV. The New York manuscript, executedby the same artist but unknown to Bing and Donati, also
corresponds very closely to the blockbook (Hamburger).
Notwithstanding these di⁄culties, there remain a number of distinctive iconographical details which can only be explained byconsultation of a picture-book manuscript; cf. the examples discussed by Donati in his review of Samek Ludovici, 99^109 with
¢gs 1^9. The order of the plates is corrected in this edition to
make it correspond more closely to the biblical text; concordancein Schreiber, Manuel, IV 167. For facsimiles of edition IV, see:
Apocalisse xilogra¢ca estense. Analisi di S. Samek Ludovici.
Testo latino nella edizione oxoniense di J. Wordsworth e H.
White. Traduzione e note di Cesare Angelini (Parma, 1969)(Modena copy); French trans. by J.-B. Bossuet and introduction
by Y. Hersant (Parma, 1969; Milan and Paris, 1983); Germantrans. (Parma and Geneva, 1974); Purpus, Farbmikro¢cheEdition (Mainz copy); Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 63^74(black-and-white reproduction of the Mainz copy). A transcription of the text is contained in the edition by Samek Ludovici
143^70; German edition, 94^188.
[Germany, c.1465, impression c.1470]. Chancery folio.
Interleaved German translation, handwritten.
48 leaves, all with woodcuts and xylographic text printed on one
side of the paper, signatures A^T, ^V,V, X^Z, g. Collation: [1^316 ].
This edition exists in ¢ve di¡erent states, distinguished on thebasis of a series of deliberate interventions (Purpus’s states A, B,
C, D, and E) and the presence or absence of an interleaved manuscript translation. The Bodleian variant is made up in quires of 16
printed leaves with an interleaved translation, so that in its original state it had the collation: [1^324 ], where leaves 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17,
20, and 23 of each quire are handwritten insertions and theprinted pages (beginning on fol. [1v] = A1) are alternately versos
and rectos in the ¢rst half of the quire and rectos and versos inthe second half. One of 14 complete copies of this edition, theothers in Cambridge, Mass. HarvCL (IVE), Cologne UStB
(IVE), Darmstadt LHSB (IVE), Haarlem SB (IVE), Heidelberg[bb-1^ bb- 2

UB (IVE, with interleaved German translation), Mainz
GutenbergM (IVE), Manchester JRL (IVD, dated binding1467), Modena Est (IVB), New York PML (IVE), Paris BnF(IVE), Schweinfurt Otto-Scha«ferB (IVE),Washington LC (IVE),
and Williamstown ChL (IVE); 10 imperfect copies in Berlin
KunstB (IVA, 45 leaves), Berlin SB (IVE, 38 leaves), The Hague
RL (IVE, 46 leaves), Go«ttingen UB (IVE, 43 leaves), London BL(IVE, 47 leaves, with interleaved German translation), New YorkNYPL (IVE, 46 leaves), Paris BnF (IVC, 39 leaves), Paris Muse¤ e
Dutuit (IVE, 47 leaves), Stuttgart LB (IVE, 46 leaves),
Wolfenbu«ttel HAB (IVE, 40 leaves, with interleaved Germantranslation); 8 fragments (mostly from the dismembered Blumcopy) in Boston PubL (2 leaves), New York PML (12 leaves),
Oberlin ObCL (1 leaf), Rotterdam Mus. Boymans (3 leaves), San
Marino HEHL (combined with leaves from edition V to make acomplete copy), Toledo TolMAL (1 leaf), and fragments o¡eredfor sale by Christie’s in London (sale 24 Nov. 1993, lot 57: 1 leaf)
and August Laube in Zurich (cat. 27, 27 Sept. 2001: 2 leaves). See
the list of copies in Purpus, Farbmikro¢che-Edition, 24^5. State Eof edition IV, as de¢ned by Purpus and represented by the
Bodleian copy, shows loss of the upper contours of the hillsideand of three stars under the inscription ‘terremotus’ on D 2 (b)(states B^E, Purpus, ‘Blockbu« cher der Apokalypse’, ills VII.7^9),radically pruned trees on Z1 (b) (states C^E), two, rather than
three mitred ¢gures behind the king on I1 (a) and the loss of thethird soldier on plate I1 (b) (states D^E), as well as the empty banderole to the right of the horse on D1 (a) which in earlier states
reads ‘Equus ypocrisis est’ (only state E). The German interleaving has the incipit: ‘HIe hebet sich an das Buch der heymlicheno¡enbarunge sant Johanns czu Tutschem Als das in diesem buch
zu latin mit den ¢guren hernach geschriben folget Zu« m ersten
wiset dys buch uÞ / wie santus Johannes ein frawen genant drusiana . . . DArnach . So tau«¡te sant johanns die frawen drusianam .
mit vil mee folcks / Vnd lerte sie den cristen glau«ben’. The language is Southern Rhenish Franconian, suggestive of a
Heidelberg provenance (long monophthongs preserved, ‘au’ forou, lengthening of short vowels in open syllables as in ‘diesem’,shifted p in ‘pferd’,‘harp¡en’,‘p¢¡en’,‘schar¡’, frequent unshifted
d in forms such as ‘det’ and ‘dot’, frequent Central German forms
such as ‘vor-’,‘sonn’, and ‘konig’). For the di¡erent versions of theGerman interleaving of edition IV, see Palmer, ‘Latein undDeutsch’, 319^21. Watermark evidence, for which see below, andinscriptions in the Mainz (referring to the year 1463) andManchester (dated binding from 1467) copies allow an approximate date for this edition in the mid-1460s, before 1467; see
Stevenson 243^4 (c.1465); Stevenson, in Briquet (repr. 1968) I 95
(c.1463); Purpus,‘Blockbu«cher der Apokalypse’, 96 (before 1467);
Purpus, Farbmikro¢che-Edition, 22^4; U. Baurmeister, in CIBN I
p. iv (c.1462^3). Whereas Schreiber localizes this edition on stylistic grounds to Franconia (Manuel, IV 161), the evidence of
paper stocks and the provenance of surviving copies points more
to western Germany.
ills. Heinecken, Ide¤e, pl. 10; Strutt, Biographical Dictionary, II
pl. VI (Bodleian copy); Katalog der Freiherrlich vonLipperheide’schen Kostu« mbibliothek (Berlin, 1896^1901), I 173^5(Berlin KunstB copy); Schreiber, Manuel, VII pl. LII (Berlin
KunstB copy); Kristeller, Apokalypse, pls LI^LII; N. F. Palmer,‘Zum Nebeneinander von Volkssprache und Latein in spa«tmittelalterlichen Texten’, in Literatur und Laienbildung im Spa«tmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit. Symposion Wolfenbu«ttel 1981,bb-2]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

ed. L. Grenzmann and K. Stackmann, Germanistische Symposien: Berichtsba«nde, 3 (Stuttgart, 1984), 579^600, ill. at 595(Bodleian copy); Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, colour pls 9^11
(Mainz copy); Kostbare Handschriften und Drucke, Staatsbibliothek PreuÞischer Kulturbesitz: Ausstellungskataloge, 9(Wiesbaden, 1978), 30 no. 10 (Berlin SB copy); Halbey, ‘Mainzer
Blockbuch-Ausgabe’, 79^80 (Modena copy); Purpus, ‘Blockbu«cher der Apokalypse’, 88^9 ills VII.7^9 (Berlin KunstB,
Modena and Manchester copies).
refs. Heinecken, Ide¤e, 349^58 (‘edition 2’); Sotheby I 21^3 (‘edition 4’); Firmin Didot 46 (‘edition D’); Dutuit I 131^9; Schreiber,
Manuel, IV 164^5, 168^216; BMC I 3; Hind I 222; Bing,‘Apocalypse’, 146^8; L. Donati, review of the facsimile by Samek
Ludovici, Biblio¢lia, 72/3 (1970/1), 97^111; CIBN I pp. iv^v (AA2); Palmer, ‘Latein und Deutsch’, 319^21; H. A. Halbey, ‘Die
Mainzer Blockbuch-Ausgabe ‘‘Apokalypse’’’, in Blockbu«cher desMittelalters, 75^80.
COPY

c.285 ¿ c.210 mm (woodcut on fol. A1: 255 ¿ c.187 mm). Watermarks: The ¢rst quire has twin unicorns with trifurcated tails(Sotheby III pl. B; Briquet 10001 (Arlon 1463, Luxemburg? 1467,
Verdun? 1472, Cologne 1472); Stevenson 243 (Arlon 1463); A.
Stevenson, in Briquet I *27, with a reference to this mark in unspeci¢ed Cologne quarto incunable editions; not listed in the printed
edition of Piccard), combined with a single example of a distinctive letter P with straight crossbar positioned over the stem
(Sotheby III pl. B, from this copy; PiccP type X 253^62(Rhineland 1468^72), closest to X 262 (Siegen 1472); Stevenson
243 (Arlon 1465)). The second and third quires have the same letter P combined with a second variety with a rounded crossbar
positioned over the stem (Sotheby III pl. B, from this copy; PiccP
type X 268^76 (Rhineland 1468^71), very close to X 270 (Siegen1470)). Both the London BL copy and that in Paris Muse¤e Dutuit(formerly Johnson copy) appear to contain the same combinationof unicorn and letter P watermarks, and are thus likely to havebeen printed in the same workshop at the same time; cf. Sotheby
III pl. C (‘Johnson copy’). In addition, the fragment o¡ered forsale by August Laube, Zurich, in 2001 may belong to the samegroup. Stevenson 249 refers to the same letter P watermark in theBrussels copy of Biblia pauperum edition I. The evidence of thesecopies, taken together with the frequent occurrence of variants of
unicorn with trifurcated tail (Briquet 10001) in Cologne incunabula from the presses of Ulrich Zel and Arnold ther Hoernen in thelater 1460s and early 1470s (e.g. A-559, B-608, G-113, G-133, J124(1), N-085), provides an important pointer to the place ofprinting and date for the group of copies associated with that at
the Bodleian, which is to be placed somewhere in western
Germany with access to paper stocks from the Vosges, possiblyin the region of Cologne, shortly before or even after 1470.
Printed in grey-black ink on one side of the paper by rubbing.
The state of the blocks is very closely comparable to the Mainz
copy; one or two additional fractures (e.g. B2 (a), F1 (b), F2 (a))
could indicate that the Bodleian impression is the later of thetwo. Coloured in green, yellow, dull orange, red, purple, pale
brown, and black. Thick strokes of black are used to mark outlines, as in many other copies of this edition (cf. Blockbu«cher desMittelalters, colour pls 9^11). The choice and disposition of colours is so close to the Mainz copy as to suggest the use of a common model. Traces of paste or glue on the versos indicate that all

11

blank pages were at one time pasted together. They have now been
separated, except for S2/T1 and T2/V1, which have su¡ered deliberate mutilation. These are now pasted together over a latenineteenth-century wove repair paper to hold the shredded strips
in place. Humfrey Wanley, who mentions this item in a letter of 21
Sept. 1697 to John Bagford, notes that it had ‘2 leaves pasted
together’ (Letters of Humfrey Wanley, 76), from which it may be
assumed that at this time only S2/T1 and T2/V1 were pasted.
Francis Douce (À1834), in his notes on Bodleian blockbooks(kept with BB-1), writes, ‘A few of the leaves are single and others
remain pasted together as they were originally.’ The interleaved
translation was copied on 24 single leaves, pasted to guards ofrather heavy medieval paper of similar, if not identical, characterto that used for the printed leaves, and inserted into the printed
quires. The paper of the interleaving has three watermarks:
Letter P with quatrefoil, similar to PiccP IX 1543 (Speyer,
Strasbourg 1471); Letter P with quatrefoil, very close to PiccP IX
1587 (Bensberg/Cologne 1472); Letter P with quatrefoil, notattested by Briquet or in the printed edition of Piccard. The earlydate of the paper stocks lends support to the hypothesis that themanuscript translation was added at a very early date. The guard
on which the ¢rst leaf with the translation for A1/2 is mounted preserves traces of the pen £ourishing of three red initials, corresponding in position to the three initials on the added leaf withthe translation. There are similar remnants of text extending into
what was once the inner margin on the guards facing B2, G1, andT1, suggesting that the set of 24 single leaves with the Germantranslation is a replacement for an original set of 12 interleaved
bifolia inscribed with a text that was subsequently deemed unsatisfactory for some reason and cut out, leaving stubs that werethen used as guards to which the replacement leaves could bepasted. The handwritten leaves have alphabetical signatures in
the upper right-hand corner of each recto (and for b^e in thelower right-hand corner of the verso as well), which served asassembly marks to indicate the pair of printed leaves to which
each manuscript leaf belonged. Signatures are missing for a, f,
and t (hidden by a repair). The manuscript insertions for L1/2
and R1/2 have been pasted in back to front, probably already inthe ¢fteenth century. The printed leaves were trimmed after they
were pasted together, but before the handwritten interleaving was
replaced. The book contains a very small number of minor handwritten additions. A handwritten note, in an early sixteenthcentury hand, has been added in the lower margin of O1: ‘zu gottste alle myn ho¡ung’; on g2: ‘1529’,‘vf d 129’. The condition of thevolume is fair, with the exception of the mutilated leaves and anumber of minor tears. Some early repairs make use of a whitehandmade laid paper, possibly from the time of Laud’s rebinding.
Later repairs make use of a bu¡ machine-made wove paper, atransparent paper, and a machine-made laid paper dating fromthe late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The order of leaves
is original, except that the bifolium with plates M 2 and N1 has
been removed from the middle of the second quire and placed as
an eccentric insertion in the ¢rst quire, between A1 and the corresponding page of interleaving. The printed leaves are numbered
1^48 in reddish-brown ink, in the same hand that numbered the
support leaves (dating from c.1790) of the Bodleian Canticum
canticorum blockbook (BB-7), correctly marking the displaced
leaves M2 and N1 as 24 and 25. A sheet of drawings (140 ¿218 mm) showing standing ¢gures and an architectural design
executed in black and white on grey hand-tinted paper and dated

12

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e etson the recto ‘1496’ and ‘1495’ (on verso ‘b2’), attributable to Mairvon Landshut, has been mounted on a modern support leaf andinserted into the book after B1; see Hind, ‘An Undescribed Sheetof Drawings’; for the artist, see C. Talbot, in The Dictionary of Art,
ed. J. Turner, vol. 20 (London and New York, 1996), 130. This leaf
was present when Francis Douce (À1834) inspected the book; cf.
his handwritten notes on the Bodleian blockbooks inserted in
BB-1.
refs. CMA 62 no. 988; [Wanley], ‘Observations’, 1509^10;
Meerman I 234 and 236; Heinecken, Nachrichten, II 186^7;
Heinecken, Ide¤e, 373; Strutt, Biographical Dictionary, II 17;
Sotheby I 23; Dutuit I 138; Pr 41; SC 988; Schreiber, Manuel, IV
165 (with incorrect shelfmark ‘Auct. M. III 14’); A. M. Hind, ‘An
Undescribed Sheet of Drawings by Nicolaus Alexander Mair ofLandshut with some Notes on the Master’s Engravings’, inFestschrift fu«r Max J. Friedla«nder (Leipzig, 1927), 30^3; [L. W.
Hanson], ‘Some Observations Concerning the Invention and
Progress of Printing, to the Year 1465’, BLR 6/6 (1961), 634^5; R.
W. Hunt, in H. O. Coxe, Laudian Manuscripts, Bodleian Library
Quarto Catalogues, 2, repr. from the edn. of 1858^1885, with corrections and additions, and an historical introduction by R. W.
Hunt (Oxford, 1973), pp. xxiv, xxxviii, 536; The Letters ofHumfrey Wanley, Palaeographer, Anglo-Saxonist, Librarian,
1672^1726, ed. P. L. Heyworth (Oxford, 1989); Palmer, ‘Zum
Nebeneinander’, 595^6; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 383, 398;
Palmer,‘Latein und Deutsch’, 321 no. 11; Sheppard no. 2.
Binding: Seventeenth-century gold-tooled armorial-centrepiece
inboard binding for William Laud, probably executed by the
London printer Richard Badger before 1639. 305 ¿ 221 ¿ 28 mm.
Brown tanned calf, with a grey surface stain, over laminated pulpboard. The upper and lower £yleaves of an earlier, probably early
sixteenth-century binding have been retained, tipped to the ¢rst
and last printed leaves; the watermark of these leaves is a bull’shead with eyes and nostrils and an unidenti¢ed motif on a singlecontoured sta¡, similar but certainly not identical to Briquet
15182 (Nuremberg 1522). For Laud’s binding new single-bifolium
endleaves of plain paper with an outside hooked guard of English
printed waste were added. The textblock was resewn all-along onfour single tawed supports to make ¢ve quires in all (including thetwo endleaf quires). The displaced bifolium M 2/N1 was at thistime sewn in place, in the ¢rst quire, after the ¢rst printed leaf.
The edges of the textblock have not been trimmed, and the outerleaves of the added endleaf quires have not been pasted down asboard sheets. Each board is framed with a blind double ¢llet andhas the larger of Laud’s two armorial centrepieces (103 ¿ 79 mm),displaying his personal arms on the right and those of the archiepiscopal See of Canterbury on the left, tooled in gold. For thelarger centrepiece, used here, see the reproduction in Davenport
265; for the smaller centrepiece (63 ¿ 49 mm), see Rogers,
Treasures, 88 and ¢g. 74. Each board originally had two textile
ties, their ends pasted down and covered with plain-paper patcheson the inner face of the boards, now cut £ush. The headcap of thebinding was repaired with tanned leather, probably in the latenineteenth or early twentieth century.
Provenance: Dieter von Handschuhsheim, probably to be identi¢ed as Dieter V von Handschuhsheim (1432^1487), who was aleading o⁄cial in the service of the electors palatine at the
Heidelberg court and in 1470 founded a convent of Augustiniannuns in Handschuhsheim, near Heidelberg, rather than his son,
Dieter VI (1482^1521); inscription in a late ¢fteenth-century[bb- 2 ^ bb-3

hand on fol. 5r ‘Bittend got fu«r den armen su«nder geber diessbu«chss uwer bru«der diether von Hentschu«ssheym’, most likely
recording the gift of the book to a religious instutution where thedonor held confraternity. Archbishop William Laud (1573^1645);
his arms on the upper board and inscription on fol. 1r ‘Liber
Guilelmi Laud Archiepiscopi Cantuarensis et Cancellarii uniuersitatis Oxoniensis 1638.’ Received by Laud in 1638, the year inwhich the main body of manuscripts from the Cistercian abbeyof Eberbach in the Rheingau and from the Mainz Charterhouse(along with manuscripts from some other German sources)
came into his possession, and passed on to the Bodleian in 1639
as part of Laud’s third donation. Former Bodleian shelfmarks:
Laud E. 65 (spine and inside upper board; cf. the handlist of
Laud manuscripts, datable 1683/7, in Library Records e. 340, fol.
111r); Arch. B. 86 (Library Records e. 340, fol. 159 r). Meerman I
234 note (bb), on the basis of his correspondence with the
Oxford biblical scholar Benjamin Kennicott (1718^1783), records
the shelfmark as ‘Archiv. B. 86’. Cf. SC I 41 no. 988.
shelfmark: Auct. M 3.15.

BB-3 Apocalypse[Edition V]. Incipit: ‘Conu(er)si ab ydolis p(er) predicacione(m)b(ea)ti ioha(n)nis drusiana et ceteri’. Edition V, which is the ¢rst
edition of the third group of Apocalypse blockbooks, contains acycle of 92 pictures on 48 leaves. It is a free reworking of edition
IV state B from a German workshop, preserving the wording of
the text exactly (Purpus, ‘Blockbu« cher der Apokalypse’, 91^3).
As with edition IV, Bing and Purpus argue that for edition V too
the woodcutters had access, as a secondary source, to a picturebook Apocalypse manuscript close to Wellcome MS. 49, andthus similar to the manuscript that was the original model for
the Netherlandish edition I/II and to the presumptive secondary
source for the ¢rst German edition, IV. Cf. the critical discussionof this argument, challenging the assumption that picture-book
Apocalypses are likely to have been available to woodcutters indi¡erent workshops at di¡erent times and in di¡erent places, aswell as the presupposition that Wellcome MS. 49 cannot bea direct or indirect copy of the blockbook, in Donati,‘L’Apocalissi’. It remains the case, however, that edition V contains a small number of unexplained iconographical details,
most notably the representation of St John holding up the eucharist on plate g2 (b), which it shares with theWellcome and NewYork
manuscripts against edition IV and the rest of the blockbook andmanuscript tradition. The sequence of plates is as in edition IV.
For facsimiles of edition V, see: L’Apocalypse reproduite en facsimile¤ sur l’exemplaire de la Bibliothe'que Firmin-Didot, ed. A.
Pilinski, Monuments de la xylographie, 1 (Paris, 1882) (NewYork PML Firmin-Didot/Bennett copy); Palmer, BerlinBreslauer Sammelband, ¢che 1 (Berlin copy); Lengenfelder andMu«ller, ¢che 8 (Munich UB copy).
[Germany, c.1468/70, impression c.1472]. Chancery folio.
48 leaves, all with woodcuts and xylographic text, the individual
plates printed on one side of the paper with the reverse blank, sig^,V, X^Z, g.The make-up of this edition varies, mostnatures A^T,V
commonly three quires of 16 leaves [1^316 ], but there is also
an issue, known from three copies, with four quires of 12 leaves[1^412]. Copy-speci¢c evidence presented below suggests that the
copy in the Bodleian, like those in Munich BSB (Xyl. 3, exbb-3]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

informatione Bettina Wagner) and Zurich ZB (RP 103), may havebeen printed on both sides of the paper, with a single plate to theleft and a blank page to the right on each side of the bifolium, to beassembled in four quires with blank rectos and printed versos
throughout; cf. Schreiber, Manuel, IV 166, alluding to one such
copy; Kristeller, Apokalypse, 5; Baurmeister 149 n. 17, commenting on the Zurich copy. In 4 of the extant copies edition V is
accompanied by a handwritten German translation on added
leaves. One of 9 complete copies of this edition, the others in
Berlin KupferstichKab (German interleaved translation),
Heidelberg UB (uncoloured), Munich BSB, New York PML,New York NYPL (German interleaved translation), Paris BnF,
Pavia Museo Civico, Vienna O«NB (German interleaved translation); imperfect copies in Cambridge UL (47 leaves), Munich UB(44 leaves), New York PML (32 leaves), Paris BnF (44 leaves),
Wolfenbu«ttel HAB (44 printed leaves, with part of a Germaninterleaved translation), Zurich ZB (30 leaves); fragments inBlackburn Museum (half leaf), London BL (1 leaf), Rotterdam
Mus. Boymans (2 leaves), Urbana UIll(E)L (1 leaf), Washington
NGA (R) (1 leaf), as well as a pair of uncoloured leaves formerlyin the private collection of Victor von Klemperer in Dresden(1 leaf) and o¡ered for sale by Dr. Jo«rn Gu«nther Antiquariat,
Hamburg, in 2000 (1 leaf); German translation in Munich BSB
Cgm 5448 (formerly the interleaving of the Munich BSB blockbook Xyl. 6, sold as a duplicate and now untraced). The localization of this edition in Germany, broadly speci¢ed by Schreiber as
southern Germany or Swabia (‘Holztafeldrucke’, 9; Manuel, IV161), is borne out by the language of the German interleaving inseveral copies. Purpus has argued for a date in the later 1460s,
not later than 1469, on the basis of the Berlin and Heidelberg
copies which are preserved in ‘Sammelba«nde’ datable to c.1468/9(‘Blockbu«cher’, 96), which is consonant with the watermark evidence; see also the evidence of the Gothic letter P watermark in
the Paris copy (CIBN I pl. XIII no. 47), which is also attested in aWest Central German manuscript of Bruder Berthold’s
Rechtssumme, dated 1470, in The Hague, Royal Library, 74 A 49,
fols 3r and 169r (ex informatione Gerard Van Thienen).
ills. Heinecken, Ide¤e, pl. 9; Dutuit pls 22^3 (Paris Dutuit copy);
Sotheby II pl. LXV (New York PML copy); Schreiber, Manuel,VII pl. LIII (Heidelberg copy); Kristeller, Apokalypse, pl. LIII;
Blum, Origines de la gravure en bois, pls LVIII^LXII nos 73, 75,
77, 79, 81 (Paris BnF, Re¤s. Xylo. 8); K. Henkel, The Apocalypse,
exhibition catalogue University of Maryland Art Gallery(Washington, DC, 1973), colour pl. 2, ills 17, 19, 21; O. Mazal,
Buchkunst der Gotik (Graz, 1975), pl. 74 (Vienna copy); Palmer,‘Latein und Deutsch’, 332 ¢g. 2 (Bodleian copy); Das Berliner
Kupferstichkabinett. Ein Handbuch zur Sammlung, ed. A.
Du«ckers (Berlin, 1994), 69^70 no. II.1 (Berlin copy).
refs. Heinecken, Ide¤e, 335^49 (‘edition 1’); Sotheby I 24^5 (‘edition 5’); II 47^50; Firmin Didot 47 (‘edition E’); Dutuit I 140^9;Schreiber, Manuel, IV 165^6, 168^216; Hind I 223; Bing,‘Apocalypse’, 146^8; Purpus, ‘Blockbu« cher der Apokalypse’, 91^
3; Palmer, ‘Latein und Deutsch’, 320^1; CIBN I pp. v^vi (AA-4);
Palmer, Berlin-Breslauer Sammelband, 52^7, 80^4; Mu«ller andLengenfelder 54^70.
COPY

263 ¿ 199 mm (woodcut on A1: 252 ¿ 195 mm). In its present statethis copy consists of 48 separate leaves, closely trimmed, especially at the left- and right-hand edges. Each leaf is now tipped to13

the recto of a support leaf (325 ¿ 255 mm) of a mid-nineteenthcentury album and protected by a lightweight interleaving paper.
The distribution of the watermarks shows that the book originallyconsisted of four quires of twelve leaves. Those pairs of consecutive plates which originally lay at the centre of the quires display
blocks of o¡set lettering in reverse, at the head and tail of theouter edges, deriving from parchment strengthening strips with
Latin liturgical text (probably in an Italian hand) that have since
been discarded. The o¡set, sometimes on the printed rectos (C 2,
K1, P2, ^V2) and sometimes on the blank versos (D1, I2, Q1, X1),
occurs at the centre of all four quires, and only here, suggestingthat the pairs of rectangular manuscript strips served as sewing
guards, possibly from a tacketed binding structure. The positionof the o¡set (now on the outer edges, but originally in the centrefold) indicates that the leaves of the Bodleian copy wereassembled with blank rectos and printed versos, and that, likethose in Munich BSB and Zurich ZB mentioned above, theymust have been printed on both sides of the paper, with a single
plate to the left and a blank page to the right on each side. N1 andS2, originally positioned as the ¢rst and last leaves of the third
quire, are an addition to the book from another copy, possibly
added as late as the early nineteenth century; they are printed ondi¡erent paper and have markedly di¡erent colouring.
Watermarks: The main paper stock is bull’s head with eyes andnostrils, single-contoured sta¡ and cross, including a variant
with irregular ears and a slightly longer sta¡ (A 2), PiccO VII 384(Speyer 1472), known to Piccard only from a printed book;see Johannes de Turrecremata, Contemplationes deuotissime(Speyer: Printer of the Gesta Christi, [1472], H 15723), the second
quire of which displays this watermark in the Stuttgart LB copy
(Inc. 2o 15723). The added leaf S2 has a bull’s head with eyes andsix-petalled rosette and cross on a single-contoured sta¡, PiccO
XII 615 (Brixen, Ochsenfurt, O«hringen 1462 and 1463). Cf.
Sotheby III pl. T (Bodleian copy). Printed in deep-black ink byrubbing. The state of the blocks is good; probably a slightly earlier
impression than the Berlin and Munich UB copies, althoughoccasionally the original details have been obscured by expert
repairs, particularly of the outer edges, where in some cases missing parts of the print and coloured areas have been made good byhand, and by the blacking in of borders by an early nineteenthcentury book restorer. The woodcuts are coloured in several
tones of reddish purple and yellow/olive green, green, deep red,grey, and £esh-colour; at what date is not always clear.The colouring on N1 and S2 makes use of a distinctive green wash, as well as
purple, grey, olive green, yellow, orange, and dark red. The detailsof the printing are clearly visible in this copy, being less obscured
by heavy colouring than in the facsimiles of the Berlin andMunich copies. The versos have remained blank. The order ofthe 48 plates is recorded by a set of numbers (omitting 1, 6, and 7)
inscribed in ink on the versos in an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century hand, now partly cut away by the trimming of theupper edge of the leaves (and at a later date repeated with a correct
sequence in pencil on the rectos), probably for the binder. The
sequence for the second quire, currently 13, 15, 14, 16, 17, 19, 18,
20, 21, 23, 22, 24, suggests that at some point two pairs of leaves
were transposed. The bifolium H1 (15) / L2 (22) appears to havebeen moved from third to second position in the quire, and thebifolium at the centre I2 (19) / K1 (18) was inverted. As currently
assembled the order of I2 and K1 is correct, although these leaves
are incorrectly numbered, whereas H1 and L2 are bound out of

14

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

order and retain the positions they must have occupied before thebifolia were divided for rebinding. The position of the o¡set on I 2and K1, on the outer edges of the blank verso and the printed recto
respectively, suggests that these two leaves were placed in thewrong order when the blockbook was ¢rst assembled.
refs. Sotheby II 50; Dutuit I146; Pr15; Schreiber, Manuel, IV166(with incorrect shelfmark ‘Auct. M. III 15’); Blockbu«cher desMittelalters, 383, 398; Sheppard no. 3.
Binding: Mid-nineteenth-century album. 333 ¿ 277 ¿ 25 mm.
Gold- and blind-tooled inboard hollow-back binding. Red
tanned morocco over millboard. Sewn as a blank book with compensation stubs and a lighter interleaving paper facing each support leaf. The support leaves and the interleaving are bothmachine-made wove paper. The edges were trimmed and gilded
before sewing. The tooling is executed with 2 ¢llets, 1 roll, and 1
small tool. The spine has ‘s. johannis e historia’ gold-tooled tothe second panel and ‘xylograph.’ to the sixth.
Provenance: Italy; illegible inscriptions in an Italian eighteenthcentury hand on A1v : ‘Pau:::: V:::::::: H::::::’, ‘L::: H::::::be ¤ ’;inscriptions in mysterious pseudo-Latin in an earlier Italianhand on A1r (a) ‘Ionandes’ (for ‘Ioannes’) and F1r (a) ‘Cornus eagelus e sona(n)t ad e ue si bru:e Dronidj m e i natiorus e frater pauelus’; the identity of ‘frater paulus’ is not clear. Vienna,
Hofbibliothek; bought at a sale in Milan in 1839. Sold as a duplicate in 1851 (Schreiber), and brought to England in 1853
(Sotheby). A letter preserved in Vienna O«NB, Az 254/1847, written by the Augsburg antiquarian dealer Fidelis Butsch to the
Hofbibliothek, received 28 Sept. 1847, refers to their duplicate ofedition V, evidently this copy, and explores the possibility of an
exchange for a di¡erent blockbook Apocalypse in his possession(ex informatione Konstanze Mittendorfer).
shelfmark: Auct. M 3.14.

BB-4 Biblia Pauperum[Edition III]. Incipit: ‘Legit(ur) in genesi . iij . cap(itul)o q(uod)dixit d(omi)n(us) serpenti super pect(us) tuu(m) gradier(is) . . .’A
cycle of 40 plates, each containing a picture of a NewTestament oreschatological event £anked by two pictures of Old Testamentpre¢gurations, surrounded by the busts of four prophets with auctoritates, two short lectiones based on Old Testament material,
and a Leonine hexameter as a titulus for each of the three pictures.
The Latin blockbook version of the Biblia pauperum, which in its
original, late thirteenth-century form consists of some 34 or morepicture ensembles ideally arranged on 17 pages, belongs to the‘Western manuscript family’, which is thought to have originatedin the Netherlands in the later fourteenth century and in which
additional eschatological subjects are added at the end of thecycle. The principal manuscripts of this group are Cambridge
Corpus Christi College, MS. 164; London BL, King’s MS. 5;
Stowe MS. 7; Utrecht UB, cod. 373. Cf. Cornell, Biblia pauperum,
168^72; G. Schmidt, ‘Kings MS 5 and its Place in the History of
the Biblia Pauperum’, in Biblia Pauperum: Kings MS 5, 21^123,
at 62^3. The blockbook o¡ers a distinctive recension of theWestern family with numerous small changes and three new setsof pictures unique to the blockbook tradition (pls 19, 20, and 40).
Schreiber distinguishes ten editions of the 40^plate blockbook, towhich Kroll has added an eleventh, which can be divided into fourgroups deriving from editions I, IV,VIII, and X respectively; neweditions within the four groups are de¢ned on the basis of some,[bb-3 ^ bb-4

but not all, of the wood blocks having been recut. The clearest
overview of the 40^plate blockbook editions is provided in thetable devised by Kroll, ‘Beobachtungen’, 295. For the chiro-xylographic edition (Heidelberg copy), the two German editions, the50^plate edition, and the sixteenth-century Italian edition
entitled Opera nova contemplativa, see Schreiber, Manuel, IV
90^113. Edition III of the 40^plate blockbook is a close copy ofedition I, but shares 8 plates (e^h, p^q, .e.^.f.) with edition II,
which is represented by a single copy (Berlin SB, Libr. impr. rar.
fol. 135). This group appears to be the second in the chronologicalsequence, most probably being based directly on a copy of edition
IV, the most likely candidate to be the editio princeps. Here Kroll’s¢ndings diverge from those of earlier scholarship, in which the¢rst edition was thought to be edition I (Schreiber, Henry) or edition VIII (Musper). All the early editions of the Biblia pauperum
appear to be Netherlandish. Their precise dating, however, is
problematic and depends on a judgement of the relationshipbetween the blockbooks and a group of northern Netherlandish
illuminated manuscripts from c.1460, discussed by Smeyers,
Koch, Henry, and Cardon^Smeyers; cf. Palmer, BerlinBreslauer Sammelband, 46, 70^1 notes 26^7. For representative
facsimiles of the blockbook editions, see Biblia Pauperum.
Reproduced in Facsimile from One of the Copies in the British
Museum, with an Historical and Bibliographical Introduction, ed.
J. P. Berjeau (London, 1859) (hand-traced facsimile of edition I);
Biblia Pauperum. Facsimile-Reproduction, getreu nach dem in derErzherzoglich Albrecht’schen Kunst-Sammlung ‘‘Albertina’’be¢ndlichen Exemplar, ed. A. Einsle and J. Scho«nbrunner(Vienna, 1890) (edition VI); Biblia Pauperum. A Facsimile andEdition, ed. A. Henry (Aldershot, 1987) (edition I); The Bible of
the Poor [Biblia Pauperum]. A Facsimile and Edition of the
British Library Blockbook C.9 d.2. Translation and commentaryby A. C. Labriola and J.W. Smeltz (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1990) (editionV); for others see below under BB-5 and BB-6. Transcriptions of
the text are printed, on the basis of editions I and Vrespectively, byHenry, Biblia Pauperum, 152^8, and Labriola and Smeltz, The
Bible of the Poor, 57^96. For a representative text from the manuscript tradition, edited from a witness close to the exemplar for theblockbook, see G. Schmidt, ‘The Texts of the Biblia pauperum
Kings MS 5’, in Biblia Pauperum: Kings MS 5, 203^71.
refs. Meerman I 224^8; Dutuit I 70^100; Conway 1^10, 195^201;
Schreiber, Manuel, IV 1^113; W. L. Schreiber, in Biblia pauperum.
Nach dem einzigen Exemplare in 50 Darstellungen [fru« her in
Wolfenbu«ttel, jetzt in der Bibliothe'que Nationale], ed. P. Heitz
and W. L. Schreiber (Strasbourg, 1903), 1^45; H. Cornell, Biblia
pauperum (Stockholm, 1925); Hind I 230^42; G. Schmidt, Die
Armenbibeln des 14. Jahrhunderts (Graz and Cologne, 1959);
Donati,‘Libri xilogra¢ci’, 215^21, 253^5; M. Smeyers,‘De invloed
der blokboekeditie van de Biblia pauperum op het getijdenboek
van Maria van Vronensteyn’, in Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis vande gra¢sche kunst opgedragen aan Prof. Dr. Louis Lebeer ter gelegenheid van zijn tachtigste verjaardag (Antwerp, 1975), 307^25;
R. A. Koch, ‘New Criteria for Dating the Netherlandish ‘‘Biblia
pauperum’’ ’, in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Painting in
Honor of Millard Meiss, ed. I. Lavin and J. Plummer (New York,
1977), I 253^89; A. Henry, ‘The Living Likeness: The Forty-page
Blockbook Biblia pauperum and the Imitation of Images in
Utrecht and Other Manuscripts’, Journal of the British
Archaeological Association, 136 (1983), 124^36; Henry, Biblia
Pauperum, 3^45; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 402^5, 435^9;

bb-4]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

Henry,‘The Iconography of the Forty-page blockbook Biblia pauperum: Form and Meaning’, in Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters,
263^88; Kroll, ‘Beobachtungen’; Palmer, Berlin-Breslauer
Sammelband, 22^5; B. Cardon and M. Smeyers,‘L’Emploi de gravures par les miniaturistes, un moyen de datation et de localisation des manuscrits enlumine¤s. Le cas du Ma|“ tre des Vederwolken’, in Le Dessin sous-jacent dans la peinture, ed. R. van
Schoute and H. Verougstraete-Marcq (Louvain-la-neuve, 1989),
77^90; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 402^5, 435^8; Palmer,
Berlin-Breslauer Sammelband, 22^5; Palmer, review of Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, Library, 6th series, 15 (1993), 143^7;
Biblia Pauperum: Kings MS 5.
[Netherlands, c.1460^3, impression Germany, c.1465^70].
Chancery folio.
A complete copy of edition III has 40 leaves, all with woodcuts
and xylographic text, signatures a^v, .a.^.v. Collation: [1^202].
One of 5 copies of this edition consisting only of the ¢rst 20 leaves
and evidently issued without the second alphabet of signatures,the others in Innsbruck UB, Munich BSB, Strasbourg BNU, andStuttgart LB; 6 complete copies with 40 leaves in Douai BM,
London BL (Holkham copy), Manchester JRL, New York PML,
Paris BnF, Christie’s London 19 Nov. 1991 (Ashburnham copy);
imperfect copies in Cambridge Corpus Christi College (38 leaves)and The Hague MMW (22 leaves); fragments in Berlin
KupferstichKab (1 leaf), Bloomington InUL (2 leaves), London
BM (Print & Drawings) (3 leaves), London Sam Fogg (29 Nov.
1991, 2 leaves from the Wiblingen copy), New York PML (1 leaf),
Paris BnF (5 leaves bound in with edition VIII, BB-5(2)), San
Marino HEHL (6 leaves), Schweinfurt Otto-Scha«ferB (4 leaves
from the Wiblingen copy), and the fragment formerly in the private collection of Victor von Klemperer in Dresden (1 leaf).
ills. T. H. Horne, An Introduction to the Study of Bibliography(London, 1814), I, frontispiece (Ashburnham copy); Schreiber,
Manuel,VII pl. XLII (Stuttgart copy); Hind I 233 ¢g. 99 and 235¢g. 100 (Manchester copy and London BL fragment); Musper,‘Urausgabe der ndl. Biblia pauperum’, ill. 5 (Stuttgart copy);
Scha«fer I 72 (colour pl. of the Schweinfurt copy Xylo-D);
Catalogue One Hundred and Nine published on the Occasion of
the Ninetieth Anniversary of the Firm (New York: Martin
Breslauer, Inc., 1988), lot 19; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 299(Paris copy); F. de M. Oyens, in Valuable Printed Books andManuscripts, Autograph Letters and Music (London: Christie’s,
29 Nov. 1995), lot 19, ills on pp. 34, 37, and 39; Text Manuscripts
and Documents from 2200 BC to 1600 AD, Sam Fogg Rare
Books, Cat. 16 (London, 1995), 126^7 no. 82 (colour pl.); Palmer,‘Biblical Blockbooks’, ill. 11 (London BL/Holkham copy).
refs. Heinecken, Ide¤e, 292^333 (¢ve editions inadequately distinguished, ‘edition 3’?); Sotheby I 63 (‘edition 4’); Schreiber,
Manuel, IV 4^5, 10^89 (‘edition III’); Hind I 236; BMC (reprint1963) I 5; Kroll, ‘Beobachtungen’; CIBN I pp. xii^xiii; Oyens, in
Valuable Printed Books, 34^40.
COPY

20 leaves (signatures a^v). 298 ¿ 214 mm (woodcut on pl. a: 259 ¿193 mm). Watermark: Scales, with horizontal scale pan,PiccardW type I 201^74 (all southern German, mostly c.1464^70), closest to I 230 (Ho«chsta«dt/Danube 1467) and I 232(Wu«rzburg 1470), not attested in the other copies of edition III.
See Sotheby III pl. F (‘Sykes copy’), cf. p. 25. Printed in deep-

15

brown ink on one side of the paper by rubbing. The absence of
cracks on pls h and i suggests that this may be an earlier impression than the Paris copy. Uncoloured, except for the picking out of
the Virgin and child on pl. f in green, pink, grey, and yellow. The
versos are blank. This copy appears to have been used for display
as a set of posters, a⁄xed by nails and pasted to a support (forexample, to wooden panelling), before it was made up, at a datethat can no longer be determined, as a codex. There are no sewing
holes in the printed leaves, and even in the present, early nineteenth-century binding structure the folded bifolia are not sewn,
but rather pasted to guards. Most of the bifolia have up to fournail-holes, roughly positioned in the four corners, within theprinted area rather than in the margin, variously positionedc.21^3 cm apart in the vertical dimension. The blank versos of
the printed leaves are covered with a heavy layer of a brownpaste-and-glue mix, often collecting as thicker puddles in the
cockled surface which never match on facing pages, and thus cannot be explained as an indication that the blanks were at one time
pasted together in the familiar manner. Often the versos show theimpression of strengthening strips, of parchment or paper, andsome leaves show o¡set of printed (pl. i) or handwritten (pls l, m)material, all in Latin, which was discarded when the leaves werebound up as a codex. In a few places there are worm-holes, or
damage from insects, but with no matching marks on adjacent
leaves. The outer leaves (pls a recto and v verso) display the rectangular impressions of (parchment?) strips at the head and tail of
their spine-edge, probably from the turn-ins of an early modern(seventeenth- or eighteenth-century?) binding structure which
preceded the present one. Many leaves show repairs with at least
two di¡erent laid papers, particularly to the outer edges, whichwere necessary to even up the textblock when the leaves weremade up as a codex, some of them undoubtedly the work of thenineteenth-century binder.
refs. Sotheby I 60 (‘Sykes copy’), 68d; Dutuit I 86^7; Pr 46;
Schreiber, Manuel, IV 5; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 383, 404;
Sheppard no. 4.
Binding: Early nineteenth-century gold-tooled armorial-centrepiece inboard binding for Sir Mark Mastermann Sykes, possibly
by the London binder Charles Lewis. 306 ¿ 223 ¿ 18 mm. Blueblack straight-grained tanned morocco over couched laminateboards. A paper guard was tipped to the spine-edge verso of eachfolded bifolium and then folded to provide a spinefold for sewing.
A blue ‘Stormont’ marbled-paper pastedown and ‘made’ £yleaf
together with 6 blank leaves were added to both ends of the textblock to form new endleaves. The edges were ploughed and gilded
for the current binding. Each board has a restrained gold-tooled
border and the armorial centrepiece surmounted by a monogram‘s e mm’ (63 ¿ 43 mm) of Mark Masterman Sykes. The spine isgold-tooled in panels and has the title ‘biblia e pauperum’ to thesecond panel. For the centrepiece, not attested before 1795, see theline-drawing reproduction in Davenport 364^5; it is also foundon London BL, G.9153, a binding for Sykes tooled on the lower
doublure ‘bound by c. lewis’, for which see H. M. Nixon and
M. M. Foot, The History of Decorated Bookbinding in England(Oxford, 1993), 99 and ¢g. 105. The Sykes copy of the blockbook
Apocalypse edition V, now in Cambridge UL, Inc. 2[1], Oates no.
3, has a matching blue-black morocco binding with the same
centrepiece. There is no evidence of the pre-nineteenth-century
binding, except for some o¡set from binding scrap on the blankrecto of pl. a. The second £yleaf contains various notes in16

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

Douce’s hand, referring to a Vienna copy of the German blockbook edition of the Biblia pauperum, and to the attribution of theLatin text to Bonaventure. Tipped in here is a white-on-black facsimile of plate .v. of the Biblia pauperum, the frontispiece to ‘The
History of Printing’, from W. Pinnock, Guide to Knowledge(London, 1833^6), I no. LXXVIII, 603^8 (5. Oct. 1833), 613^6 (12Oct.1833). To the pastedown of the lower board is a⁄xed, presumably by Douce, a copy of the engraving by Jacob Matham (1571^
1631) after Jan Bouckhorst of the ‘Maid of Haarlem’ receiving acrown of laurels, honouring the supposed invention of printingby ‘Laurentius’ Coster and originally published as the frontispiece to S. Ampzing, Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem inHolland (Haarlem, 1628); the engraving is missing in Douce’s
copy of this book (Douce A.219); cf. F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch
and Flemish Engravings and Woodcuts ca 1450^1700(Amsterdam, 1949^ ), XI 236 no. 365.
Provenance: Sir Mark Masterman Sykes (1771^1823); sale (11May 1824), lot 616. Francis Douce (1757^1834); armorial bookplate; cf. Sotheby I 60, who notes that the book was purchased at
the Sykes sale by Thorpe, who sold it on to Rodd, from whom it
was in turn purchased by Douce. Bequeathed in 1834.
shelfmark: Shelfmark: Douce 248.

BB-5 Biblia Pauperum
Fragment.
[Edition VIII]. Incipit: ‘Legit(ur) in genesi . iij . cap(itul)o q(uod)dixit d(omi)n(u)s serpenti super pect(us) tuu(m) gradier(is) . . .’Edition VIII is one of two which represent the third group of
Biblia pauperum blockbooks.Whereas Musper held, in numerous
publications, that edition VIII is the editio princeps, more recent
publications have disputed this, and Kroll shows that it is much
more likely to be a direct copy of edition I, which itself derives
from edition IV (Kroll, ‘Beobachtungen’, 296). It is to be distinguished from edition IX, which is known from only two copies in
Basel Oe¡entl. Kunstsammlung and London BL, by plates r^v,
which were recut.
refs. Musper, ‘Urausgabe der ndl. Biblia pauperum’; Musper,‘Urausgaben’; V. Scholderer, review of Musper, Urausgaben (facsimile), Library, 3rd series, 18 (1963), 145^7; Donati, ‘Libri xilogra¢ci’, 239^42; A. Henry, ‘The Forty-page Blockbook ‘Biblia
Pauperum’: Schreiber Editions I and VIII Reconsidered’, Oud
Holland, 95 (1981), 127^150; Kroll,‘Beobachtungen’, passim.
[Germany, c.1462^8]. Chancery folio.
40 leaves, all with woodcuts and xylographic text, signatures a^v,
.a.^.v. Collation: [1^202]. There are 3 complete copies of edition
VIII, in Cologne UStB and Paris BnF, and the Gotha-Doheny
copy (o¡ered for sale by Quaritch in London, 22 Oct. 1987); 3
imperfect copies in Edinburgh NLS (39 leaves), Vaticano BAV(39 leaves), and Wolfenbu«ttel HAB (38 leaves); 2 large fragments
in Paris BnF (15 leaves) and Providence, Brown Univ. JCBL (16leaves); further fragments in Darmstadt LHSB (2 leaves),
Copenhagen RL (1 leaf), Washington NGA (R) (1 leaf), Weimar
ZBKlassik (1 leaf), and a leaf auctioned by Sotheby’s in London
on 21 June 1993. Fragments from the same copy as that in the
Bodleian, ¢rst attested in the early eighteenth century, are preserved in Cambridge UL, Inc Frag 0 [4127], Oates no. 7 (a sectionof fol. f); London BM Print & Drawings (Bagford collection of[bb -4 ^ bb-5

fragments, portions of pls d, k, and l; pls n, o, and p, from Harley
MS. 5934); cf. Schreiber, Manuel, IV 7 (described as a ‘Bedford’
fragment); Dodgson, Catalogue, I 209 no. C 3; BMC I 4. The
paper stocks point to the Netherlands, and Baurmeister’s cautious dating ‘c.1462^8’ (CIBN I p. xiv) is based on the watermark
evidence of the Paris copies. Facsimiles of edition VIII: Musper,
Urausgaben (facsimile) (Wolfenbu«ttel copy); Donati^Tocci, Pal.
lat. 143 (Vatican copy).
ills. Musper, ‘Urausgabe der ndl. Biblia pauperum’, 82 ills 1^2(Wolfenbu«ttel copy); Musper, ‘Die Datierung und Lokalisierung
der a«ltesten gedruckten Bu«cher und Laurens Janszoon Coster’,Die graphischen Ku« nste, nf 3 (1938), 41^52, at 48 ill. 6(Wolfenbu«ttel copy); Schreiber, Handbuch, XI pls 172^9; The
Estelle Doheny Collection . . . Part I: Fifteenth-century Books
including the Gutenberg Bible (London: Sotheby’s, 22 Oct. 1987),
frontispiece and 6 plates of lot 73; Kroll, ‘Beobachtungen’, 300
and 307 (Paris copy); M. W. Driver, ‘The Image Redux: Picturesin Block-books and What Becomes of Them’, in Blockbu«cher desMittelalters, 341^52, ill. XV.7 at 346, ill. XV.12 at 349 (Brown
Univ. copy).
refs. Heinecken, Ide¤e, 292^333; Sotheby I 63 (‘edition 3’);
Schreiber, Manuel, IV 7^8, 10^89; BMC I 6; Hind I 238; Donati,‘Libri xilogra¢ci’, 211^3; M. H.Wolf, Catalogue and Indexes to the
Title-pages of English Printed Books preserved in the British
Library’s Bagford Collection (London, 1974), p. xviii (Harl.
5943); Kroll,‘Beobachtungen’; CIBN I p. xiv.
COPY

A cutting, preserving almost the full width of the original leaf (fol.
h).115 ¿ 169 mm. No watermark. Printed in grey ink on one side of
the paper by rubbing. Uncoloured. The verso, which shows signsof pasting, is blank.Worm-holes. The upper edge of the fragment
is pierced with pairs of prickings or staple holes in four places,suggesting that the leaf may have been reused in some way that is
no longer clear as padding or scrap paper. Tipped to page 18 ofvolume 50 of Thomas Hearne’s manuscript ‘Remarks andObservations’, dated 1714, where it is used by the author in an
essay on early printing (pp. 15^27) to illustrate his discussion of
the earliest printing ink, the use of colour in printed books, andthe practice of printing blockbooks on one side of the paper only,
so that the leaves could be hung up in churches, chapels, andhouses. Hearne also refers to ‘two thin folio books containing
old Pictures (from woodencuts)’ in the Bodleian Library, presumably BB-2 and the ‘Sammelband’ BB-6 and 7. Cf. Remarks andObservations of Thomas Hearne, ed. D. W. Rannie, vol. IV, OHS,
34 (Oxford, 1898), 342. For details of further fragments in
Cambridge UL and London BM (Prints & Drawings), which
derive from the same copy as that in the Bodleian, see above. A
note kept together with the Cambridge leaf refers to three fragments of this book, now apparently lost, in the possession of‘EFB’, possibly to be identi¢ed with the author E. F. Benson(1867^1940), who bought them from the widow of the Revd H. L.
Deck (1852^1910), who inherited them from his father; one ofthese leaves is said to have contained an inscription in the handwriting of the antiquary Thomas Baker (1656^1740), Fellow of St
John’s College, Cambridge, stating that they were given to him by
Mr Bagford. Portions of pls d, f, h, k, l, n, o, and p are preserved,
suggesting that the material which came into the hands of the bibliographer John Bagford may only have been a partial copy. This
copy is mentioned in a letter from Bagford to Hearne dated 23

bb-5^bb- 6]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

17Mar. 1710, in which the writer states ‘Just now I have in my custity
on of the same Examplarys of the Book so much talked of bytrauelers to Harlem mentioned by Had. Junius and Buxhornius
as to be the ¢rst speciment of printing and at Harlem’ (MS.
Rawl. Letters 21, no. 17, fol. 31).

in ‘Sammelba«nde’, with the blockbook Apocalypse edition V andthe Canticum canticorum edition II, suggesting that these books
were printed, but not necessarily designed and cut, in a common
workshop. See U. Baurmeister, in CIBN I p. xvii; Palmer,‘Junius’s
Blockbooks’, 160^5.

refs. Pr 47; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 404, 383; Sheppard
no. 5.
Binding: The host manuscript has an early eighteenth-century
inboard binding for Thomas Hearne. 164 ¿ 103 ¿ 20 mm.
Quarter parchment over rope-¢bre millboard, the boards not
sided with paper.
Provenance: Cambridge, unidenti¢ed bookbinder (£. 1710);
Hearne records that Bagford owned further fragments of theblockbook ‘communicated to him by [a very curious and learned
Gentleman (deleted)] a Bookbinder of Cambridge’ (p. 18). John
Bagford (1650^1716), who is recorded in the ‘Remarks andObservations’ as having given the leaf to Hearne (p. 17). Thomas
Hearne (1678^1735); dated inscription on p. i: ‘Suum cuique Tho:
Hearne. 1714’. William Bedford (À1747). Richard Rawlinson(1690^1755). Bequeathed in 1755.
shelfmark: MS. Hearne’s diaries vol. 50, p. 19a.

ills. Heinecken, Ide¤e, pl. 6; Strutt, Biographical Dictionary, II pl.
7 (Bodleian copy, edition XI); Sotheby II pls LXVI^LXVII;Schreiber, Manuel, VII pl. XLIV (Leipzig copy, edition X); O.
Mazal, Buchkunst der Gotik (Graz, 1975), ills 70^1 (Vienna copy,
edition X); D. Debes, Zimelien. Bu«cherscha«tze der Universita«tsbibliothek Leipzig (Leipzig, 1988), 183 no. 96 (Leipzig copy,
edition X); Kroll, ‘Beobachtungen’, 290^3 ills XI.1^4 (Weimarand Leipzig copies, editions XI and X), 305 ill. XI.12 (Berlin
copy, edition X); Palmer, ‘Latein und deutsch’, 334 ill. 4 (Berlin
copy, edition X); Palmer, ‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, 138 colour pl. I(Bodleian copy, edition XI).

BB-6 Biblia Pauperum[Edition XI]. Incipit: ‘Legit(ur) in genesi .iij. ca(pitul)o q(uod)dixit d(omi)n(u)s serpenti super pect(us) tuu(m) gradier(is) etpostea ibidem legitur de serpe(n)te et muliere . . .’ Edition XI is
one of two which represent the fourth group of Biblia pauperum
blockbooks, and is only to be distinguished from edition X by asingle pair of leaves, plates .i. and .k., which have been recut.
Kroll’s provisional investigation of edition X suggests that it is a
close copy, with some simpli¢cation of detail and shading, basedon a composite set of plates from editions I, VI, and VIII;‘Untersuchungen’, 308 and note 9. Facsimiles: Palmer, BerlinBreslauer Sammelband, ¢che 2 (edition X); Biblia Pauperum,
35 mm colour ¢lmstrip published by the Bodleian Library (Roll
173 I).
[Germany, c.1470]. Chancery folio.
40 leaves, all with woodcuts and xylographic text, signatures a^v,
.a.^.v. (n, o, r, and s of the second alphabet without points).
Collation: [1^202]. One of 4 complete copies of this edition, theothers in Pavia Museo Civico, Vienna O«NB, and Weimar
ZBKlassik; imperfect copy in Munich BSB (39 leaves); the imperfect copy of 24 leaves in Blackburn Museum (formerly Gotha)
wants the leaves that distinguish editions X and XI. See the list of
copies of editions X and XI in Palmer, Berlin-Breslauer
Sammelband, 47^8; ‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, 143^4 notes 15^16(including the fragments of edition X or XI). Edition X together
with its variant, edition XI, represent the ¢nal stage of development of the 40^plate Biblia pauperum. The paper stocks and theprovenance of extant copies, taken together, suggest that these
editions are German rather than Netherlandish, but it is not possible on present evidence to specify their origin more precisely
within the Central and Southern German area. Edition X is datable, on the basis of the paper and interleaving of the Berlin copy
(Palmer, Berlin-Breslauer Sammelband, 64), to c.1469, whereas
edition XI is better placed c.1470 or in the early 1470s. Both editions are associated, by common paper stocks and by associationrefs. Heinecken, Ide¤e, 317 (‘edition 1’); Sotheby I 64 (‘edition 6’);
Schreiber, Manuel, IV 8^9, 10^89 (‘edition X’); Hind I 238; CIBN
I p. xv; Kroll, ‘Beobachtungen’; Palmer, Berlin-Breslauer
Sammelband, 22^5, 45^8; Palmer,‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, 143^5.
COPY

258 ¿ 190 mm (pl. a). In its present state this copy consists of 40
separate leaves, trimmed to the frame of the woodcut, andmounted with the printed pages as rectos in a late eighteenthcentury album. The distribution of the watermarks con¢rms thatthe book originally consisted of 20 bifolia, folded and placed insequence. Watermarks: Letter P, not listed by Briquet or in theprinted edition of Piccard. Hen, similar, but not identical, toWasserzeichenkartei Piccard, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart Best.
J 340 (http://www.piccard-online.de, last accessed 1 July 2004),
no. 42120 (Utrecht 1445). For reproductions, see Sotheby III 26
and Palmer, ‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, 162 ill. 3. The distinctive henwatermark is known from two copies of the Canticum canticorum
blockbook edition II (Munich UB, Cim. 48, and Vienna O«NB,
Ink. 2.D.34) and from a copy of the Ars memorandi blockbook
edition III (Pavia Museo Civico, inv. 4867, item 3), which are
therefore likely to have been printed in the same workshop;
Palmer, ‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, 161^5. Printed in deep-brown ink
on one side of the paper by rubbing. The state of the blocks is similar to that of the Berlin copy, but several details and a break at thebottom of pl. n (leading to loss of the letter ‘V’ in ‘V 9’) indicate thatthe Bodleian copy is a later impression. Coloured in green, two
shades of yellow, two shades of brown, dull and bright red, £eshcolour, grey-black, and black-brown, probably by the same handthat executed the colouring of BB-7 (Canticum canticorum edition
II). Christ’s wounds and the £ow of blood at the cruci¢xion aremarked up in red or orange. On pls a^b and e^f majuscules inthe text are touched with red. The versos, which at one time were
pasted together, are blank. Many of the leaves contain the remainsof a sequence of bracketed numbers inscribed at top centre, only 6of which survived the trimming. In addition these, and two further
leaves contain pencil numbers. The plates with the numbers are as
follows (giving the bracketed number in ink ¢rst): d (4/28), f (6/14), l (^/41), m (^/42), q (14/38), .f. (24/42?), .h. (26/44), .k. (28/46). Taken together the two sets of numbers, both of which must
antedate the present binding of c.1790, provide evidence that at
one time the leaves lay in a di¡erent order, and that this order
was at one point changed. The ink numbers indicate a state when
one of the bifolia g/h, i/k, l/m, and n/o was misplaced somewhere18

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

towards the end of the book. The pencil numbers appear to referto a volume made up of more than 40 leaves, most likely from thetime when the Biblia pauperum was combined with the Canticum
canticorum (BB-7). There is further evidence, given below, that
until the late eighteenth century this book was kept together, orbound together, with the Canticum canticorum blockbook.
Tipped into the album at the front, pasted to the second £yleaf,
are notes comparing this copy with that of edition I in London
BM (Prints & Drawings), 1845^8^9, and Douce’s copy of edition
III (BB-4) signed by the biographer P. R. Head (14 Dec. 1882) andthe wood engraver W. J. Linton (1812^98), author of The Mastersof Wood-Engraving (New Haven and London, 1889) (27. May
1884).
refs. CMA I 256; [Wanley], ‘Observations’, 1508^9; Meerman I
224, 227; Heinecken, Nachrichten, II 146; Heinecken, Ide¤e, 322;
Strutt, Biographical Dictionary, II 17; Ottley, History ofEngraving, I 129^30 with note; Sotheby I 60, 64; Pr 45; SC 5143;
Schreiber, Manuel, IV 9; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 383, 404;
Rogers, Treasures, 162; Palmer, ‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, passim;
Sheppard no. 6.
Binding: Late eighteenth-century album, for the Bodleian
Library. 354 ¿ 284 ¿ 19 mm. Blind- and gold-tooled centrepiece
inboard binding by the London binder Heinrich Walther, probably dating from the 1790s. Blue straight-grained tanned morocco
over millboard. Each trimmed woodcut is inlaid into a support
sheet (340 ¿ 274 mm) without any overlap, and held in place by asecond sheet pasted across the entire verso, a black ruled ink line
disguising the join. See A. Gri⁄ths, ‘The Archaeology of the
Print’, in Collecting Prints and Drawings in Europe, c. 1500^1750,
ed. C. Baker and others (Aldershot, 2003), 9^28, at 15, for a discussion of this expensive and laborious mounting method. The inlaid
and mounted leaves are made up as sections and, with ‘antiquespot’ marbled-paper endleaves, are sewn on 6 single recessed
cords. The ¢rst and last blockbook leaves have repairs which predate the current binding. Many of the support leaves were
repaired with Japanese paper in 1995. Their edges are ploughed
and gilded. The blind- and gold-tooling is executed with one of
the Bodleian’s engraved oval centrepieces (72 ¿ 56 mm), 8 small
tools, 3 rolls, and 2 ¢llets. The spine has 6 sets of paired false single
bands, and has ‘hist. e vet. et nov. e testament’ gold-tooled tothe second panel and ‘seu e biblia e pauperum’ to the third panel.
A ticket (8 ¿ 26 mm) with ‘bound by e h. walther’ tooled inblack ink is pasted to the verso of the upper £yleaf. No evidenceof an earlier binding survives. The matching bindings of BB-6
and BB-7 are almost identical with a signed binding by Walther
illustrated as pl. XXV in Ramsden, London Bookbinders, 144^5.
This volume, now London BL, C.155.c.7 (illustrated at http://
prodigi.bl.uk/bindings/welcome/htm, last accessed 28 June
2004), shares the same 6 small tools used to frame the boards ofBB-6 and BB-7, including the distinctive ‘steeple’ or ‘crocketed
pinnacle’ tools (25 ¿ 8.5 mm and 30 ¿ 9 mm). These were also
used on 58 bindings attributed to Walther and executed before
1794 for Anthony Morris Storer, which formed part of the 1799
Storer bequest to Eton College; see R. Birley, ‘The Storer
Collection in Eton College Library’, The Book Collector, 5(1956), 115^26, at 122 and plate facing 119, and R. Birley, The
History of College Library (Eton, 1970), pl. 9. They are also foundon another signed incunable binding made by Walther for the
Bodleian Library c.1791, Auct. K 3.20 (see E-040(1)). The larger‘crocketed pinnacle’ tool was used on the vellum copy of Novelle[bb - 6 ^ bb-7

Otto (London, 1790), a signed binding c.1791 by Walther for thesecond Earl Spencer now in Manchester JRL, discussed and illustrated by H. M. Nixon, Five Centuries of English Book-binding(London, 1978), 182^3. For Walther’s binding work for the
Bodleian and the »9. 9. 0 payment by the library in 1789 for‘engraving stamps’, see K. Jensen, ‘Heinrich Walther, Christian
Samuel Kalthoeber and other London Binders: Books in the
Bodleian Library Bound by Germans Settled in London in the
Eighteenth Century’, Bibliothek und Wissenschaft, 29 (1996),
292^311, especially 304^5 and notes 46^8 (mentioning this item).
This and the matching binding on BB-7 stand out among theWalther bindings made for the Bodleian on account of theirwealth of intricate tooling, which, when taken together with thelaborious and expensive mounting method, may indicate thatthese books were particularly valued.
Provenance: Franciscus Junius (1589^1677). Bequeathed in 1677.
Formerly kept together with BB-7 as MS. Junius 31 and listed assuch in the year 1697 in CMA. Humfrey Wanley, who examined
the book in the early years of the eighteenth century, wrongly supposed it to be identical with the blockbook recorded by Hadrianus
Junius in his Batavia (written in 1568); see H. Junius, Batavia(Leiden, 1588), 256; [Wanley], ‘Observations’, 1508^9; Palmer,‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, 154^5. The volume was still shelved as MS.
Junius 31 when Gerard Meerman corresponded with BenjaminKennicott shortly before 1765; see Meerman I 224 note (s) (onlymentioning the Biblia pauperum). Schreiber, Manuel, IV 9, andSheppard mistakenly identify the Biblia pauperum with the‘Bibliorum historiae sculpturis expressae’ listed by Hyde,Catalogus (1674), 88 (a collection of about 443 sixteenth-century
engravings by Dutch artists compiled from many sources, fromJohn Selden’s library, Antiq. c.B. 1, former shelfmark: B 4.6. Th.
Seld.), a mistake which has given rise to the assignation of a
Selden provenance to the blockbook. Former Bodleian shelfmark: Auct. M 3.13. Formerly exhibited in one of the glass casesin the Arts End of Duke Humfrey’s Library, later in the Picture
Gallery (Upper Reading Room), cf. Macray (2nd edn) 463^4[1890], not so listed in the ¢rst edn; Library Records d. 1570, fol.
6r [1919]; Library Records d. 1572, fol. 2r [1921]; Library Records
d. 1571, fol. 18r [1925]; Library Records d. 1573, fol. 8r [1931].
shelfmark: Arch. G c.14.

BB-7 Canticum Canticorum[Edition II]. Incipit: ‘Osculet(ur) me osculo oris sui q(ui)a meliorasunt vbera tua viro [!]:’ (pl. 1, upper register). A cycle of 32 pictures
representing the Bride’s encounter with the Bridegroom,arranged in two registers on 16 plates, with inscriptions on
banderoles, based on motifs from the Song of Songs. A
Netherlandish inscription in edition I state II underlines the interpretation of the Bride as a pre¢guration of Mary, which is implicit
in a number of the individual pictures: ‘Dit is die voersienicheitva(n) marie(n) der mod(er) godes En(de) is gehete(n) in laty(n)ca(n)tice’ (pl. 1). Outside the blockbook tradition this distinctive
ensemble of texts and images is known only from a cycle of wall
paintings dating from about 1350 on the gallery of the church ofCistercian nuns at Chemno in Poland; cf. J. Domasowski,‘Malarstwo s¤ cienne’, in Domasowski and others, Malarstwo
gotyckie na Pomorzu Wschodnim, (Warsaw and Poznan¤, 1990),
10^58, at 11^12; J. F. Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles. Art
and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (Newbb-7]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

Haven and London, 1990), 85^7, ills 154^63; Palmer, ‘Junius’s
Blockbooks’, 147; Bartal, passim. The illustrations to the Song ofSongs in the ‘Furtmeyr Bible’, Augsburg UB, Cod. I. 3. 2o IV, arebased on the blockbook, as are the early sixteenth-century mariological wall paintings in the church of Odensvi in Va«stmanland,
Sweden. Facsimiles of edition II: Donati^Tocci, Pal. lat. 143 (pls1^9); Mu«ller and Lengenfelder, ¢che 3. For a complete transcription of the inscriptions, based on edition I, see the description of
the plates in Canticum Canticorum. Holztafeldruck von c. 1465,
ed. O. Clemen, Zwickauer Facsimiledrucke, 4 (Zwickau, 1910),
2^6.
refs. Meerman I 228^31; Ottley, History of Engraving, 138^53;
Ottley, Invention of Printing, 217^27; Sotheby I 77^120; Dutuit I
155^77; Conway 10^11, 201^2; Hind I 243^5; Donati, ‘Libri xilogra¢ci’, 221^30, 256; Donati, ‘Un errore dello Schreiber a proposito del Canticum Canticorum xilogra¢co’, Biblio¢lia, 74 (1972),
101^8; V. Hernfja«ll, ‘Ho«ga Visans Brud i O«rtagaîrden: Ett birgittinskt motiv i Odensvi’, Iconographisk post (1983), no. 3, 19^34;
Kroll, ‘Bruchstu«ck’; R. Kahsnitz, ‘Die Handschrift und ihre
Bilder’, in Die Furtmeyr-Bibel in der Universita«tsbibliothek
Augsburg: Kommentar, ed. J. Janota (Augsburg, 1990), 65^169, at
98^102, 131^2, 139^69; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 405, 439^40;
M. Engammare, ‘Das Blockbuch ‘‘Canticum canticorum’’ ^ dieerste Serie von Abbildungen des Hohenliedes’, in Blockbu«cher
des Mittelalters, 319^27; T. Petev, ‘Typology and Format in the
Netherlandish Blockbook Canticum canticorum, ca. 1465’,
Visual Resources, 13 (1998), 331^61; R. Bartal,‘‘‘Where Has your
Beloved Gone?’’: The Staging of the Quaerere Deum on the
Murals of the Cistercian Convent at Chemno’, Word and Image,16 (2000), 270^89.
[Germany, c.1469^70]. Chancery folio.
16 leaves, all with woodcuts and xylographic text. Collation: [1^82]. Edition II is a close copy based on edition I. One of 11 complete copies, the others in Berlin SB, London BL, Munich BSB,
Munich UB, Paris BnF (2 copies), Paris Louvre, Pavia Museo
Civico, San Marino HEHL, and Vienna O«NB; imperfect copies
in Munich GraphSlg and in Vienna Albertina (wants pls 5, 6, 9,
and 16); fragmentary leaves attested in Maihingen (OettingenWallerstein collection), Urbana-Champaign UIllL, andWashington NGA(R). The Cracherode copy in London BL,
which Dutuit considers to be a distinct edition, is printed fromthe blocks of edition II, with some modi¢cations by hand.
Whereas edition I was executed in the Netherlands and is datablec.1465, attested in two states (with a printed Netherlandish
inscription in state II, the spelling ‘moeder’ pointing if anything
to the eastern Netherlands), edition II was more likely executedin Germany c.1469^70. This edition is closely associated, on thebasis of common paper stocks and by the occurrence of these editions together in ‘Sammelba«nde’, with Apocalypse edition V and
Biblia pauperum edition X.
ills. Heinecken, Ide¤e, pl. 13; Sotheby I pls XIX^XX, XXII
(London BL copy); Dutuit pls 25^8, 30 (Paris Dutuit copy);
Schreiber, Manuel,VII pl. LIX (Berlin copy); Blum, Primitifs, pl.
XLVII (Louvre copy); Schreiber, Handbuch, XI pls 195^7;
Palmer,‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, 138 colour pl. II (Bodleian copy).
refs. Heinecken, Ide¤e, 374^7 (‘edition 1’); Sotheby I 83^6; Dutuit
I 167^71 (‘edition 3’); Schreiber, Manuel, IV 151^9; BMC I 6; Hind

19

I 245; CIBN I pp. xvii^xviii; Palmer, ‘Junius’s Blockbooks’,148^50.
COPY

249 ¿ 180 mm (pl. 1). In its present state this copy consists of 16
separate leaves, trimmed to the frame of the woodcut, andmounted with the printed pages as rectos of a late eighteenthcentury album. The distribution of the watermarks con¢rms thatthe book originally consisted of 8 bifolia, folded and placed insequence. Watermarks: Bull’s head, one of the non-identical pairof twins belonging to the type PiccO VII 801^74 (Briquet 15103^
11), the other to PiccO VII 221^722 (Briquet 15039^102, similar to
CIBN I pl. XXVI nos 94^5), but neither watermark ¢rmly identi¢able; possibly identical with the Bull’s head watermarks in the
Munich GraphSlg copy (inv. 10773b). Paschal lamb (Briquet 44,
cf. Stevenson^Briquet, pl. *B no. 7, similar to PiccVierf X 1725),
also found in the Munich GraphSlg copy (inv. 10773b) andattested by Stevenson in other blockbooks, namely Biblia pauperum edition I, Ars moriendi edition II, Apocalypse edition V,
and in a number of Cologne incunabula; see also Sotheby III 27;
Dutuit I 171. For illustrations, see Sotheby III pl. G, cf. p. 27,
Palmer, ‘Junius’s Blockbooks’, 162 ill. 3, discussion 161^4 (withfurther examples of the use of this watermark in incunabula).
Printed in deep-brown ink on one side of the paper by rubbing.
The state of the blocks appears to be identical with that of the
Berlin copy. Coloured in green, yellow, two shades of brown, dulland bright red, and black-brown, probably by the same hand that
executed the colouring of BB-6. The versos, formerly pasted
together, are blank. The leaves are bound in the order 1^4, 9^10,
5^6, 11^12, 7^8, 13^16 (Schreiber’s counting). This ordering of
the leaves corresponds to the original state of the Berlin SB copy
(Libr. impr. rar. fol. 141, now rebound), and to that of the
Cracherode-Verdussen copy in London BL (IC 47), and isrecorded on the basis of the latter copy by Meermann I 229 andHeinecken, Ide¤e, 374^5. Heinecken notes the order of leaves in
the Bodleian copy, thereby attesting it for the period before thevolume was rebound in the 1790s. As with the Biblia pauperum(BB-6), however, there is evidence of a double sequence of numbers, one in ink and one in pencil, positioned at the head of eachleaf, but trimmed away and only legible on pls13 (‘12’ in ink,‘53’ inpencil) and 14 (‘8’, or possibly ‘6’, in ink). The pencil number ‘53’
would appear to be evidence of a common numerical sequence forthe 40^plate Biblia pauperum and the Canticum canticorum, dating from the time when they were kept together, or boundtogether, in the Junius collection (see below). The ink numberingmight indicate a state when the leaves were disordered, with not
only the order of leaves, but also rectos and versos disturbed. A
completely satisfactory explanation of these numbers, consonantwith the evidence of the Biblia pauperum, is hard to ¢nd. The support leaves are numbered 1^16 in reddish-brown ink, in the same
hand that numbered the printed leaves of the Bodleian copy of
Apocalypse edition IV (BB-2). A further set of numbers, in pencil,
in the lower right-hand corner of each support leaf, records theideal order of the leaves as 1^2, 5^6, 3^4, 7^16 (as in the copy
described by Sotheby I 85^6), with later pencil corrections to thenumbering of pls 3^6 to bring it into line with the sequence 1^16
(as in the copies followed by Ottley, History of Engraving, 143^
52, and Schreiber, Manuel, IV 153^9).
refs. Meerman I 231; Heinecken, Nachrichten, II 190;
Heinecken, Ide¤e, 375; Ottley, Invention of Printing, 227; Sotheby

20

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

I 83^6; Dutuit I 170^1; Pr 49; Schreiber, Manuel, IV 9;
Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 383, 405; Palmer, ‘Junius’s Blockbooks’; Sheppard no. 7.
Binding: Late eighteenth-century album, for the Bodleian
Library. 354 ¿ 284 ¿ 19 mm. Blind- and gold-tooled centrepiece
inboard binding by the London binder Heinrich Walther, probably dating from the 1790s. Blue straight-grained tanned morocco
over millboard. Each trimmed woodcut is inlaid into a support
sheet (342 ¿ 274 mm) without any overlap, and held in place bypasting a second sheet across the entire verso, a black ruled ink
line disguising the join. The inlaid and mounted leaves are madeup into sections and, with‘antique spot’ marbled-paper endleaves,are sewn on 6 single recessed cords. The edges of the support
leaves are ploughed and gilded. The tooling is executed with oneof the Bodleian’s engraved oval centrepieces (72 ¿ 56 mm), 8 small
tools, 3 rolls, and 2 ¢llets. The spine has 6 sets of paired false single
bands and has ‘hist. e b. virg. e mari×’gold-tooled to the second
panel and ‘ex e cantico e canticor.’ to the third panel. A ticket(9 ¿ 26 mm) with ‘bound by e h. walther’ tooled in black ink ispasted to the verso of the upper £yleaf. No evidence of an earlier
binding survives. See BB-6, which has a matching binding, forfurther details.
Provenance: Franciscus Junius (1589^1677). Bequeathed in 1677.
Formerly kept together with BB-6 as MS. Junius 31, and still atthat shelfmark when Meerman corresponded with Kennicott
shortly before 1765 (the ¢rst explicit attestation of this item).
Kept with the book is a small label in the handwriting of E. W. B.
Nicholson, Bodley’s Librarian 1882^1912, inscribed ‘Blockbooks. The Canticles printed and coloured in the same way as
the Biblia Pauperum. Auct. M.III.12’, from the time when thisvolume was displayed in a glass case in the Arts End of Duke
Humfrey’s Library; see Macray (2nd edn) 263^4 [1890], not solisted in the ¢rst edn. For further details of the history of thisbook see under BB-6.
shelfmark: Auct. M 3.12.

BB-8 Donatus: Ars minor
Fragment.
[Donatus, Ars minor]. Incipit: ‘Artes orationis quot sunt. Octoque . . .’ If the poor survival of these ephemeral publications canbe deemed su⁄cient to allow a judgement at all, then the blockbook editions of the Ars minor served to reinforce the productionof typographically printed schools books, rather than being, as
was once thought, their precursors. There were more than 350
typographic editions of this text during the incunable period; cf.
D-124^D-147. The Bodleian leaves from the Ulm blockbook edition, which is printed on paper in chancery folio, with generous
margins, and would have displayed an elaborate woodcut borderon its opening page, indicates that there was thought to be a market for a ¢ne, and no doubt relatively expensive, edition of such anelementary school text, notwithstanding its utilitarian function.
They represent Haebler’s type three, which consists of thoseblockbook Donatuses where the xylographic text reproduces a
handwritten, as distinct from a typographic exemplar. The text isbased on the normal medieval recension, as found in the
Netherlandish and German typographic editions and printed by
Schwenke, 37^49, but with the paradigm ‘fero’ at the end after‘volo’, an additional discussion of the in£ection of passive verb
forms, and repetition of the form ‘lectum’ (see Haebler 26^7).

[bb-7^ bb- 8

Anopisthographic leaves from this edition, with a nonsensicaland aberrant text designating all the personal pronouns, including the ¢rst and second person, as ‘persone tercie’, attested in the
von Klemperer collection and in Stuttgart LB, have been interpreted by Amelung as rejected proof leaves used as binding scrap
in the Dinckmut workshop in Ulm, and provide evidence that the
text for this edition was reworked.
refs. Sotheby I 129^44; K. Haebler,‘Xylographische Donate’, Gb
Jb (1928), 15^31; Schreiber, Handbuch,VI 55^7 nos 2990^7; Hind
I 238; Donati,‘Libri xilogra¢ci’, 258; Amelung, Fru«hdruck, 173^5
no. 88; Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 406^7, 440.
[Ulm: Conrad Dinckmut, c.1476/80]. Chancery folio
A perfect copy of the xylographic 27^line edition would consist of
26 leaves, all with xylographic text, and with a decorative borderon the ¢rst leaf. The last quire, presumably of three, can be shownto have contained 10 leaves (Haebler 26). This is the only blockbook edition to contain a printer’s colophon: ‘Octo parcium orationis. donatus. Per Cuînradum. Dinckmuît Vlme(n)sis Oppidi.
Ciuem impressus ¢nit felicit(er)’ (fol. 26, Haebler’s counting).
One of 10 recorded fragments of this edition, the others inColeraine Ulster UL (1 leaf, formerly Jacques Rosenthal),Frankfurt (Main) StUB (1 leaf), Hannover KestnerM (2 leaves),
Kaufbeuren DreifaltigkeitsK (1 leaf), Leipzig DB/BuchM (2leaves, destroyed), Stuttgart LB (3 leaves, two copies of fol. 26),
Ulm StB,Wu«rzburg UB (bifolium), and attested in the private collections of Viktor Goldschmidt, Heidelberg (1 leaf, untraced),
and Victor von Klemperer, Dresden (1 leaf, untraced). For
details, see Haebler, Schreiber, and Amelung. Only 6 of the 26
leaves are attested. Haebler considers that the leaves might wellderive from two distinct editions, to which Schmidt-Ku« nsemu«ller
adds a third, whereas Amelung shows that the evidence points to asingle edition, with some variation in the form of majuscules. The
dating of this edition is determined by two factors, the attestationof the style of decorative borders on the opening page, known only
from the lost Leipzig fragment (reproduced by Weigel^
Zestermann), in books printed by Johannes Zainer in the period
up to 1476, and the watermark dating of the Stuttgart leaves to theyears 1481^3, suggesting that the blocks may have been used over a
period of years, as is likely with a xylographic school text.
ills. Sotheby I pl. XXIV no. I (Bodleian copy); Weigel^
Zestermann II no. 290 (Leipzig copy, original state); Fru«hdruckeaus der Bu«cherei Victor von Klemperer (Dresden, 1927), ill. 5;
Schramm VI pl. 1 (Leipzig copy, with modern additions);
Schmidt-Ku«nsemu«ller, 80 and 82 (Kaufbeuren copy); Ernst,
Wiegendrucke, 94 (Hannover copy); Feisenberger, ‘Ulster Gift’,pl. 1 (Coleraine/Rosenthal copy); Amelung, Fru«hdruck, ills 115
and 128 (Stuttgart copy).
refs. Haebler 24^9; Schreiber, Handbuch,VI 57 nos 2994^5; GW
VII col. 620; F. A. Schmidt-Ku«nsemu«ller, ‘Ein unbekannter xylographischer Donat’, Gb Jb (1958), 78^83; K. Ernst, Die
Wiegendrucke des Kestner-Museums, revised by C. vonHeusinger (Hannover, 1963), 94 no. 3; H. A. Feisenberger, ‘The
Henry Davis Collection II: The Ulster Gift’, The Book Collector,
21 (1972), 339^55, at 342.
COPY

2 leaves, the ¢rst wanting the ¢rst line of text and beginning ‘terito
imp(er)fecto vtina(m) legerem legeres legeret Et e pluraliter vtina(m) legeremus’, the second beginning ‘plusq(ua)m p(er)fectobb- 8^xyl-1]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

cum latus essem vel fuissem esses’; probably fols 20 and 26 of the
26^leaf edition (Haebler). 281/290 mm (printed area 224 ¿151 mm, originally 27 lines), and 289 ¿ 198 mm (printed area
155 ¿ 145 mm, 12 lines and 4^line colophon). Printed in black
printer’s ink in a press on both sides of the paper; the second
leaf, the last of the book, with a blank verso. The space for a 3^line deep initial on the verso of the ¢rst leaf has been left blank.
No colouring. Worm-holes and minor damage to both leaves.
Both the leaves, although much cleaned and restored, show tracesof brown paste. This, taken together with marks which appear tobe the o¡set from turn-ins, suggests that the leaves served as pastedowns in an early-modern binding. In their present state theleaves are preserved as separate items, trimmed, and inlaid into
handmade wove-paper support sheets (375 ¿ 259 mm) which predate the current guard-book binding. Both leaves have earlier
repairs with a white handmade laid paper, and the trimmed
remains of an earlier inlaid support sheet.

21

Binding: Mid- or late nineteenth-century guard-book, for the
Bodleian Library. 410 ¿ 302 ¿ 35 mm. Blind-tooled inboard binding. Drab olive-green tanned calf over millboard. The tooling is
executed with a three- and four-line ¢llet, and one roll. The spinehas ‘donatus. e fragmenta e varia’ gold-tooled to the second
panel. The second leaf has a window mount of machine-madelaid paper (watermark: ‘[Abbey M]ills e [Greenf]ield’), possibly
from a twentieth-century Bodleian exhibition, tipped to therecto of its support sheet.
Provenance: Georg Franz Burkhard KloÞ (1787^1854); sale 1835,
cf. Sotheby I 134 note À. Samuel Butler (1774^1839); sale, part 3(Christie’s 1841), lot 144. Purchased for »26. 5. 0; see Books
Purchased (1841), 13. See D-124 for further details.
shelfmark: Auct. 2Q inf. 1.50.(14).

refs. Sotheby I 134 no. 1; Pr 10; Schreiber, Handbuch, VI 57 no.
2994; Schramm VI 3 and 18 (assigning the Bodleian Library
copy to the British Museum); Hind I 258; Blockbu«cher desMittelalters, 383, 407; Sheppard no. 8.

Woodcut and Metalcut Single Sheets
XYL-1 The Agony in The Garden of Gethsemane, etc.
(Sto«ger-Passion)
XYL-1.1 Christ Washing Peter’s feet, and The Last
Supper; The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.
[Southern Germany (Bavaria?), c.1455^ 60]. Metalcuts (dotted
prints) with Latin inscription.
Schr. 2232. The picture of Christ washing Peter’s feet and the Last
Supper is printed on the recto. Christ kneels, to the left in the foreground, washing the feet of Peter, who is seated to the right andwhose right foot is placed in the basin. Behind this group is a second scene, the Last Supper, in which Christ is shown seated at thecentre of the table with his disciples on either side. He is shown
wearing a di¡erent long-sleeved gown and raising his right handin blessing. John rests his head on Christ’s bosom. The table isdecked with a cloth, on which has been placed a pretzel, a knife,a plate containing a ¢sh, and a piece of bread. Judas, the only ¢gure with no halo, is seated in front of the table, his head raised, andotherwise largely obscured by the group in the foreground. One offour recorded copies, the others in Berlin Kupferstichkab,
Munich BSB, and Vienna Albertina.
ills. A. Stix, Die Einblattdrucke des XV. Jahrhunderts in derKupferstichsammlung der Hofbibliothek zu Wien. 2. Bd.: Die
Schrotschnitte (Vienna, 1920), pl. V ill. 34 (Vienna copy);
Haebler, Leiden Christi, pl.VIII ill. 24 (Bodleian copy); Aderlass
und Seelentrost, 276 (Berlin copy); Schmidt, Gedruckte Bilder, ill.
283 (Vienna copy); Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 16.
Schr. 2243. The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane is printed on
the verso. Christ is portrayed as a robed ¢gure, with hands foldedin prayer, kneeling in the garden, which is surrounded by a wattle
fence. Above Christ a banderole inscribed ‘Pa eter si possibile est

transfe.’ (standing for a variant reading of Mt 26,39: ‘Si possibile
est, transfer a me calicem / transferat a me calix iste’; see Schr.
2240a). Three disciples are sleeping in the foreground. The one in
the middle has a book, which rests on the fence.To the right, inside
the garden, there rises a cli¡ surmounted by the chalice, above
which the blessing hand of God emerges from the clouds, surrounded by stars. To the left a closed gate, behind which two soldiers (the second scarcely visible in this impression) and threelances are to be seen. One of ¢ve recorded copies, the others in
Berlin Kupferstichkab, Munich BSB, Paris BnF, and Vienna
Albertina.
ills. H. Delaborde, Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History,trans. R. A. M. Stevenson (London, 1886), 43 ¢g. 13 (Paris copy);
Bouchot II pl. 9 no. 11 (Paris copy); Stix pl.V ill. 35 (Vienna copy);
Haebler, Leiden Christi, pl.VIII ill. 24 (Bodleian copy); BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 17.
XYL-1.1^2 belong to a cycle of metalcuts with 16, 18, or 20 scenes
extending from the Entry into Jerusalem to the Last Judgement
and known from the Munich copy as the Sto«ger-Passion (orLeiden Christi), designed to be printed on small leaves with thedimensions of chancery 8o and often made up into a booklet.
Schreiber dates them c.1460 and localizes them on the Upper
Rhine, whereas Schmidt has recently argued that they are most
likely Bavarian on the basis of the language of the associatedGerman texts. One print from the cycle is attested in a manuscript
prayerbook dated 1458 (Munich, Hartung & Karl, auction 14, 19^
20 Nov. 1975, no. 8; see Cermann). Those copies for which the original codicological structure can be determined were mostly somanufactured that they could be assembled in a single quire,with the illustrations printed on one side of the paper (versos inthe ¢rst half and rectos in the second half of the quire) and22

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

handwritten or printed prayers in German on the reverse of theleaves. Four such copies of the Sto«ger-Passion survive with handwritten text (Berlin Kupferstichkab, Cim. 23, wanting four leaves;
Vienna Albertina, Inv.-Nr. 727^744/1929, complete cycle of 20
illustrations; the Scripps fragment in Detroit, Institute of Arts,
inv. no. 09.1S338, Schr. 2324; and two reused leaves inserted into
the manuscript codex Paris BnF, Ea 4 re¤s., Schr. 2302 and 2442).
There are fragments of ¢ve typographic copies made up in thesame way (formerly Braunau, Langer collection, text leaf only,
printed on both sides of the paper; Dresden Kupferstichkab,
Schr. 2253 and 2474; London BM (Prints & Drawings), formerly
IA 15111, Schr. 2324; London BM (Prints & Drawings), formerly
IA 15112, with 8 leaves listed by Dodgson, Catalogue, I 171^5, and
BMC III 706; Weimar SchloÞmuseum, Schr. 2395). The type of
the German incunable editions, which is modelled on that usedby Gutenberg for the 36^line and 42^line Bibles, is attributed to
the Printer of the 1462 Almanac (see GW 1287, now in Princeton,
Scheide Library) and datable c.1460/1. Ulrich Han and Johannes
Numeister have been thought likely candidates for identi¢cation
with the printer (see Geldner). In addition to the fragments, thereis the complete incunable edition of the Leiden Christi, as
described by Sto«ger, in Munich BSB, 8o Inc. s.a. 104m (Cim. 62b/
1, BSB-Ink L-94), which has the full cycle of 20 illustrations and isbound together with the Sieben Freuden Mariae, an exactly comparable illustrated prayer cycle made up in the same way consisting of eight otherwise unattested metalcuts and their texts andprinted with a di¡erent state of the same type (BSB-Ink S-379;
see Schr. 2181). In the Munich volume the illustrations are printed
back to back, as is the case with the Bodleian leaves, and interleaved with separately printed pages of text. The Braunau leaf,
for which see Haebler, Leiden Christi, pl.VI ills 17^18, must derivefrom a copy constructed in the same way. A further developmentin the use of the Passion cycle was the production of an Italian vernacular edition, known only from the so-called ‘Rosenthal fragments’ now in New Orleans, Edward Alexander Parsons Library,
designed as a cycle of 16 illustrations to be printed back to backand assembled with interleaved typographic text leaves, attributable to a printer schooled in the tradition of Gutenberg’s workshop
and arguably datable not much later than 1462. The Italian type isrelated to that used at a later date for Ulrich Han’s edition ofJohannes de Turrecremata, Meditationes (Rome, 31 Dec. 1467,
HC 15722). The date of the Rosenthal fragments, which would
appear to be the earliest surviving example of Italian vernacular
printing, and their origin (Germany? Italy? Foligno? Bologna/
Piacenza?) are the subject of controversy between Haebler,
Donati, Wehmer, and Geldner. It is in this context, as Field hassuggested, that the Bodleian leaves, one of the earliest printed
items in the library’s collections, need to be seen (see below).
refs. F. X. Sto«ger, Zwei der a«ltesten deutschen Druckdenkma«ler(Munich, 1833); W. H.Willshire, A Descriptive Catalogue of Early
Prints in the British Museum.Vol. 1: German and Flemish Schools(London, 1879), 68^75; Weigel^Zestermann II 242^54 no. 338;
Schreiber, Manuel, III 109^10; Dodgson, Catalogue, I 171^5;
Stix 5^8 nos 33^50; Schreiber, Meister der Metallschneidekunst,
18^19; Haebler, Leiden Christi, passim; Schreiber, Handbuch, V
117 no. 2500, with cross-references; Dodgson, Prints in the
Dotted Manner,18^20 nos 50^58; L. Donati,‘Passio Domini nostri
Iesu Christi. Frammento tipogra¢co della Biblioteca Parsoniana’,
Biblio¢lia, 56 (1954), 181^215; C. Wehmer, ‘Vdalricus Gallus deBienna. Notizen zu einem Aufsatz von Lamberto Donati’, in[x y l-1

Contributi alla storia del libro italiano. Miscellanea in onore diLamberto Donati, Biblioteca de bibliogra¢a italiana, 57(Florence, 1969), 325^57; F. Geldner, ‘Zum fru«hsten deutschenunditalienischen
Buchdruck(Mainz^Baiern^Foligno.
Johannes Neumeister und Ulrich Han?)’, Gb Jb (1979), 18^38;
Field, ‘Art Institute’; Baurmeister 54; Fleischmann, Metallschnitt, 130^8; P. Schmidt, ‘Rhin supe¤ rieur ou Bavie're?
Localisation et mobilite¤ des gravures au milieu du XVe sie'cle’,
Revue de l’art, 120 (1998), 68^88, at 81^3; R. Cermann, in H.
Fru«hmorgen-Voss, continued by N. H. Ott and U. Bodemann,
Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften desMittelalters, vol. 5 part 1/2 (Munich, 2002), 50^3 no. 43.1.16;
Cermann, in Aderlass und Seelentrost, 275^7; Schmidt,
Gedruckte Bilder, 273^92; Griese (in preparation).
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. 101 ¿ 75 mm (metalcuts 101 ¿75 mm). Chain-lines vertical. No watermark visible. Printed inblack ink in a press on both sides of the paper. Coloured ingreen, blue, brown, and yellow. Cropped close to the printed
area. Schr. 2232 is represented here by an intermediate state of
the plate, lacking two nail marks that are clearly visible on thelater impression in Munich (Haebler, Leiden Christi, 24). Thisleaf, together with XYL-1.2, was removed in Feb. 1887 from asmall-format Greek book of hours printed in median 16 o (113 ¿85 mm) by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1497 (Auct. 1R. 5.34; H169), where it was pasted inside the upper board of a contemporary Italian blind-tooled brown leather binding (with Schr. 2232
uppermost). The pastedowns to which the metalcuts were a⁄xed
are completely blank, but the blind impression of handwriting on
the upper £yleaf, facing the pastedown, indicates that a leaf withwritten text has been removed. Handwritten notes by E. W. B.
Nicholson (1849^1912) on both pastedowns record the removalof the metalcut leaves; see also the corresponding statement in
his catalogue.
The printing of the illustrations back to back, suggesting that the
text was to be interleaved or ^ very much less likely ^ that this wasa picture cycle without text, is only otherwise attested in the complete copy of the Leiden Christi in Munich, which has German
text, and in the Rosenthal fragments in New Orleans, which have
Italian text. In view of their provenance, having been extracted
from the Italian binding of an incunable printed in Venice, it
seems most probable that the Bodleian leaves are fragments of
the Italian incunable edition. This is corroborated by the printingof Schr. 2424 and 2376 back to back, as in the Italian edition,
where they appear to have constituted nos 12 and 13 in a cycle of16, whereas in the Munich Leiden Christi these illustrations are
printed on di¡erent leaves and constitute nos 15 and 16 (fols 24 v
and 26r) of a cycle of 20 images (see Cermann, in: Fru« hmorgenVoss and others, 51). Haebler’s observation that the Bodleian
impression of Schr. 2232 represents an earlier state of the plate
than the German edition in Munich and the similarity of the colouring, if this can be accorded evidential value, to that found in
the German copies are grounds for supposing that the printing
may have been executed by a German printer in Germany. The
priority of the Bodleian impression is also an argument for a relatively early date for the Italian edition. Haebler, Leiden Christi, 39
describes this leaf as representing a‘5th edition (?)’of the metalcut
Passion cycle.

xyl-1^xyl-2]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

refs. Schreiber, Manuel, III 19^20 and 23^4; Schreiber,
Handbuch, V 24^5 and 29; Dodgson, Catalogue, I 172; Haebler,
Leiden Christi, 22 n. 1, 24, 39; Field, ‘Art Institute’, 205;
Nicholson nos 51^2. Schreiber’s manifestly incorrect account of
the Bodleian leaves is repeated by Dodgson and only partiallycorrected by Haebler.
Binding: Mounted between glass plates and kept, together with
XYL-1.2, in a dark blue case, made for the Bodleian and inscribed‘early col. prints (munich passion series)’. 156 ¿ 131 ¿20 mm.
Provenance: The host volume was purchased by the Bodleian in
1840. See H-169. Former Bodleian shelfmark: Arch. G f.7(1).
Formerly exhibited in one of the glass cases in the Arts End inDuke Humfrey’s Library, later in the Picture Gallery (Upper
Reading Room), see Library Records d. 1570, fol. 6 r [1919];
Library Records d. 1572, fol. 1r [1921]; Library Records d. 1571,
fol. 18r [1925]; Library Records d. 1573, fol. 8r [1931].
shelfmark: Arch. G f.6.

XYL-1.2 Christ’s Descent into Hell; Resurrection of
Christ[Southern Germany (Bavaria?), c.1455^ 60]. Metalcuts (dotted
prints) with Latin inscription.
Schr. 2424. Christ’s Descent into Hell is printed on the recto.
Christ, robed but revealing his wounds, and with the banner ofvictory over his left shoulder, stands on the broken gates of Helland takes Adam by the right arm. Adam is standing inside thegabled entrance to Hell, which stands in £ames. A second ¢gure,wearing a hair shirt and thus identi¢able as John the Baptist,kneels before him. Between them, to the left, stands Eve. To theleft of the entrance two devils are to be seen, one standing above
the other. The black background is ornamented with white arabesques and £owers. One of six recorded copies, the others in
Berlin Kupferstichkab, London BM (Prints & Drawings),
Munich BSB, Nuremberg GermNM, and Vienna Albertina.
ills. F. T. Schulz, Die Schrotbla«tter des Germanischen Nationalmuseums zu Nu«rnberg, Einblattdrucke des fu«nfzehnten Jahrhunderts, 13 (Strasbourg, 1908), pl. 8 (Nuremberg copy); Stix pl.VIII
ill. 48 (Vienna copy); Dodgson, Prints in the Dotted Manner, I pl.
XIII ill. 55 (London copy); Fleischmann, Metallschnitt, pl. 44(Nuremberg copy).
Schr. 2376. The Resurrection of Christ is printed on the verso.
Christ, partly clothed with a cloak and raising the banner of victory in his left hand, rises with one foot stepping out of the tomb,which occupies the centre of the picture and is ornamented with afrieze of triangles and trefoils. In the foreground, to the left, lies asleeping warrior with his halberd, and to the right a sleeping
watchman, whose long naked sword has fallen to the ground. In
the background, to the left, a mountain from which rise four
trees. Here too the black background is ornamented with whitearabesques and £owers.Thought by Lehrs to be copied, in reverse,
omitting the angel and the third watchman, from an engraving by
the Master of the Playing Cards or his school (Lehrs I 157 no. 10).
One of six recorded copies, the others in Berlin Kupferstichkab,
London BM (Prints & Drawings), Munich BSB, Nuremberg
GermNM, and Vienna Albertina.
ills. R. Muther, Die deutsche Bu«cherillustration der Gothik und
Fru«hrenaissance (1460^1530) (Munich and Leipzig, 1884), II 1

23

(Munich copy); Schulz pl. 7 (Nuremberg copy); Stix pl. VIII
ill. 44 (Vienna copy); Fleischmann, Metallschnitt, pl. 43(Nuremberg copy); Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 14.
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. 103 ¿ 75 mm (metalcuts 101 ¿75 mm). Chain-lines vertical. No watermark visible. Printed inblack ink in a press on both sides of the paper. Coloured ingreen, blue, brown, and yellow. Cropped close to the printed
area. Schr. 2376 represents the third state of this plate, as
described by Schreiber, in which the lower part of the tomb andareas of the background have been e¡aced, and with the heads ofnails in black in the four corners, as also attested in the Munich
printed edition and in the individual leaf in London. Haebler,
Leiden Christi, 38 (no. A.6) incorrectly describes the Bodleianleaf as an impression of Schr. 2376 printed on one side of thepaper.
refs. Lehrs I 157^8 no. 10a; Schreiber, Manuel, III 65; Schreiber,
Handbuch, V 74^5 and 91; Dodgson, Catalogue, I 172; Haebler,
Leiden Christi, 22 n. 1, 38; Field, ‘Art Institute’, 205; Nicholsonnos 65^6.
Binding: As XYL-1.1.
Provenance: Removed in 1887 from the same volume as XYL-1.1,
where this leaf was pasted inside the lower board (with Schr. 2376
uppermost). It is reported in its original state by Nicholson.
Former Bodleian shelfmark: Arch. G f.7(1). Formerly exhibited
together with XYL-1.1.
shelfmark: Arch. G f.7.

XYL-2 Almanac
Fragment.
[England, ¢rst quarter 16th century, c.1522/3]. Woodcut withxylographic and handwritten inscriptions in Latin.
A complete copy of this almanac would have consisted of a single
long narrow strip of parchment approximately 770 ¿ 126 mm(printed area c.740 ¿ 103 mm) that could be folded to form asmall rectangular book. The strip was to be folded down the middle with the calendar on the inside, and then again in concertina
fashion into about 15 compartments. An unfolded section(approximately 13 cm) was to be left at one end, which could be
used to wrap round the book to form a protective cover. The overall dimensions when folded would have been approximately 65 ¿45 mm. Slits extending across half the width, either to the right orto the left, were made at the beginning of every second month, sothat two panels could be folded out, making it possible to the viewthe calendar for two months at a time; see BÖrthy,‘En dansk billedkalender’, 71, with an illustration of a Danish calendar of similar design; Gumbert, ‘In plaats van zakagenda’s’, ill. 2, Latin
calendar for the diocese of Utrecht. These details can be inferredfrom complete copies of an almost exactly identical xylographic
edition printed by ‘M. S.’ and preserved in copies dated by hand
to 1537, 1538, and 1542 in London BL, C.36.aa.5, C.41.a.28, andC.29.c.6; four further copies in private and institutional collections are cited by Bosanquet, English Printed Almanacks, 78,
who does not distinguish between the di¡erent editions. One of
the London BL copies (C.36.aa.5) is kept in a small leather
pocket, which is likely to be contemporary, and could have beenused as a pocket-book. In the complete copies the recto (to befolded inwards) begins at the top with a lunar table, then a rota24

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

computistica, divided into 24 segments, with an image of the cruci¢xion with Mary and John at the centre and the symbols of theevangelists in the four corners, beneath which the 12 months arepresented in horizontal blocks to form a perpetual calendar. The
information for each month is set out in ¢ve rows: a list of principal saints’ days, a pictoriated representation of the saints’ days as
busts or emblems, the dominical letters, and two sets of golden
numbers (represented by pentadic symbols), the ¢rst handwritten
in red for calculating the ecclesiastical new moon, and the second,
printed in black, for calculating the real new moon. The calendar
is followed by a table of eight items, listing the notable eras andreigns, with the years given both in roman numerals (with spaces
to be ¢lled in by hand) and in symbolic form (thousands in black,hundreds, tens, and single years in red).The verso has 12 compartments, occupying half the width of the almanac when opened,with conventional pictures illustrating the occupations of themonths and the names of the months in Latin. Opposite each picture, to the right, is a circle with lines radiating from the centre in
red and black, indicating the number of daylight and night-timehours during the month. That the xylographic almanac is derived,in content and layout, from an earlier manuscript tradition isclear from a continental manuscript copy dated 1432, almost
identical in design with the xylographic editions, MS. Douce 71,
with which this item was formerly bound together; Watson,
Dated and Datable MSS Oxford, no. 452 and ill. 349. Bosanquet,
English Printed Almanacks, 9, refers to another such manuscript,
dated1433, in his own collection, now NewYork PML, M 941. For
further manuscript precursors and parallels to the xylographic
folding calendars, see Koledarcíek iz leta 1415. (Orig. in the
Possession of the National and University Library of Ljubljana.
<Ms. 160>). Pocket Calendar for the Year 1415, ed. K. Rapos› a.
Text by J. Dolar. English translation by M. Cregeen (Ljubljana,1986); J. P. Gumbert, ‘U«ber Faltbu«cher, vornehmlich
Almanache’, in Ru« ck^Boghardt, 111^21; A. von Euw, Die Handschriften und Einzelbla«tter des Schnu«tgen-Museums Ko«ln:
Bestandskatalog (Koln, 1997), 94^9, colour plate no. 12; ‘‘The Artof the Book from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance: A
Journey through a Thousand Years’’, catalogue Dr. Jo«rn Gu«nther
Antiquariat (Boston and Hamburg, 2000), no. 24 (colour pl.);Spiegel der Seligkeit: Privates Bild und Fro«mmigkeit im Spa«tmittelalter, exhibition catalogue of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum 2000 (Nuremberg, 2000), 346^8 no. 169 (colour pl.);Gumbert, ‘In plaats van zakagenda’s. Laatmiddeleeuwse kalenderhandschriften’, Madoc, 17 (2003), 215^22, at 219^22 (withills 2^3).
The Bodleian fragment, which preserves only the calendar andoccupations of the months for September to December, and thetable of notable eras and reigns, represents an otherwise unattested edition. The black lettering is xylographic, the red letteringand both black and red pentadic symbols handwritten. Evidenceof the date of this edition is provided by the table of notable eras,
which contains an item ‘A passione s(an)cti thome CCC XXX’,referring to the 330 years from the death of St Thomas Becket in
1170 to 1500, with a space for handwritten additions for the years
after this date. That the calendar was designed or, more likely,
revised for use in England is evident from the major saints’ days
listed in the upper register of the tables for the months, which
include Leodegarius (2 Oct.), Eduwardus (King Edward I, 13
Oct.), E(d)mundus (Edmund of Abingdon, 16 Nov.), and
Edmundus (King Edmund, 20 Nov.).

[x yl- 2 ^x y l-3

ills. Bosanquet, English Printed Almanacks, pl. III.
refs. E. F. Bosanquet, English Printed Almanacks andPrognostications. Bibliographical History to the Year 1600
(London, 1917), 14^16 and 77^8 (no. II); STC 388 (of which STC
392 is another copy); L. BÖrthy,‘En dansk billedkalender fra 1513’,
Folkeminder, 12 (1966), 57^84; B. Capp, English Almanacs 1500^
1800. Astrology and the Popular Press (Ithaca, NY, 1979), 25^6with n. 24; J. B. Friedman, ‘Harry the Haywarde and Talbat his
Dog: An Illustrated Girdlebook from Worcestershire’, in Art into
Life. Collected Papers from the Kresge Art Museum Medieval
Symposia, ed. C. G. Fisher and K. L. Scott (East Lansing, Mich.,
1995), 115^53, at 135; K. Ayre, Medieval English Figurative
Roundels, Corpus vitrearum medii aevi: Great Britain ^Summary Catalogue, 6 (Oxford, 2002), p. li ¢g. 5 (xylographic
strip calendar in Brideswell Museum, Norwich); Gothic: Art for
England, 302^3 no. 169 (with a colour reproduction of a xylographic almanac in the Pepys Library, Magdalene College,
Cambridge).
COPY

Parchment fragment (originally a long narrow strip). 266 ¿126 mm (woodcut 260 ¿ 110 mm), when folded 65 ¿ 45 mm.
Printed in black ink in a press on both sides of the parchment.
Coloured in red, green, and pink. The section that has been preserved was originally folded into 12 panels, with slits to the left
after October and December. The calendar is dated variously, by
handwritten additions to the table of notable eras (the additions
indicated here by italic), to 1507, 1517, 1522, and 1523: ‘Ab incarnacio(n)e domini M vcxxii’, i.e 1522, and in symbolic numbers ‘I+++++ ++ iii’, i.e. 1523, ‘A passione s(an)cti thome CCC XXX
vii’, i.e. 1507 (Thomas Becket martyred in 1170), and ‘A coronacione regis xxxiii’, i.e. the 33rd regnal year of King Henry VII,
which was 1517. Bosanquet, English Printed Almanacks, 15^16
indicates that such discrepancies are the rule in copies of xylographic calendars.
refs. SC IV 511^12; Douce Legacy, 118.
Binding: Nineteenth-century quarter deep-red/burgundy morocco over marbled pasteboards, made for the Bodleian. 138 ¿185 ¿ 7 mm.
Provenance: Francis Douce (1757^1834). Bequeathed in 1834.
Probably to be identi¢ed with the ‘Runic almanac’ which Doucerecords in a notebook that he was lent in 1793; MS. Douce e. 74,
fol. 1v ; see also Douce’s notebook on calendars, MS. Douce e. 20,
fol. 51r. The leaf was bound together with a manuscript copy onparchment of the same almanac (Netherlandish, dated 1432; SC
21645; Douce Legacy, no. 176) and a printed pamphlet, The pronosticacion calculed by mayster Jaspar Laet [Gaspaer Laet theYounger] of Andwarpe . . . for the yere of our lorde god.
M.D.xxxiij. ([Antwerp? 1533]), STC 482.5, now kept as Douce L
646, which together formed MS. Douce 71. In Oct. 1882 the two
printed items were removed from MS. Douce 71 and boundseparately.
shelfmark: Douce A 632*.

XYL-3 Andrea, Zoan: Ornamental design with naked
putti and sphinxes[Italy (Venice), c.1530].Woodcut book cover with monogram.
Two woodcuts printed side by side. The design for the upperboard, printed to the right, consists of an escutcheon set in thexyl-3^xyl-5]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

centre of a circular band surrounded by four naked putti holding
cornucopia and lilies and occupying an oblong panel, set against
a woven trellised background. Between the two putti at the top is asmall plaque, surmounted by a £owering plant and bearing themonogram ‘Z. A.’. Single-lined frame. The second woodcut, thatfor the lower board, to the left, has an escutcheon set in the centre
of a circular band surrounded by two naked putti above, ¢ghting
each other with toys, and two sphinxes seated below, and occupying an oblong panel, set against a woven trellised background.
Single-lined frame. Two vertical chequered strips in the centre of
the sheet are designed as ornament for the spine of a book.
Evidently intended as an outer paper cover to be pasted to thebinding of a volume in 4o. One of two almost identical editions,printed from di¡erent blocks. The ¢rst of these is known from theBodleian copy and from a pair of book covers in the Essling collection, now separated from the volume they once contained,
whereas the second forms the covers of the only attested copy ofDonato con strutto nouamente correto (Venice: Guilielmus deFontaneto, 26 July 1532), also in the Essling collection (Esslingno. 444, illustrated I 394^5), signed with the monogram ‘Z. B.’.
The monogram ‘Z. A.’ is that of Zoan (Juan) Andrea Vavassori,attested in the period 1515^72 as a Venetian printer, editor, bookseller, cartographer, and engraver, for whom see Essling IV
109^16.
ills. Essling I 396^7 (Essling copy); Baer, Holzschnitte, pl. 15(Essling copy); Sander, Copertine, pls IX, X (Essling copy);
Sander VI ills 865^6 (Essling copy); Rauch sale catalogue no. 3(Geneva, 1953), 45 no. 62 (Bodleian copy).
refs. L. Baer, Mit Holzschnitten verzierte Buchumschla«ge des XV.
und XVI. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt a.M., 1923), no. IX.
COPY

Chancery half-sheet, divided into two separate leaves: 202 ¿139 mm (woodcut for the lower board 200 ¿ 132 mm); 202/3 ¿140 mm (woodcut for the upper board 199 ¿ 128 mm). Chainlines horizontal. The watermark, which is divided between the
two leaves and is unidenti¢ed, has elements similar to a cardinal’s
hat with monogram (see Briquet 3413, 3484). Printed in black ink
in a press on one side of the paper. The position of the watermark
leaves no doubt that the woodcut with two putti and two sphinxes
was printed to the left, and that with four putti to the right.
Uncoloured. Traces of paste on the reverse. Described by Rauchas a proof copy. The outer edges of the leaves have been trimmed,
incurring partial loss of the frames. The escutcheon on the woodcut to the left is inscribed in a sixteenth-century hand with the letter ‘A’, that on the right with ‘V’, possibly for ‘AndreaVavassori’.
Binding: Mounted on card and kept in a folder made for the
Bodleian.
Provenance: Albert Ehrman (1890^1969); purchased from
Nicolas Rauch of Geneva in 1953 for »180; ledger no. ‘R 1138’.
Presented in 1978 by John Ehrman.
shelfmark: Broxb. 95.34.

XYL-4 Angel Playing the Lute; Judith[Italy (Venice?), ¢rst half 16th century]. Woodcut with inscription, probably designed as a book cover.
Two woodcuts printed side by side, divided by a vertical black
strip intended for the spine when a⁄xed to a bookcover. The
woodcut to the left shows an angel, portrayed as a half-length25

winged ¢gure playing a lute, at the centre of an oblong panel. He
is surrounded by an arabesque design made up of tendrils,
acanthus and vine leaves, £owers and masks, standing out likethe main design in white on black. The woodcut to the right portrays Judith as a standing ¢gure in an oblong panel, barefoot, witha raised naked sword in her right hand and the head of Holofernes
in her left. The black background is inscribed ‘ivdit’. Both panels
are set against a stippled background, black on white. Evidently
designed to be pasted to the boards of a pasteboard binding in 8 o.
Unique copy.
ills: Rauch sale catalogue no. 3 (Geneva, 1953), 41^2 no. 57.
COPY

Chancery quarter-sheet, divided into two separate leaves: 148 ¿80 mm (trimmed to the edges of the woodcut for the lower
board); 148 ¿ 97 mm (woodcut for the upper board 148 ¿80 mm, black strip to the left 146 ¿ 15 mm). Chain-lines vertical.
No watermark. Printed in black ink in a press on one side of thepaper. Uncoloured. Traces of paste on the reverse. Described by
Rauch as a proof copy.
Binding: Mounted on card and kept in a folder made for the
Bodleian.
Provenance: Albert Ehrman (1890^1969); purchased from
Nicolas Rauch of Geneva in 1953 for »107. 10. 0; ledger no. ‘R1139’. Presented in 1978 by John Ehrman.
shelfmark: Broxb. 95.32.

XYL-5 Annunciation to the Shepherds; Device of Jean
Belot
[Switzerland(?), early 16th century].Woodcut with monogram.
Two woodcuts printed side by side. In that to the left an angel
appears, holding a banderole, to two shepherds, the ¢rst standing
and extending his hand to a second shepherd, to the right, who isseated on the ground. The scene is surrounded by decorated columns from which branches extend to form an arch. Unique copy.
In the second woodcut the monogram ‘I B’, linked by tendrils, isinscribed in a shield with three stars, a⁄xed to a tree trunk. In theupper part of the shield there is an inscription ‘Ma’. The background is formed of scrolls and £owering plants. The monogramis that of the printer Jean Belot, who is attested in Lausanne in
1491, and in Geneva 1495^1512. The ¢rst state of the woodcut
with the monogram, which has ‘R’ (for ‘Rouen’) instead of ‘Ma’
inscribed on the shield, is found in books printed by Belot in the
period up to 1500.
ills. E. H. Gaullieur, ‘E¤tudes sur la typographie genevoise du
XVe au XIXe sie'cles et sur l’introduction de l’imprimerie en
Suisse’, Bulletin de l’Institut National Genevois, 2/1 (1855), 32^
292 (repr. Nieuwkoop, 1971), pl. II,4 (I B monogram, ¢rst state);
P. Heitz, Genfer Buchdrucker- und Verlegerzeichen im XV., XVI.,
und XVII. Jahrhundert (Strasbourg, 1908), no. 12 (I B monogram,¢rst state); M.-L. Polain, Marques des imprimeurs et libraires en
France au XVe sie'cle (Paris, 1926), 16 no. 17 (I B monogram, ¢rst
state); W. J. Meyer, Die franzo«sischen Drucker- und Verlegerzeichen des XV. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1926), 27 no. 12 (I B monogram, ¢rst state); Rauch sale catalogue no. 3 (Geneva, 1953), 43
no. 59 (with illustration of both woodcuts); Loµkko«s, Gene've, 170,
197 (I B monogram, ¢rst state).
refs. H. Delarue,‘Les de¤buts de l’imprimeur Jean Belot a' Gene've
et ses bre¤viaires de Lausanne’, Genava, 3 (1925), 297^307.

26

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

COPY

Chancery quarter-sheet. 120 ¿ 181 mm (printed area: 118 ¿78 mm; 117 ¿ 80 mm; 20 mm apart). Chain-lines vertical. No
watermark. The woodcuts printed side by side in black ink in apress on one side of the paper. Uncoloured. There are traces ofpaste on the reverse. Described by Rauch as a proof copy.
Binding: Mounted on card and kept in a folder made for the
Bodleian.
Provenance: Albert Ehrman (1890^1969); purchased from
Nicolas Rauch of Geneva in 1953 for »65; ledger no. ‘R 1140’.
Presented in 1978 by John Ehrman.
shelfmark: Broxb. 95.33.

XYL-6 Assumption of the Virgin[Italy (Bologna?), c.1491].Woodcut book cover.
The Virgin Mary in a long robe, crowned and with a halo, her
hands pressed together in a gesture of prayer, surrounded by aglory, is seated on the arc of the ¢rmament within a mandorla. To
her left and right are two naked putti playing musical instruments.
Above her there is a haloed head with two trumpets issuing fromthe mouth, within an arc from which tongues of ¢re descend;beneath her feet the head of an angel. The mandorla is supported
by four clothed angels positioned in the corners of the outer
frame. A second impression of this woodcut is known from the¢rst page [a1r] of the unique copy of the Miracoli della Madonna,
Bologna: Guiglermo Piemontese, 14 June 1491, formerly in theAntonio Bertoloni, Fairfax Murray, and Tammaro de Marinis
collections; see Catalogue d’une collection d’anciens livres a' ¢gures
italiens appartenant a' Tammaro de Marinis, introd. by S. de Ricci(Milan, 1925), no. 122 with pl. CXLVI; Sander 4310 with pl. 466.
This edition forms the basis on which an approximate date andplace of origin can be assigned to the woodcut.
refs. Nixon, Broxbourne, 38 (brief notice).
COPY

Chancery half-sheet. Two identical impressions printed side byside on one side of a half-sheet of heavy chancery paper. 255 ¿349 mm (woodcuts 206 ¿ 144 mm; 206 ¿ 144 mm; 14 mm apart);
the measurements of the sheet, as given here, include the turn-ins.
Chain-lines horizontal. No watermark visible. Printed in redbrown ink, probably in a press. The condition is good, although alittle rubbed. The printed sheet with the two woodcuts was folded
and turned in on all edges, in order to serve as a one-piece, limp
paper-case binding for a slim printed book in 4 o (c.212 ¿155 mm), which appears to have been removed in the mid-twentieth century. According to Alfred Ehrman’s acquisitions ledger, at
R 284, it was an ‘Orazione Funerale, Florence 1574’ (with an
added note ‘taken out ^ not contemp.’), no longer in the
Broxbourne collection and most likely to be identi¢ed with oneof several printed funeral orations for Cosimo I de’ Medici,Grand Duke of Tuscany (see Ottavio Bandini, Orazione funerale
di m. Ottauio Bandini ¢orentino. Da lui fatta e recitata il di XIX diGiugno MDLXXIV nell’esequie del sereniss. Cosimo de’ Medici
primo gran duca di Toscana (Florence: Giorgio Marescoti, 1574);
Benedetto Betti, Orazione funerale publicamente recitata nelleesequie del sereniss. Cosimo Medici (Florence: appresso gli heredi
di Iacopo Giunti, 1574); Leonardo Salviati, Orazione funerale delcavalier Lionardo Saluiati, da lui pubblicamente recitata nell’esequie del Serenissimo Cosimo Medici Granduca di Toscana . . .

[x y l-5 ^ x yl-7

celebrate l’vltimo di d’aprile dell’anno 1574 (Florence: appresso i
Giunti, 1574); another edition of the same (Florence:
Bartolomeo Dermartelli, 1574)); cf. EDIT16, ed. Istituto
Centrale per il Catalogo Unico (http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it, lastaccessed 30 Apr. 2004). All that now remains is the printed
cover, the pastedowns, and the remains of sewing supports.
212 ¿ 156 ¿ 2 mm. The printed book was originally sewn on three
single-cord supports and cased in with no boards. Further stripsof paper, which evidently served as £anges in the original endleaf
construction, are visible underneath both pastedowns at thespine-edge. Although this appears to be the ¢rst use of the printed
book covers, in the estimation of the annotator of Ehrman’s ledger the binding was ‘not contemporary’ with the volume from
1574.
Binding: Kept in a cloth-covered portfolio gold-tooled on theupper board ‘woodcut binding 1491’.
Provenance: Albert Ehrman (1890^1969); armorial book-plate;purchased in 1945 from Sotheby/McLeish for »24; ledger no. ‘R284’. Presented in 1978 by John Ehrman.
shelfmark: Broxb. 31.7.

XYL-7 St Barbara[Southern Germany, c.1450^60].Woodcut.
Schr. 1260d. St Barbara, with a halo, is portrayed standing, raising up a chalice with the host in her left hand, while she grips herrobe with her right hand. Double-lined frame. Unique copy.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1260^4; BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 9.
refs. Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII 75; Dodgson, Ashmolean, 32(Bodl.6).
COPY

One sixteenth of a sheet. 110 ¿ 75/6 mm (woodcut 72 ¿ 54 mm).
Chain-lines horizontal. No watermark. Printed in black ink on
one side of the paper by rubbing. Coloured in dull brown, greenish yellow, and pink (all badly faded). The crown, nimbus, andchalice are gold over a red ground. Pasted to the upper pastedown,
which is otherwise completely blank, of a paper manuscript in 4 oof Rudolf von Liebegg (Rudolfus de Liebegg), Pastorale novellum(with glosses) (214 ¿ 152 mm), written in a southern German cursive hand and dated 1418. The parchment pastedowns of themanuscript are the blank versos of charters, that inside the upperboard with the name of an addressee ‘Bertoldus’.
refs. SC 21707; Douce Legacy, 168^70 no. 245; Watson, Dated
and Datable MSS Oxford, no. 459; Nicholson no. 105.
Binding: Fifteenth-century inboard binding. 220 ¿ 150 ¿ 58 mm.
Red, surface-stained tawed sheep over beech boards, the covering
now much worn. One copper-alloy catch plate to upper board anda copper-alloy anchor plate to the lower board, the strap and clasp
now lost. An intact iron, four-link chain with ring and staple isattached to the head-edge of the lower board. A rectangular
patch on the upper board, lighter in colour than the surrounding
leather, may indicate a lost label. Now kept in a brown linen-covered box made at the Bodleian and dated Apr. 1983.
Provenance: Wu«rzburg, Bavaria, Conventual Franciscans,
Inventio crucis. Francis Douce (1757^1834); armorial bookplate. Bequeathed in 1834. Acquired by Douce at an anonymous
sale, which he recorded on the title-page of his copy of the catalogue as ‘the property of Halbach’ (London: Evans, 8 Feb. 1832),xyl-7^xyl-8]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

lot 752. The previous item in the sale catalogue, lot 751, is a similarly chained volume, MS. Douce 58, also containing a woodcut,
for which see XYL-22, and has an octagonal, dark blue label on
the spine, identical with that on the spine of this manuscript; MS.
Douce 58 is known to come from the library of the Franciscan
convent in Wu«rzburg.
shelfmark: MS. Douce 133, upper pastedown.

XYL-8 St Barbara, etc
XYL-8.1 St Barbara[Germany (Augsburg?), c.1475].Woodcut.
Schr. 1262a. St Barbara, crowned and with a halo, standing andholding a chalice with the sacrament in her right hand. Singlelined frame. Unique copy. This tiny woodcut, which appears to
be unique, forms part of a larger set, of which otherwise only
Schr. 1096 (The Madonna and Child in a glory), 1262a(St Barbara), 1336 (St Catherine of Alexandria), 1378 (StChristopher), 1493 (Mass of St Gregory), and 1741 (St Wolfgang)
are known to survive. For similar woodcuts see XYL-10.1^5 andthose printed in the upper borders of Augsburg calendars: Schr.
788 ([Johann Scho«nsperger], for the year 1497) and 3181([Johann Ba«mler, n.d.], for the year 1485; see Schreiber, Manuel,I 224; Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 163.788.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1262^1; BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 10(b).
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, II 30; Schreiber, Handbuch, III 34; VIII
75; Dodgson, Ashmolean, 33 (Bodl.15); Nicholson no. 106.
COPY

A cutting, 36 ¿ 31 mm (woodcut 35 ¿ 29 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. The alignment of the paper suggests that XYL 8.1^4 may
be cuttings from a larger printed item, presumably a calendar,
printed on a chancery sheet. Traces of cut-away printing at theedges of XYL-8.2^4 indicate that the original printed sheet contained further woodcuts which have not been preserved. Printed
in black ink in a press on one side of the paper. Coloured in brightcrimson, pink, yellow, pale brown, and green. The ¢ne conditionof the four prints suggests that they survived to the nineteenth century within the covers of a book, but there is no other evidence ofthe context in which they came into the possession of their earliest
recorded owner, who is likely to have been responsible for mounting them.
Pasted in modern times onto a postage-stamp size cutting froman incunable leaf (41 ¿ 36 mm) and mounted between glass plates
together with XYL-8.2^4. Kept in a dark blue case inscribed‘early col. prints of saints’, made for the Bodleian. 184 ¿151 ¿ 20 mm.
Provenance: Purchased from Antiquariat Caspar Haugg in 1891
(cat. 121, no. 232). See Library Bills, 18 Dec. 1891.
shelfmark: Arch. G. f.5(2).

XYL-8.2 St Catherine of Alexandria[Germany (Augsburg?), c.1475].Woodcut.
Schr. 1336. St Catherine, crowned and with a halo, standing andholding a wheel in her left hand and a raised naked sword in her
right hand. Single-lined frame. One of three recorded copies, the27others in London BM (Prints & Drawings) and that attested in theprivate collection of T. O. Mabbott, New York.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1336; BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 10(d).
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, II 51; Schreiber, Handbuch, III 58^9;
VIII 79 (incorrectly listed as no. 1335); Dodgson, Ashmolean, 33(Bodl.16); Nicholson no. 111.
COPY

A cutting, 39 ¿ 35 mm (woodcut 35 ¿ 29 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. Printing and colouring as XYL-8.1.
Pasted in modern times onto a cutting of early paper with wormholes (50 ¿ 55 mm), no printing evident on the mount. Mounted
between glass plates together with XYL-8.1.3^4.
Provenance: Purchased from Antiquariat Caspar Haugg in 1891
(cat. 121, no. 232). See Library Bills, 18 Dec. 1891.
shelfmark: Arch. G. f.5(3).

XYL-8.3 St Gregory, Mass of[Germany (Augsburg?), c.1475].Woodcut.
Schr. 1493. St Gregory kneels before an altar, accompanied by abishop, both facing to the left. Above the altar Christ appears as
a half-length ¢gure rising from the tomb, his hands raised. Singlelined frame. One of three recorded copies, the others in Munich
GraphSlg and the leaf recorded by Schreiber in the private collection of Albert Cohn, Berlin.
ills.W. L. Schreiber, Holzschnitte aus dem letzten Drittel des fu« nfzehnten Jahrhunderts in der Kgl. Graphischen Sammlung zu
Mu« nchen, part I, Einblattdrucke des fu«nfzehnten Jahrhunderts,
31 (Strasbourg, 1912), pl. 101 (Munich copy); Bodleian Filmstrip
Roll 245, no. 10(c).
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, II 106; Schreiber, Handbuch, III 116;
VIII 89; Dodgson, Ashmolean, 33 (Bodl.17); Nicholson no. 110.
COPY

A cutting, 42 ¿ 38 mm (woodcut 36 ¿ 29 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. Printing and colouring as XYL-8.1.
Pasted in modern times onto a cutting from an incunable leaf
printed in two columns (47 ¿ 48 mm). Mounted between glass
plates together with XYL-8.1^2.4.
Provenance: Purchased from Antiquariat Caspar Haugg in 1891
(cat. 121, no. 232). See Library Bills, 18 Dec. 1891.
shelfmark: Arch. G. f.5(4).

XYL-8.4 The Madonna and Child in a Glory[Germany (Augsburg?), c.1475].Woodcut.
Schr. 1096. The Virgin and child, standing on the crescent moonand surrounded by an aureole on a black ground. Single-lined
frame. One of two recorded copies, the other in Munich
GraphSlg.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1096; BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 10(a).
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, I 325; III 250; Schreiber, Handbuch,
II 139; VIII 64; Dodgson, Ashmolean, 33 (Bodl.14); Nicholson
no. 14.

28

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

COPY

A cutting, 37 ¿ 32 mm (woodcut 35 ¿ 28 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. Printing and colouring as XYL-8.1.
Pasted in modern times onto a cutting from an incunable leaf
printed in two columns (45 ¿ 40 mm). Mounted between glass
plates together with XYL-8.1^3.
Provenance: Purchased from Antiquariat Caspar Haugg in 1891
(cat. 121, no. 232). See Library Bills, 18 Dec. 1891.
shelfmark: Arch. G. f.5(1).

Bonacursus de Gloria, see under XYL-25 Johannes
Metensis: Turris sapientiae.
Book Covers, see under XYL-3 Andrea, Zoan;
XYL-4 Angel Playing the Lute; Judith;XYL-5 Annunciation to the Shepherds; Device of Jean
Belot; XYL-23 St George; St Maurelius.

[x y l- 8 ^x yl- 9(described by Schreiber as state II). In his Manuel Schreiber localizes this metalcut on the Lower Rhine (Cologne) and dates it
c.1475. In his later publications, however, he attributes it to the
Master of Jesus in Bethany, whose workshop he locates in the
Netherlands in the period 1465^85 (Handbuch, VII 79^80).
Schramm XIV 3 mistakenly attributes the metalcut to the Mainz
printers Scho«¡er and Fust (the printers of the Canon Missae,
which is the host volume of the Oxford copy; see below).
ills. Schmidt, Denkmale, no. 81 (Munich copy); Schreiber,
Meisterwerke, II pl. 107 (Bodleian copy); Schramm XIV, 3
and pl. 1 ill. 1 (Bodleian copy); Field, Washington, ill. 341(Washington copy); Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 18.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, III 53^4 (incorrectly listed as no. 2338
II); W. L. Schreiber, in Heitz, Kanonbilder, 8; Schreiber, Meister
der Metallschneidekunst, 52^3; Schreiber, Handbuch, V 63;
Field, Washington, no. 341; The Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-century Woodcuts and their Public, ed. P.
Parshall and R. Schoch, Exhibition catalogue, Washington
NatGal and Nuremberg GermNM (in press, 2005).
COPY

XYL-9 Calvary[Netherlands or Lower Rhine, c.1480]. Metalcut (dotted print),
with Latin inscriptions.
Schr. 2339 state II.The cruci¢xion of Christ, £anked by that of thetwo thieves, with the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalen, John the
Evangelist, Centurio, Longinus, and other ¢gures. Christ, withhalo and the crown of thorns, the cloth round his loins £oatingout to either side, is portrayed hanging on the cross, held in position by three nails and dominating the upper third of the picture.
His blood £ows from the ¢ve wounds. At the head of the cross partof an ‘INRI’ inscription in reverse is visible: ‘n o i’. To the left the
cruci¢xion of the good thief, facing the onlooker, tied by ropes toa T-cross constructed from roughly hewn tree stems; his soul isbeing drawn into heaven by an angel, a small winged ¢gure emerging from a cloud. To the right the bad thief, his back to the onlooker and roped to a similarly constructed cross, whose soul has
fallen prey to a devil, portrayed with a round mask-like face, long
ears, and horns, emerging from a cloud. The lower part of theelongated stem of the cross is embraced from the left by Mary
Magdalen, the central foreground ¢gure. To her left John the
Evangelist supports the swooning ¢gure of the Virgin Mary,
assisted by a third female ¢gure, also with a halo. To the right ofthe cross Centurio and a soldier, in splendid and exotic costumes,
stand in conversation. Behind the two groups in the foregroundthere are two further ¢gures standing with their backs to the
onlooker, to the left of the cross a woman with a halo, and to theright Longinus, who holds his lance upright, both looking out
towards the city of Jerusalem, which can be seen in the background. In the Bodleian copy the picture is framed by a metalcut
border of clouds and stars, set out in white against an intense
black ground, with the evangelists’ symbols in the four corners,
accompanied by inscribed banderoles bearing their Latin names
in reverse, the letters printed from right to left: ‘se(n)nahoi’,‘suehta[m]’, ‘sacul’, and ‘sucram’. Whereas ‘INRI’ and the inscriptions
indicating the names of the evangelists are in reverse, the picture
itself makes correct use of symbolic left and right. One of four
recorded copies, the others in Gdan¤sk PAN, Munich GraphSlg,
and Washington NatGal. This is the only copy with the border

Chancery sheet. 329 ¿ 252 mm (328 ¿ 251 mm), central image
238 ¿ 179 mm. Chain-lines horizontal. The watermark, visibleon the lower portion of the Magdalen’s robe, is a small heart, surmounted by a cross; in the style of Briquet 4235 (Metz 1492), butcloser in appearance to a large group of watermarks unknown toBriquet and attested for Frankfurt a.M. c.1450 in the Wasserzeichenkartei Piccard, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart Best. J 340,(‘Herz, daru«ber Kreuz, relativ klein’), e.g. no. 32428 (Frankfurt
a.M. 1449, ex informatione Peter Ru«ckert); the metalcut cannot
be as early as this evidence might suggest. Printed in black ink in
a press on one side of the paper.There is a break, evidently alreadyin the block from which the leaf was printed, in the lower portionof the border. Coloured in dark brown, yellow, and green.
Cropped close to the printed area. Some damage has been
incurred in the vicinity of stitching holes round the edges, used tohold the leaf in position. Attached by stitching (and formerly
pasted) to the otherwise completely blank leaf [a 6v] precedingthe ‘Te igitur’ in the Canon Missae printed on parchment by
Johann Fust and Peter Schoe¡er in Mainz in 1458 (407 ¿ 283/
4 mm, corresponding to royal folio); see M-284. This leaf was left
blank by the printers to receive an illustration, conventionally a
cruci¢xion. According to a note pasted inside the front cover, theCanon Missae of 1458 was extracted in Jan. 1887 from Douce’s
copy of the Missale Moguntinum printed by Peter Schoe¡er on 3
Apr. 1493 in Mainz (M-259); the two parts of the volume containmarginal notes in the same early hand, indicating that they wereunited at an early date. A set of stitching holes on the edges of themetalcut, with no corresponding holes on fol. [a 6v] of the Canon
Missae, indicates that the metalcut was at one time sewn into adi¡erent book, and that it was inserted at a later date into its present host volume.WhenW.Y. Ottley (À1836) saw the leaf, which heerroneously describes as a woodcut, it was already sewn to theblank leaf of Douce’s Canon Missae as it is today. A handwritten
note by E. W. B. Nicholson (À1912) in the Bodleian copy of W. Y.
Ottley’s An Inquiry concerning the Invention of Printing (shelfmark: 2582 d.3), 196, states that the leaf was at some time removed
from the host volume and placed in an album, Douce Prints 210(‘Early wood-cuts biblical subjects’, later shelfmark Douce Printsc. 26, now kept in the Ashmolean Museum; for a list of the Doucexyl-9^xyl-10]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

Prints albums and portfolios see Library Records d. 746), but was
restored to its original place by him in 1886.
refs. Ottley, Invention of Printing, 196; Report on the Bodleian
Library 1882^1887, 50; Nicholson no. 75.
Binding: See M-284.
Provenance: Francis Douce (1757^1834). Bequeathed in 1834.
There is no evidence that the metalcut was inserted into theCanon Missae before these items were acquired by Francis
Douce. Old shelfmark: Douce 280. Formerly exhibited in one of
the glass cases in the Picture Gallery (Upper Reading Room); see
Library Records d. 1573, fol. 8r [1931].
shelfmark: Arch. G b.4, fol. [a6v].

St Catherine of Alexandria, see under XYL-8 St
Barbara, etc.
XYL-10 St Catherine of Alexandria; Madonna andChild; Madonna and Child in a Glory; Monstrance;
Visitation[Germany (Augsburg?), c.1485^90].Woodcut.
Schr. 60. The Visitation. Elisabeth, standing to the left, extends
her hands to the Virgin, who is shown standing to the right in the
doorway of a building. Both have haloes. A tower and steeple canbe seen in the background. Single-lined frame. One of threerecorded copies, the others in London BM (Prints & Drawings)
and Munich GraphSlg.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 161.60 (Munich copy);
164.1067 (all ¢ve images, Bodleian copy); Bodleian Filmstrip
Roll 245, no. 19.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, I 20; Schreiber, Handbuch, I 26;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 32 (Bodl.9); Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII 7;
Nicholson no. 9.
Schr. 1067. Madonna and child. The Virgin, with crown and halo,
is seated, holding the naked Christ child, who stands on her left
knee. The image belongs to the same set as XYL-10.1. Singlelined frame on three sides, a double line at the top. Unique copy.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1067; Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 19.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, I 318; Schreiber, Handbuch, II 130;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 32 (Bodl.10); Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII
62; Nicholson no. 17.
Schr. 1082. Madonna and child in a glory. The Virgin, with crownand halo, is standing, holding the naked Christ child in her arms.
He stretches out his right arm to touch her chin. In the background a glory, depicted as a circle of £ames. Single-lined frame.
One of two recorded copies, the other formerly in the Wu« nsch collection in Wa«hring (Vienna).
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1067; BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 19.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, I 322; Schreiber, Handbuch, II 135;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 32 (Bodl.11); Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII
63; Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1082; Nicholson no. 19.
Schr. 1335. St Catherine of Alexandria. She is shown crowned andwith a halo, standing and holding a raised naked sword in her left
hand. With her right hand she grasps her cloak. Single-lined

29

frame. One of six recorded copies, the others in Augsburg SB,
London BM (Prints & Drawings), Munich BSB (two copies, thesecond formerly in Prince Liechtenstein’s collection in Vienna),and Munich GraphSlg.
ills. Schramm III 759 (Munich BSB copy); Illustrated Bartsch(Supplement), 163.788 (Munich GraphSlg copy); 164.1067(Bodleian copy); 164.1074^1 (Munich BSB copy); BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 19.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, II 51; Schreiber, Handbuch, III 58;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 32 (Bodl.12); Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII
79; Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1335; Nicholson no. 112.
Schr. 1941. Monstrance. The cylindrical ostensorium, in which
the sacrament is displayed, stands on a quatrefoil base, surmounted by a pinnacle and £anked by two pairs of columns withpinnacles. Single-lined frame on three sides, a double line at the
top. One of three recorded copies, the others in London BM(Prints & Drawings) and Munich GraphSlg.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1067; McKitterick,Print, 58 ¢g. 9; Bodleian ¢lmstrip Roll 245, no. 19.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, II 290; Schreiber, Handbuch, IV 92;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 32 (Bodl.13); Nicholson no. 99.
These ¢ve woodcuts belong to a larger set described by Schreiber,
Manuel, I 20, as Augsburg work of c.1490, which were mostly used
for the illustration of calendars and comprise Schr. 60, 80, 112,
576, 623, 629, 749, 1067, 1082, 1335, 1492, 1835, and 1941. Schr.
1335 occurs in a set of images printed on a calendar broadside for1485, attributed to Master JoÞ Hordt of Augsburg, and printed
with the types of Johann Ba«mler of Augsburg; see Illustrated
Bartsch (Supplement), 164.1074^1 (unique copy in Munich BSB).
Schr. 60, 1335, 1492, and 1941 are all included in a calendar broadside of very similar design printed with the types of Hans
Schoensperger of Augsburg for the year 1497; Illustrated Bartsch(Supplement), 164.788 (unique copy in Munich GraphSlg). For acomparable item see XYL-8.1^4.
COPY

The oblong paper strip on which the ¢ve woodcuts are printedside by side, in the order as listed above, is a cut-out from a larger
sheet, present dimensions 45 ¿ 147 mm (printed area of the woodcuts 41 ¿ 26 mm, 42 ¿ 29 mm, 41 ¿ 25 mm, 44 ¿ 28 mm, 44 ¿28 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. No watermark. Printed in black
ink in a press on one side of the paper. Coloured in green, dark
red, yellow, and pale brown. The ¢rst image is partly torn away at
top and bottom, the second only at the bottom. Several wormholes. There are traces of paste on the reverse, which also contains
pencil notes indicating the acquisition from Ludwig Rosenthal
and the Schreiber numbers. The arrangement of the images, side
by side to form a strip, corresponds exactly to that attested in the
typographic broadside calendars made by late ¢fteenth-century
Augsburg printers, as indicated above, and it is clear that this is a
cutting from such a leaf.
Binding: Mounted between glass plates and kept in a dark purple
case, made for the Bodleian and inscribed ‘early col. prints ofsaints’. 198 ¿ 85 ¿ 19 mm.
Provenance: Ludwig Rosenthal (1840^1928); in his possession
when ¢rst mentioned by Schreiber in 1892. Purchased in 1893
from Rosenthal’s Cat. 90, no. 8.
shelfmark:Arch. G f.8.

30

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

XYL-11 Christ as Man of Sorrows (‘Image of Pity’)[England, c.1490].Woodcut with Greek and English
inscriptions.
Schr. 866b. Christ as Man of Sorrows, half-length, positioned in
front of the cross, with long hair, eyes half open, his head inclined
to his right, arms crossed, showing the wounds of his hands andside, £anked by the lance and reed and sponge, and surroundedat the top, left and right by a border, made up originally of either
17 or 18 compartments with instruments of the Passion. The
inscription on the tablet over the cross is in Greek and reads ‘ov
bav civvLe yv s: hova ov : x hv :’ (a corruption, with incorrect word division, of oJ basileu;~ th’~ dovxh~, ‘the king of glory’; Ps 23,7), as on
the icon at S. Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome; see W.
Mersmann, Der Schmerzensmann (Du«sseldorf, 1952), pp. VI^
VII; D. I. Pallas, Die Passion und Bestattung Christi in Byzanz.
Der Ritus^das Bild (Munich, 1965), 197¡., 229^30; Bertelli, ‘The
Image of Pity in Santa Croce’, passim; H. Belting, Das Bild undsein Publikum im Mittelalter. Form und Funktion fru«her
Bildtafeln der Passion (Berlin, 1981), 66^7, 159^60, 308. A closely
related English painted image of the Man of Sorrows, with thesame Greek inscription, but without the arms of the Passion andnot necessarily copied from the same Byzantine model, is contained in London BL, Add. MS. 37049, fol. 2 r (illustrated byBertelli, pl. 15); the reading th’~ with t-h’ ligature explains the misreading of th’~ as hov in the woodcuts. The panel beneath the Manof Sorrows contains the English text of an indulgence extending
over seven lines and granting a remission of [thirty-]two thousand, seven hundred [and ¢fty-¢ve years] purgatory for the
performance of a devotion before the image: ‘To em at before
is ymaege o¡ pyte. Deuoutly. v. tyemes say. pr nr & aue.
Pitee[ous]ly beholding ies ar[mes of Chris]tes passion. Ar’ e[graunted xxx].ij.M.vij.C. e [& lv. yeres] o¡ pardon.’ All enclosed
in a double-lined frame. Unique copy. Whereas Schreiber dates
this impression c.1470^80, Hodnett more plausibly prefers alater date ‘c. 1490?’ and localizes it to the north of England. For
this variant of the Man of Sorrows, two of them found in printed
primers (London: William Caxton, [1490], Hodnett 350; London:
Wynkyn de Worde, [1494], Hodnett 390), the rest single-leaf
woodcuts, see Bradshaw,‘Image of Pity’, the text of the indulgenceat 89^90, here specifying a Credo as well as the ¢ve Paternosters
and Aves; Dodgson, English Woodcuts, 7^9 nos 1^10; STC
14077c.6^14a. Bertelli presents further material and plausibly
associates the di¡usion of the cult of this image with theCarthusian order.
ills. Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, pl. XXXV (b);Dodgson, English Woodcuts, ¢g. 3; Illustrated Bartsch(Supplement), 163.866^2; Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 5.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 33^4 (Bodl.19); Dodgson, ‘English
Devotional Woodcuts’, 99; Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII 46;
Dodgson, English Woodcuts, 7 no. 3; C. Bertelli, ‘The Image of
Pity in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme’, in Essays in the History of
Art presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. D. Fraser and others(London, 1967), 40^55 and plates, at 48^9 with note 59; STC
14077c.7; Hodnett no. 2511; Nicholson no. 73.
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. 155 ¿ c.107 mm (woodcut 132 ¿89 mm). Chain-lines vertical. No watermark. Printed in pale
brown ink on one side of the paper by rubbing. Coloured in red,[x yl-11^ x y l-12

pink, yellow, green, blue, grey, and black, the wounds in Christ’s
side and on his hands emphasized in red. Badly torn, so that muchof the left-hand edge and the lower left-hand corner are lost. The
bottom line of text is partly scored through. Numerous prickingsin the outer margins indicate that the leaf was at one time sewn toa backing, probably a page of a manuscript. Pasted onto a paper
mount attached to fol. 5r of a nineteenth-century guard-book.
The woodcut was removed in 1894 from MS. Bodl. 850, where it
was pasted to the otherwise completely blank recto of the lower£yleaf (fol. 109r). It was ¢rst noticed by E. Gordon Du¡ in 1886.
The manuscript, datable on the basis of its illumination to thethird quarter of the ¢fteenth century, is a Latin book of hours,with a Sarum calendar and an appendix of English and Latin
prayers. At the end of the manuscript, on the pages immediately
before the leaf to which the woodcut was pasted, there are further
additions: an ‘Oratio de sancta Trinitate’, incipit: ‘Domine deus
omnipotens pater et ¢lius et spiritus sanctus da michi famulo tuo
N victoriam contra omnes inimicos . . .’ (fol. 107 v, with an English
indulgence); ‘<O> domine ihesu christe ¢li dei viui qui in cruce suspensus fuisti . . . Libera me domine iotha etha zemachi rozima
sicut liberasti tres pueros . . .’ (fols 107v ^108r); ‘Cum inter homines
veneris Pantassereum in mente hanc oracionem dicendo et omne
gaudium tibi agent . . .’ (fol. 108v); ‘Omnipotens sempiterne deus
qui in¢rma mundi elegis vt forcia queque confundis concede propicius mihi . . .’ (fol. 108 v); ¢nally the Lord’s prayer in English (fol.
108v, sixteenth-century addition). The host volume has a late sixteenth-century inboard gold-tooled centrepiece binding, probably English. Tawed calf leather over beech boards with an innerbevel. 217 ¿ 157 ¿ 7 mm. The gold tooling is executed with a single¢llet, an oval centrepiece, and two small tools. The upper board
has two holes and a rust mark at the lower fore-edge indicating a
Bodleian Library chain staple, now missing. The spine has theshelfmark annotations: ‘850’ in black paint; ‘Med’ in ink; and‘svp: art e d: 55’and ‘arch: e f. 5’, both gold-tooled.
refs. SC 2604; Pa«cht^Alexander III no. 1087.
Binding: Late nineteenth-century (1894?) blank book, housing
two woodcuts, bound as an inboard binding for the Bodleian.
Brown cloth over strawboards. 224 ¿ 157 ¿ 7 mm. The spine wasoriginally gold-tooled with the title ‘english woodcut imageof pity 15th cent.’ Later erasures of the tooling and then the
addition of an ‘s’ changed the tooled title to ‘woodcuts 15thcent.’ These changes were probably carried out when XYL-36
was added to the binding in 1920.
Provenance: Notes in the calendar, with dates, suggest that thehost volume may have belonged to the families of Byddey (1512),
Gavell (1538), and Sidney (1482^1554). The birth of Sir PhilipSidney in 1554 is recorded on fol. xir. In the Bodleian Library by
1620; see SC I 103.
shelfmark: Arch. G e.35(1).

XYL-12 Christ as Man of Sorrows (‘Image of Pity’)[England, c. 1480^90].Woodcut with Greek and English
inscriptions.
Schr. 873a. Christ as Man of Sorrows, positioned in front of thecross, half-length, with £owing hair, eyes half open, his head
inclined to his right, arms crossed, showing the wounds on his
hands and side. The inscription on the tablet over the cross is in
Greek, and reads ‘bacivae yv s: hoao: x[:]:’ (a corruption of oJ

xyl-12^xyl-13]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

basileu;~ th’~ dovxh~); see XYL-11. On either side of Christ’s head,
above the cross-bar, are inscribed the words ‘IC. XC.’. The panel
beneath the image contained the text of an indulgence, extending
over four lines, now completely deleted. Double-lined frame,
diagonal shading top and left. Unique copy. It seems certain, on
the basis of the parallels assembled by Bradshaw and Dodgson(see XYL-11), that the text was an indulgence of 32,755 years in
English. This may be the earliest surviving example of a woodcut
Man of Sorrows from England.
ills. Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, pl. XXXV (a);Dodgson, English Woodcuts, ¢g. 1; Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 163.873^1.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 33 (Bodl.18); Dodgson, ‘English
Devotional Woodcuts’, 98^9; Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII 48;
Hind II 737^8; Dodgson, English Woodcuts, 7 no. 1; STC
14077c.8a; Hodnett no. 2505; Nicholson no. 71.
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. 147 ¿ 99 mm (woodcut 95 ¿66 mm). Chain-lines vertical. No watermark visible. Printed inpale brown ink on one side of the paper by rubbing. Uncoloured.
The inscription has been rendered totally illegible by an evidently
deliberate act of mutilation. Badly torn, especially top left andbottom right, with resultant loss of parts of the woodcut. Also
some worm-holes. The woodcut is attached to the original upper
pastedown (fol. iv), which is otherwise completely blank, of MS.
Bodl. 939, a late ¢fteenth-century parchment manuscript containing a calendar, private prayers, psalms and devotions in
Latin, individual items in English and a heading in French (fol.
84r), illuminated with decorated borders and 13 historiated initials (others cut out). The illumination is most likely Flemish. The
leaf bearing the woodcut is the ¢rst of an added quire with Latin
prayers (fol. i, 1^5, text fols 1r ^4v, fol. 5r/v ruled but blank), which
precedes the calendar; its illumination is similar in style but
clearly distinguishable from the minor decoration in the main
body of the manuscript. The text facing the image, appropriately,is a commemoration of the Holy Cross, incipit: ‘Signum sancte
crucis + defendat me ab malis presentibus preteritis et futurisinterioribus et exterioribus . . .’ (fol. 1r). See Haimerl 91; printed
in Nicolaus Salicetus, Liber meditationum ac orationum devotarum qui Antidotarius anime dicitur (Strasbourg: Johann
Gru«ninger, 1490; S-008), fol. 41ra-va. The script is probably
English rather than Flemish (as suggested in SC) and datable,
like the illumination, to the last quarter of the ¢fteenth century.
refs. SC 27691; Pa«cht^Alexander I no. 377.
Binding: Contemporary blind-tooled inboard binding, laterrebacked. 204 ¿ 143 ¿ 38 mm. Brown tanned calf over gently bevelled oak boards. The original parchment pastedowns are now
lifted, and separate paper board sheets have been added to replacethem. All tooling is blind, executed with a single and a three-line¢llet and four tools: small square stamp with £eur-de-lis andcrown; £eur-de-lis; larger square stamp with £eur-de-lis, crown,
and four stars; circular stamp with a hybrid dragon-man; the¢rst three of these are identi¢able as tools used by Oldham’s
Binder D (attested c.1483^6), for which see Oldham, Blindstamped Bindings, pl. XXVI nos 364, 370, 377 (ex informatione
Mirjam Foot). The upper board preserves the stub of a tannedleather strap in a recess, anchored by one decorative copperalloy nail and one iron nail with washer. A copper-alloy catch
plate is anchored to the lower board by two copper-alloy pins.

31

Both boards have other holes and scars around their current furniture, indicating that alterations were made at an early date.
Rebacked with brown tanned leather; the trimmed original spine
is mounted on the rebacked spine. There is nothing to suggest thatthe binding is Flemish, as suggested in SC.
Provenance: Eleanor (‘Elina’, ‘Alienora’), unidenti¢ed (£. 1470^
80). The main part of the book (fols 6r ^11v, 22r ^88r), which wasintended for the use of a woman, whose name is repeatedly mentioned in the prayers on fols 76r ^83r, is probably Flemish, to judge
from the style of illumination, but made for an English patron, as
indicated by the calendar, whose script and illumination are
consonant with the body of the book. ‘Elina’ was speculatively
identi¢ed by Falconer Madan in SC V 338 as Eleanor Nevil,
granddaughter of John of Gaunt. The calendar, which follows an
English use, is not distinctive except for the unusual (Flemish?)spelling ‘Zwilchin(us)’ for St Swithin at 15 July. Napier’s suggestion, reported in SC, that the English vernacular texts containedin two added blocks of leaves, fols 12^21 and 89^122, of which
120v ^122v are an addition of Latin prayers relating to the plague,
might have been written in the northern Midlands is not supported by linguistic evidence (ex informatione Anne Hudson).
The quire with the woodcut, although written in a di¡erent style
from these leaves, may also have been added in England.
Nathaniel Crynes, M.A., of St John’s College, Oxford (1686^1745). Presented in 1736.
shelfmark: MS. Bodl. 939, fol. iv.

XYL-13 Christ as Man of Sorrows (‘Image of Pity’)[England (Syon Abbey?), c.1499].Woodcut, with English
inscription.
Schr. 858. Christ as Man of Sorrows, half-length, with £owing
hair, eyes open, his head inclined to the right, arms crossed, showing the wounds on his hands and in his side, £anked by the lance
and the reed and sponge, and surrounded by a border of 22 compartments with instruments of the Passion. The inscription on thetablet over the cross reads ‘I.N.R.I’. The panel beneath the Man ofSorrows contains the English text of an indulgence extending over
six lines and granting a remission of 32,755 years for the performance of a devotion before the image: ‘To them that before thisyma=ege of pyte deuoutly say fyue e Pater noster fyue Aueys & a
Cred=eo pytously beholdyng these armes e of xps passyon ar
graunted xxxii e M.vii C.&.lv. yeres of pardon’. All enclosed in asingle-lined frame. See Bradshaw,‘Image of Pity’, 89, who records
this text accompanying a Man of Sorrows pre¢xed to the Psalmsof the Passion in Caxton’s c.1487 edition of the Primer. The woodcut is a unique copy.
ills. Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, pl. XXXV (c);Hodnett (‘Additions and Corrections’), ¢g. 17; Dodgson, English
Woodcuts, ¢g. 9; Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 163.858; Du¡y,‘Devotion’, ¢g. 4; Du¡y, Altars, ¢g. 85; Image of Christ, ed. G.
Finaldi (London, 2000), 152^5 (with plate); Bodleian Filmstrip
Roll 245, no. 1.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, I 247; Schreiber, Handbuch, II 45;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 34 (Bodl.20); Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, 96 and 99 (no. 7); Dodgson, English Woodcuts,
8; STC14077c.13; Hodnett no. 2513; Image of Christ, 152^5; Du¡y,‘Devotion’, 26; Nicholson no. 82.

32

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

COPY

Chancery half-sheet. 225 ¿ c.180 mm (woodcut 222 ¿ 140 mm).
Chain-lines vertical. The watermark is a unicorn, identi¢able as
the same stock of paper as that used by Wynkyn de Worde in his
third edition of the Quattuor sermones, datable to [1499] (uniquecopy in London BL, Du¡ 318); ex informatione Paul Needham.
Printed in black ink in a press on one side of the paper.
Uncoloured. The English text has been scored through. The
lower part torn and repaired.
One of a set of three independently produced woodcuts, XYL-30(Pieta'), XYL-13 (Christ as Man of Sorrows), and XYL-19 (Deathand the Last Judgement, with an inscription relating to Syon
Abbey), forming the opening leaves of MS. Rawl. D. 403. The
printed pages are the versos of fols 1^3, and stubs of these threeleaves can be found at the end of the ¢rst quire of the manuscript,
between fols 16 and 17. MS. Rawl. D. 403 is a paper manuscript in
4o (225 ¿ 160 mm), written by a single hand datable on palaeographic grounds c.1490^1510, containing as the main text anotherwise unrecorded Latin devotional treatise entitled Liber
mortis et vite (fols 4r ^103v, incipit: ‘Quomodo in¢rmi se occupent.
vel se occupare debent. aut qualiter se exerceant. docemur vtique
per exempla sanctorum patrum. . . .’), which was copied by a deacon or brother resident in the Birgittine convent of Syon: ‘per
Johannem cuius habitacio est in syon’ (fol. 103v). Corrections
and additions suggest the manuscript may be an autograph. Thatthe text was composed for the use of Birgittines is suggested by thefact that St Birgitta is placed ¢rst in the list of saints after Mary(fol. 66r). It is followed by two shorter devotional treatises, alsoin Latin, the E¡usio languentis spiritus in pium Jesum (fols 104r ^108v, incipit: ‘Ueni mi iustissime iudex. veni mi dilectissime
rex. . . .’) and the Meditationes passionis domini nostri Jhesu
Cristi ad omnes horas cum orationibus (fols 109r ^123r, incipit:‘Hora matutina meditare ac considera magestatem excelsam
domini nostri ihesu christi. atque eius humilitatem profundam . . .’). The paper stocks used for the three woodcuts are di¡erent (that for the present item being the only one with an
identi¢able and datable watermark), but all three are printed on
half-sheets of ¢ne paper, whereas the manuscript is on thicker
paper and chancery 4o. The rectos of the printed leaves are
inscribed in the same hand as the rest of the manuscript with
Latin prayers, relating thematically to the facing woodcuts, aswell as to the content of the work that follows, suggesting thatthey are not later additions, but rather part of the volume as originally conceived. Fol. 1r has a Latin devotion to St Birgitta (incipit: ‘<G>aude sponsa ihesu cristi. o quam felix que fuisti digna tali
nomine. Gaude christo tibi teste. sancte prodis et honeste claro
regum germine . . .’; ‘<D>eus qui ecclesiam tuam per beatam birgittam sacris illuminare dignatus es . . .’); whereas the ‘Gaude’ is nototherwise recorded, the concluding prayer can be found in the The
Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey. From the MS. with English
Rubrics F.4.11 at Magdalene College, Cambridge, ed. A. J.
Collins, Henry Bradshaw Society, 96 (London, 1969), 32 and 139.
These texts are likely to have been related to a preceding page now
lost and possibly containing a further woodcut. Fol. 2 r, facing the
Pieta' (XYL-30), is inscribed with a Latin hymn to the Virgin:‘<A>ue mundi spes maria aue mitis aue pia aue plena gratia. Aue
virgo singularis’ (closely related to Chevalier, Rep. hymn. 1974;
AH 32,38 no. 24). Fol. 3r, facing the Man of Sorrows (XYL-13),
is appropriately inscribed with the Seven Prayers of St Gregory(incipit: ‘domine ihesu criste adoro te in cruce pendentem . . .’, as[x yl-13 ^ x y l-14

printed by Leroquais, Livres d’heures, II 345); see Du¡y, Altars,
239^40; G. Roth, ‘Die Gregoriusmesse und das Gebet ‘‘Adoro tein cruce pendentem’’ im Einblattdruck. Legendensto¡,bildliche Verarbeitung und Texttradition am Beispiel desMonogrammisten d. Mit Text- abdrucken’, in Einblattdrucke des15. und fru«hen 16. Jahr- hunderts. Probleme, Perspektiven,
Fallstudien, ed.V. Honemann and others (Tu«bingen, 2000), 277^
324. The woodcut of Death and the Last Judgement (XYL-19)
faces the opening page of the Liber mortis et vite, where in chapter
1 the sick are urged to remember the Last Judgement.
Binding: Late nineteenth-century or early twentieth-century
inboard hollow-back binding made for the Bodleian Library.
235 ¿ 168 ¿ 23 mm. Half-bound in maroon morocco, sided withblack cloth, over millboard. The edges of the textblock are
untrimmed and retain their deckles to the tail and fore-edges.
The manuscript was originally bound in a limp parchment wrapper inscribed on the upper cover ‘Mariale’ and ‘Liber mortis etvite’. The wrapper is now folded and sewn into the binding after
fol. 123. The wrapper has four sets of irregular holes across thespine indicating a long-stitch structure. The upper cover extended
some 45 mm beyond the fore-edge to provide a fore-edge £ap.
Provenance: Syon Abbey, Middlesex, Birgittines. Richard
Rawlinson (1690^1755). Bequeathed in 1755. Although the manuscript appears to have been made for Syon, it is not clear how longit remained there. There is no ex-libris, and no evidence to attribute it speci¢cally to the men’s or the women’s library (deHamel, ‘Syon Abbey’, 120). This is one of several cases in which
printed devotional materials are known to have been incorporated into the early books, both manuscript and print, of Syon
Abbey; see C. de Hamel, ‘The Medieval Manuscripts of Syon
Abbey, and their Dispersal’, in Syon Abbey. The Library of theBridgettine Nuns and their Peregrinations after the Reformation,with an introduction by J. M. Robinson, Roxburghe Club([London], 1991), 48^133, at 100; M. C. Erler, ‘Pasted-in
Embellishments in English Manuscripts and Printed Books
c.1480^1533’, Library, 6th series, 14 (1992), 185^206, at 196.
shelfmark: MS. Rawl. D. 403, fol. 2v.

XYL-14 Christ before Caiaphas (or Annas); Christ
before Pilate
XYL-14.1 Christ before Caiaphas (or Annas)
Fragment.
[Southern Germany, c.1460]. Metalcut (dotted print).
Schr. 2269c. Only a small portion of this unique item has beenpreserved, with the result that the identi¢cation of the scene
depicted remains uncertain. On the right we see a heavily bearded¢gure in exotic garb, enthroned, wearing a Phrygian hat, and carrying a baton or sceptre in his left hand. The background isformed by a curtain of rich brocade and the diagonal lines of aroof. Executed with punches and cross-hatching. As Pilate is portrayed without a beard in XYL-14.2, which clearly belongs to thesame set of metalcuts, and as this ¢gure is lacking the attributes ofkingship, such as would give a positive indication of Herod, this ismost likely the remains of a picture of Christ appearing in bondage before Caiaphas or Annas. Nicholson and Van Dijk identify
the ¢gure as Herod; Schreiber suggests Pilate. Unique copy. Thisand the following item appear to be the only remnants of a fourth
metalcut Passion cycle, in the same style and format as the Sto«ger-xyl-14 ^xyl-15]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

Passion (XYL-1), the Chicago Passion, and the Riga Passion, as
discussed in the survey by Field, ‘Art Institute’ (without mentionof these two Bodleian leaves). Considered by Schreiber to beUpper Rhenish, possibly an early work of the Master of the
Aachen Madonna (with his distinctive treatment of eyes and eyebrows), but, as Field notes, Schreiber’s attribution of metalcuts tothis region is largely based on his interpretation of the Sto«gerPassion, which is now questioned by P. Schmidt (see XYL-1.1).
refs. Schreiber, Handbuch,V 37; Nicholson no. 57.
COPY

A fragment, probably printed on one eighth of a chancery sheet.
67 ¿ 31 mm. Chain-lines vertical. No watermark. Printed in black
ink on one side of the paper in a press. Coloured in yellow, dark
red, blue, and green. All that survives of the metalcut is a vertical
strip from the right-hand upper portion of the image, showing
part of a seated ¢gure. The damage is the result of tearing, nodoubt deliberate. Attached to the original upper pastedown (fol.
iv), which is otherwise completely blank, of a small-format bookof hours on parchment (106 ¿ 75 mm), written in the third quarterof the ¢fteenth century for the use of a certain ‘Guillermus’ (fols
82v, 83r, and 84v). Several leaves with miniatures and illuminatedborders have been removed; illuminated borders are preserved on
fols 93r, 97v, and 102v. Script, illumination, and the calendar (witha mixture of Rouen and Sarum saints) indicate that the book islikely to have been written in France for an English patron. A
note by E. W. B. Nicholson dated 30 Dec. 1886 records the text ofa ¢fteenth-century English inscription ‘the horse was delyuerd
xviij daye of marce’ on the lower pastedown, over which XYL14.2 has been pasted; this is evidence that the metalcuts, although
undoubtedly pasted into the volume at a very early date, did notform part of the book at the time the manuscript received its present binding.
refs. SC 6489; Van Dijk IV 107.
Binding: Fifteenth-century blind-tooled inboard binding, laterrebacked. 112 ¿ 85 ¿ 33 mm. Mid-brown tanned hair-sheep (?)
over beech boards. The covering leather is now much darker; see
the upper turn-ins for the original colour. All tooling is blind, executed with a four-line ¢llet and three tools: square stamp with dragon; indistinct circular stamp (angel?); indistinct rectangularstamp (foliage). The original upper parchment pastedown has
been lifted. Each board has a single recess with three nail-holes
and a later larger hole through the board. No furniture now survives. Rebacked with mid-brown tanned leather. Part of the original spine, bearing the shelfmark ‘133’ in white paint, is now
mounted on the inner face of the upper board.
Provenance: Robard Toteayd of Bury (£. c.1500); see the sevenline strophic inscription in English recording the donation of thebook and requesting prayers for the former owner: ‘Bokys andpreyer moche profytabyll be . . .’ (fol. 150 r). John Mannyng (£.
early sixteenth century); inscription at fol. 150 r : ‘John Mannyng
hys boeke’. Thomas Barlow (1607^91); inscription ‘Liber Thome
Barlow e' collegio Reg. Oxon. 1647’. Bequeathed in 1691. Other
names associated with the manuscript are Thomas White, whose
death on 26 Oct. 1460 is recorded in the calendar on fol. 10, andWilliam Milett, whose birth on 16 Sept. 1474 is recorded on fol.
149v. Former Bodleian shelfmarks: MS. Liturg. 133; MS. Linc. 47.
shelfmark: MS. Barlow 47, fol. iv.

33

XYL-14.2 Christ before Pilate[Southern Germany, c.1460]. Metalcut (dotted print) with Latin
inscription.
Schr. 2273a. Christ before Pilate, who washes his hands. Christ is
shown with a halo, wearing a long robe, standing to the left, heldby a soldier in armour. His hands are bound. To the right Pilate, abeardless ¢gure wearing a Phrygian hat, sits on a throne washing
his hands in a bowl. The man to his right wears a hat. The man tohis left pours water on his hands. The background is formed by acurtain and an arched vault. At the top an inscription, white on
black and framed with a double line, reads ‘Innocens . Sum . in .
isto . homi’ (based on Mt 27,24: ‘Innocens ego sum a sanguine
iusti huius’); see Schr. 2273. Executed in black on white, using
punches and cross-hatching. Unique copy. Part of the same,otherwise unattested metalcut Passion cycle as XYL-14.1.
Described by Schreiber as an early Upper Rhenish metalcut, possibly an early work of the Master of the Aachen Madonna.
ills. Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 13.
refs. Schreiber, Handbuch, V 38^9; Griese (in preparation);
Nicholson no. 58.
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. 105 ¿ 75 mm (metalcut 103 ¿74 mm). Chain-lines not visible. No watermark (Nicholson).
Printed in black ink on one side of the paper in a press. Coloured
in yellow, dark red, blue, and green. Some damage on the outeredge to the right. Pasted inside the lower board of the same bookof hours as XYL-14.1. A note in the hand of E. W. B. Nicholson(1849^1912), dated 30 Dec. 1886, states that this item had beentransferred to an album, Douce Prints 210 (now Douce Prints c.
26 in the Ashmolean Museum, see XYL-9), and that it was
restored to the original host volume by him.
Binding and provenance: See XYL-14.1 for details.
shelfmark: MS. Barlow 47, lower pastedown.

XYL-15 Christ blesses a Monk
[France (?), c.1500].Woodcut with Latin inscription.
Schr. 837n. The risen Christ stands facing the onlooker on theright of the image, holding a cross sta¡ in his left hand and displaying his wounds. He is portrayed as if hovering above theground, his right hand raised in blessing. To his right a smaller,
tonsured ¢gure kneels before him in prayer. In the background awalled town with two church steeples. Inscribed on a banderole isthe petition ‘Te petimus criste noebis faueas p(er)egrinis D S’,
whereby the kneeling ¢gure seeks protection for pilgrims.
Double-lined frame. Unique copy. The attribution to a French (?)
workshop is on stylistic grounds. Whereas Dodgson favours adate c.1480^90, Schreiber places the woodcut c.1500.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 163.837^2; BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 20.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 31 (Bodl.3); Schreiber, Handbuch,
VIII 45; Griese (in preparation); Nicholson no. 95.
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. 130 ¿ 84 mm (woodcut 123 ¿64 mm). Chain-lines vertical. Nicholson’s note ‘Not enough of
the watermark left’ cannot be substantiated. Printed in pale grey
ink by rubbing on one side of the paper. The colouring, which isunlikely to be original, is in light blue, mauve, pale yellow, green,

34

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e etsblue-black, gold, black, purple, dark grey, deep red, and brown.
The ¢ve wounds are picked out in deep red to give them special
prominence. Closely trimmed at the top, but with wider margins
to the left and right. Stitching holes on the right-hand edge suggest that the leaf may at some time have formed part of a codex in
8o, supporting the view that in its present context the image has
been reused.
The woodcut is one of an extensive series of devotional images,
only ¢ve of which are preserved, that were added to a sixteenthcentury Sarum primer: Hore beatissime virginis Marie/secundum
vsum Sarisbu(riensem) totaliter ad longum cum multis pulcherrimis orationibus et indulgentiis iam vltimo adiectis (Paris:
Franciscus Regnault, 1534, 4o, 237 ¿ 172 mm); Hoskins 34 no. 89.
Tipped in at the front of the book are three leaves, of which fols i r ^iiv contain a list of 19 obits of members of the Radcli¡e family of
Ordsall in Lancashire for the period 1548^78, giving special prominence to Sir Alexander Radcli¡e (À1548), his wife Alice(À1552), and their children William (À1568), Alexander (À1570),
John (À1560), Eleanor (À1557) wife of Sir Richard Molyneux(À1568), and Elizabeth (À1576), who may have been responsible
for establishing this record of her family history; for the
Radcli¡es see C. P. Hampson, The Book of the Radcly¡es(Edinburgh, 1940), esp. 148^57; W. Langton, The Visitation of
Lancashire and a Part of Cheshire, made in the Twenty-fourthYear of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth, A.D. 1533, by Special
Commission of Thomas Benalt, Clarencieux, Part I, Chetham
Society 98 (Manchester, 1876), 64^5; for the Molyneux see N.
Z. R. Molyneux, History Genealogical and Biographical of the
Molyneux Families (Syracuse, NY, 1904), 12, 49; DNB under Sir
Richard Molyneux. Pasted to the third leaf is a slip of paper witha list of names, in an eighteenth-century hand, including a number of notable antiquaries of that period (Peter Le Neve, Richard
Furney, Sir Thomas Sebright, Anstis), most likely bookbinder’sscrap and unrelated to the early history of the volume. The calendar at the front of the book contains handwritten notes referringto the years 1552^80, and adding St Monica (4 May), Holy
Maccabees (1 Aug.), Twelve Martyrs (1 Sept.), and transferring St
Barbara from 4 Dec. to 3 Dec. The designation ‘pape’ against thenames of popes has been systematically deleted, as have otherreferences to popes and to Rome throughout the book. There areseveral ownership marks from the later sixteenth century: ‘elisabet Aderton est possessor iuius [!] li(bri)’ (fol. & 6v), ‘AlexanderRad’ (fol. &9v), Dame Elisabethe atherton owithe the book’,‘alexander . . .’, Alexander’ (fol. &10r), ‘Ihesus est amor meus
Alexan(der)’ (fol. &10v), as well as an inscription ‘I praye god
Mayke thomas byrtwyssyll god’ (fol. &8v), suggesting that thebook may have been passed down from Sir Alexander Radcli¡e(À1548) to his daughter Elisabeth, ¢rst wife of Sir John Atherton(À1573) of Atherton in Lancashire, divorced by him in 1551, andwhose death on 1 May 1576 is recorded towards the end of the listof obits; see Langton, 64; VCH Lancashire III 437; C. Haigh,
Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge,1975), 47. For a notable example of book ownership in the
Radcli¡e family during the same period, see London BL, Kings
MS 5, an illuminated Netherlandish Biblia pauperum of exceptional quality consonant with the religious interests documented
by the interleaved Sarum primer, and inscribed on fol. 1v ‘alexander Radcly¡ boke’, possible candidates for whom are Elisabeth
Atherton’s father (À1548), brother (À1570), nephew (À1568), andgreat-nephew (À1599), all called Alexander; see J Backhouse, in[x yl-15

Biblia Pauperum: Kings MS 5, 10^13. For a further example (exinformatione A. I. Doyle) see Paris, Bibliothe'que Mazarine, ms.
514, a late fourteenth-century English Book of Hours with anownership inscription ‘Alexander radclyf Sr’ and the dates ofbirth and obits of numerous members of the Radcli¡e and Bothe
families, including Alexander Radcli¡e (1532^1568), son of Sir
William Radcli¡e (1502^1568) and grandson of Sir Alexander
Radcli¡e (À1548) and his wife Alice Bothe (À1552), whose obits
are recorded in the Bodleian volume; see A. Barratt, ‘Two
Middle English Lyrics in the Bibliothe' que Mazarine’, Notes &Queries 229 (1984), 24^7. The various annotations and deletionsin the printed primer, together with the unusually large numberof added devotional images, indicate the intense use that wasmade of this book by its recusant owners during the Elizabethan
period.
This ¢rst item is attached by stitching to the centre of the upperedge of fol. C1v of the host volume. This is the second opening oflauds of the Hours of the Virgin Mary. The image is positioned
above the third psalm (Ps 66) and opposite the beginning of the‘Benedicite’; an association of these texts with the image is not
immediately obvious. The second added item is a parchment leaf
(226 ¿ 140 mm) with a manuscript illustration of the three nails
impaling the Sacred Heart, hands, and feet sewn onto fol. J 8v,
illustrating St Gregory’s prayer in honour of the ¢ve wounds ‘Ave
dextra manus Christi’ (Chevalier, Rep. hymn. 1771;Walther, Initia
1909), printed as ‘Ave manus dextra Christi’ on fol. J 8r/v. The illumination is clearly sixteenth-century work, most likely from the¢rst half of the century. For the third and ¢fth insertions, which
are sewn to fol. P1v (Penitential Psalms) and Q1v (litany), see
XYL-17: Cruci¢xion (T-cross) with the Virgin and St John, and
XYL-33: The Sacred Heart and the wounds of Jesus Christ displayed on a cross (‘Arms of Jesus Christ’). The fourth insertion,
sewn to the upper edge of fol. P5v (the second page of the 15
Gradual Psalms), is a square paper leaf (71 ¿ 74 mm) with apainted image displaying eucharistic emblems, originally to befolded up to form a triangle.The central panel shows a purple chalice on a blue background, with the letters X and P on either side,surmounted by a wafer inscribed ‘ih’c’. It is surrounded by four
Sacred Hearts, each containing a wafer with ‘ih’c’, enclosed in asquare frame. Dotted impressions on the reverse of the leaf follow
the lines of the frames and compartments of the design, possiblyused in some kind of tracing process.The distinctive use of purple,and gold and/or silver, on all ¢ve added leaves suggests that thecolouring was done at the same time (and by the artist responsible
for the image of the three nails). Nicholson’s description indicatesthat when he saw the book there was sewn to fol. P4v, at the end of
the Penitential Psalms, a ‘double oval shaped piece of paper,
gummed together at top only, the upper one drawn and perforated
with wheel-like patterns’; the two parts of this item (63 ¿ 45 mm),which looks like a pointer and is made from scrap paper containing notes dated 1568 relating to the Kennett family, has now been
removed from its original position and is tucked under the eighteenth-century slip pasted to fol. iii r. Sewing holes and remnants ofthread indicate that the ¢ve images are the remains of a much
more extensive series of inserted material, perhaps as many as 28
items in all, but that these were lost before the book came to berebound in the later eighteenth century; such indications arefound, almost always in the upper margin, on fols B5, B8, C8, D1,
D7, D8, F3, J5, K3 (?), L4, L6, L8, M3, M5, M7, M8, P3, P4, P7, P8, Q2,
Q3, R1.

xyl-15^xyl-18]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

refs. ACatalogue of the Books relating to BritishTopography, andSaxon and Northern Literature bequeathed to the Bodleian
Library in the Year MDCCXCIX by Richard Gough, Esq. F.S.A.
(Oxford, 1814), 424 no. 204; SC IV 294^5.
Binding: Late eighteenth-century gold-tooled inboard binding.
245 ¿ 180 ¿ 33 mm. Marbled brown tanned calf over millboard.
The textblock, which has much insect damage predating the current binding, has been repaired in places with a white handmade
laid paper and was heavily pressed during rebinding. The edges
were ploughed and stained yellow. No evidence of the pre-eighteenth-century binding, except two rust stains on the last leaf,
survives.
Provenance: Alexander Radcli¡e, probably Sir Alexander
Radcli¡e of Ordsall, Lancashire (c.1475^1548); inscriptions on
fols &9v and &10r/v (see above). Elisabeth Atherton, ne¤e Radcli¡e(À1576); inscriptions on fols &6v and &10r (see above). Richard
Gough (1735 his inscription on the upper £yleaf. Bequeathed in
1809.
shelfmark: Gough Missals 177, fol. C1v.

Christ’s Descent into Hell, see under XYL-1 The
Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, etc.
Christ Washing Peter’s feet, and The Last Supper, see
under XYL-1 The Agony in the Garden ofGethsemane, etc.
XYL-16 Cruci¢xion (T-cross) with The Virgin and
St John[Switzerland or Germany (Basel?), c.1487].Woodcut.
Schr. 379/4684. Christ hanging from a T-cross, a⁄xed by fournails, his head surrounded by a nimbus of lilies, the loincloth £uttering on either side. Mary stands to his right, holding an
inscribed roll in her right hand, and John the Evangelist to his
left, barefoot, holding a closed book in his hands, both withround haloes. The inscription on a curling banderole a⁄xed at
the head of the cross reads ‘.i.nr.i’. At the base of the cross, on thestony foreground, a skull. The woodcut is attested in numerous
printed missals from the press of Michael Wenssler in the years
1486^8; see Heitz, Kanonbilder, 17 no. 17, and the Bodleian copyof the Missale Sarum s.a. [Basel: Michael Wenssler, 1488?] (M272), [n1v].
ills. Heitz, Kanonbilder, pl. 14; Schramm XXI pl. 4 ill. 8;
Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 7.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, I 107; V 114; Schreiber, Handbuch, I 123;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 33; Schramm XXI 5; Nicholson no. 79.
COPY

Parchment. 342 ¿ c.230 mm (woodcut 243 ¿ 164 mm). Printed inblack ink in a press on one side of the parchment. Coloured in red,
blue, green, yellow, brown, purple, olive, silver, and black. Boundin, with the printed side as a verso, after fol. [*** 8] of the Missale
Coloniense (Basel: Michael Wenssler, 1487); printed on medianpaper in folio (342 ¿ 231 mm); see M-253. The woodcut faces the
opening of the canon of the Mass on fol. [****1r]; parchment stubvisible before fol. [***1].

35

Binding: For details of the nineteenth-century Bodleian bindingof the host volume, see M-253.
Provenance: Joseph Niesert (1766^1841), 1818; for his inscription
see M-253; sale (1843), lot 275. See Books Purchased (1843), 34.
shelfmark: Auct. 6Q 1.15, after [***8].

XYL-17 Cruci¢xion (T-cross) with The Virgin and
St John[Unknown, c. 1490^1530].Woodcut.
Schr. 463d. Christ hanging from a T-cross, a⁄xed by three nails.
Mary stands to his right and John the Evangelist to his left, allthree with haloes. Triple-lined frame with rounded top. Uniquecopy. Closely related in design and technique to XYL-33, andundoubtedly from the same workshop.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 162.463^2.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 30 (Bodl.2); Schreiber, Handbuch,
VIII 28.
COPY

Parchment. 68 ¿ 48 mm (woodcut 54 ¿ 36 mm). Printed in brownblack ink, probably in a press, on one side of the parchment.
Painted over, by the same hand as XYL-15, in green, blue, purple,
red, silver, and gold. Sewn to fol. Q1v of a printed Sarum primer(Paris: Franciscus Regnault, 1534), and later owned by recusant
gentry in Lancashire: see XYL-15.
Provenance and binding: See XYL-15.
shelfmark: Gough Missals 177, fol. Q1v.

XYL-18 Cruci¢xion with Christ Pierced by the Lance[Southern Germany (Franconia?), c.1440^50].Woodcut.
Schr. 470ha. Christ is portrayed with a halo, his head inclined to
the left, apparently with open eyes, a⁄xed by three nails to thecross. A banderole attached to the head of the cross, intended tocarry the ‘INRI’ inscription, has been left blank. Mary and John,
both with haloes, stand on either side, to the left and the right,
with gestures of sorrow. John raises his hand, as if engaged in dialogue. To the left Longinus, with hat and beard, pierces Christ’s
side with his lance. Two angels collect the blood which £ows fromthe wounds in his hands and side in chalices. Single-lined frame.
The image is surrounded by a broad decorative border of acanthus
leaves attached to the curling stem of a vine, with squarish £owers
at the corners, enclosed by a double-lined frame. Unique copy.
For the border design, which is similar in design to border B of
the Gulden puchlein woodcuts in Munich BSB (datable to 1450,
Nuremberg), see Schreiber, Handbuch,VI 120, and the discussionin Schmidt, listing nine examples, several of them from
Nuremberg. Nicholson noted c.1460^80 as the date for this item,changed by a later annotator of his catalogue to c.1440^50.
Schreiber’s later dating (c.1460) needs to be revised in view of thedate of the host volume described below. For another woodcut
from this group, see XYL-35.
ills. McKitterick, Print, 57, ¢g. 8; Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245,
no. 23.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 30 (Bodl.1); Schreiber, Handbuch,
VIII 29; Schmidt, Gedruckte Bilder, 32 and n. 73; Nicholson
no. 77.

36

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

COPY

Chancery quarter-sheet. 216 ¿ c.150 mm (woodcut 185 ¿c.123 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. The upper half of a watermark
is positioned in the middle of the outer edge, unusual for a leaf in acodex in 4o, and indicating that this is a genuine quarter-sheet singleton. Printed in black ink on one side of the paper in a press.
Coloured in green, two tones of reddish pink, brown, pale
brown, and pale yellow. The leaf is contained in a mid-¢fteenthcentury manuscript missal on paper, in 4o (216 ¿ 144 mm), where
it is hooked round the two innermost bifolia of the ¢rst quaternion, so that the image of the cruci¢xion faces the ‘Te igitur’ introducing the Canon of the Mass. The manuscript begins withcollects and secrets for the ¢rst two Sundays in Advent (fol. iiv,
continued on fol. 58r), the proper Prefaces to the Mass (fols 1r ^2v), followed by the Gloria and Creed copied in smaller script on
fol. 3r. The woodcut is on fol. 3v, followed by the Canon, which
begins on fol. 4r. The manuscript is the work of a single scribe,and is datable on the basis of script and watermark evidence toc.1445^55 (principal watermark: Anvil in circle; Briquet 5958,
attested in Gurck 1446, variants Bruck a.d. Mur 1452 etc.;
WZMA AT5000^RB25_1_209, attested 1452^4 [www.oeaw.ac.at/
ksbm/wz/index.htm, accessed 16 Apr. 2004]). The woodcut isprinted on paper from a di¡erent stock, with an unidenti¢able
bull’s head watermark. As the Gloria and Creed copied on therecto of this leaf are integral to the text and the work of the main
scribe, there can be no doubt that the woodcut leaf formed part ofthe manuscript as it was planned. The outer, left-hand margin of
the woodcut is rather wide (24 mm), whereas the right-hand frameof the woodcut and any margin are entirely lost in the gutter. A
lateral crease at the top of the woodcut leaf and some small
holes, perhaps for stitching, suggest that the woodcut may have
served some other purpose before it was reused as an integral
part of the present volume.
refs. SC 19423; Van Dijk I 192.
Binding: Fifteenth-century inboard binding. 234 ¿ 157 ¿ 29 mm.
Red, surface-stained tawed sheep over sharply bevelled wooden
boards. Many individual leaves have been been repaired with a¢ne white handmade laid paper. The original endleaves, a parchment pastedown and a paper £yleaf, were lifted and heavily
repaired with transparent paper in the late nineteenth or earlytwentieth century; now foliated fols i^ii, 58^59. Fol. 60, originallya slotted spine liner extending onto the boards, was also lifted andheavily repaired. It is now guarded into the manuscript after the
lower endleaves. Each quire has an internal parchment sewing
guard. Both boards have impressions from ¢ve circular bosses.
The upper board has the scar from a lost catch plate which was
attached with four copper-alloy pins. The lower board has thestub of a heavy tawed-leather strap anchored with a copper-alloypin. The strap and clasp are now missing. The three parchment
leaves which originally served as pastedowns and as spine liner, asingle leaf (fol. i) and a bifolium (fols 59^60), are fragments of theearliest known copy of a Middle High German medical text, theBartholoma«us, datable on palaeographical grounds c.1200^20;
the parchment sewing guards between fols 15v/16r, 35v/36r, and45v/46r are from the same manuscript.
refs. R. Priebsch, ‘Deutsche Prosafragmente des XII.
Jahrhunderts II: Bruchstu« cke der sog. Practica des Meisters
Bartholomaeus’, Modern Language Review, 11 (1916), 321^34; G.
Keil, ‘Bartholoma«us’, in VL 1 (1978), 609^15; B. Schnell, ‘Die[x y l-18 ^ x yl-19

deutsche Medizinliteratur im 13. Jahrhundert. Ein ersterU«berblick’, in Eine Epoche im Umbruch. Volkssprachliche
Literalita«t 1200^1300. Cambridger Symposium 2001, ed. C.
Bertelsmeier-Kierst and others (Tu«bingen, 2003), 249^65, at 253;
‘Marburger Repertorium deutschsprachiger Handschriften des
13. Jahrhunderts’ (www.marburg.de/hosting/mr/mr13 [accessed
11 Apr. 2004]).
Provenance: Villach (Carinthia), parish church of S. Martin;
inscription ‘Hoc MiÞale fuit quondam ad usum Ecclesie
Parochialis S. Martini supra Villacum’ (seventeenth century).
Matteo Luigi Canonici (1727^1805 or 1806). Purchased by the
Bodleian in 1817.
shelfmark: MS. Canon. Liturg. 334, fol. 3v.

XYL-19 Death and the Last Judgement[England (Syon Abbey?), c.1499].Woodcut, with Latin
typographic text.
Schr. 608. Christ, depicted with a nimbus of rays and displaying
the ¢ve wounds, his naked body partially wrapped in a cloak
which falls from his left shoulder, his right hand raised in blessing,is shown seated on a rainbow, his feet resting on the orb of theworld. He is £anked by two angels emerging from the clouds andblowing trumpets to which banderoles are attached, displaying
instruments of the Passion, the ¢ve wounds, and a bleeding
Sacred Heart. Two small ¢gures are shown rising from theground, resurrected from the dead. In the foreground, occupying
the full width of the picture, a corpse lies wrapped and tied in acloth on a black ground, buried without a co⁄n, and surrounded
by worms, bones, skulls, and gravediggers’ tools. Immediately
behind the corpse, at the centre of the picture, a cadaver, representing Death, runs across the black earth holding a giganticarrow in both hands. To the left a tonsured monk kneels in prayer,
his face raised to Christ. To the right a devil gestures with a black
book, which we might suppose to contain a list of the dead man’ssins, evidently demanding his condemnation. The picture is surrounded by a double-lined frame. A majuscule ‘S’ (= ‘Syon’?), tothe right of the devil, was printed as part of the woodcut. At thetop, outside the frame, there is a typographic inscription:‘Surgite Mortui. + Uenite ad Judicium.’, and below: ‘Arma Beate
Birgitte: De Syon. +’, accompanied by a coat of arms bearing the
rampant lion of Sweden (of which the lower part has been cutaway). Unique copy. The typographic text, which need not be alater addition (as has sometimes been suggested), indicates thatthe woodcut may have been produced at, or at least printed for,the convent of Syon Abbey. Nicholson, in his unpublished handlist, states that the majuscules B and D, both very rare, point to
Wynkyn de Worde or Pynson, whereas he associates the A, B,
and U with Caxton’s no. 6 type. Hodnett suggests a date of c.1510
and attributes the printing to Richard Pynson (with questionmark); Hind considers William Fawkes more likely.
ills. Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, pl. XXXVI (a);Dodgson, English Woodcuts, ¢g. 15; Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 162.608; Du¡y, Altars, ¢g. 100; Driver, ‘Bridgettine
Woodcuts’, ¢g. 1; Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 2.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, I 170^1; Schreiber, Handbuch, I 196;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 34 (Bodl.22); Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, 96 and 100 (no. 6); Hind II 738; Dodgson,xyl-19^xyl-20]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

English Woodcuts, 9^10; STC 14077c.18; Hodnett no. 1356a;
Driver,‘Bridgettine Woodcuts’, 239^41; Nicholson no. 119.
COPY

Chancery half-sheet. 225 ¿ 180 mm (woodcut 223 ¿ 149 mm, originally c.223 ¿ 155 mm), imperfect at the bottom. Printed in black
ink in a press on one side of the paper. Uncoloured. Chain-lines
vertical. No watermark. The third of three woodcuts placed at
the beginning of a set of devotional texts in Latin for the use of
Birgittines. For the function and context of the woodcut and theassociation of MS. Rawl. D. 403 with Syon Abbey, Middlesex,
see XYL-13; see also XYL-30. There is a close correspondence
between the iconographical content of the image, which combines
two distinct themes, namely ‘death and burial’ and the ‘Last
Judgement’, and the opening chapters of the Liber mortis et vite.
Chapter 1 of book 1 sets out a programme of contemplation formonks, based on imitating the Fathers in their constant thoughtof the Last Judgement: ‘Nam illi properantes de die in diem ad
mortem cogitauerunt siue comedentes. siue bibentes. siue vigilantes. siue dormientes. siue orantes. legentes. vel meditantes.
aut aliud aliquid operantes. illam tristem nouissimam turbam decelo. terribili crepitu clangentem. Surgite mortui. venite ad iudicium. atque illum tremebundum aduentum vltimum et terribilem
districti iudicis Iesu Christi . . .’ (fol. 4 r). A later passage, speci¢cally addressed to monks, prescribes contemplation of one’s own
death in terms that correspond to the lower portion of the woodcut: ‘Vide ergo. et discute bene. in quo ordine istorum morientium
statueris. aut quomodo te disposuisti et vixisti. vt a domino inveniaris . . . dixit enim Euagrius. cum sedes in cella tua. collige te ad
te. reuoca sensum tuum intra te. et memor esto diei mortis tue. etconsidera morti¢cacionem corporis tui morituri . . .’ (fol. 14 r). The
host manuscript came to the Bodleian with the collection of
Richard Rawlinson (1690^1755). Bequeathed in 1755.
Binding: See XYL-13.
Provenance: Syon Abbey, Middlesex, Birgittines. Richard
Rawlinson (1690^1755). Bequeathed in 1755. See XYL-13.
shelfmark: MS. Rawl. D. 403, fol. 3v.

XYL-20 Etzlaub, Erhard: Rom Weg Map[Germany (Nuremberg), before 11 Aug. 1500; impression post
1550?].Woodcut with German inscriptions.
Edition I. The Rom weg map, which is orientated with south to the
top and with Nuremberg positioned programmatically at thecentre, provides an accurate overview of the pilgrim routes toRome from all parts of the Holy Roman Empire and some way
beyond, extending as far west as Narbonne and Paris, toScotland (but not England and Ireland), Denmark (as far as
Viborg) and southern Sweden (Skaîne ‘Schon’) in the north, toGdan¤sk, Cracow, Budapest (‘ofen’) and Montenegro in the east,and to the heel of the Italian peninsula and Corsica in the south.
The four seas to the south-east, south-west, north-west, andnorth-east are identi¢ed as ‘Das venedisch mer’ (Adriatic Sea),‘Das lampartisch mer’ (Ligurian Sea). ‘Das groÞ deutsch mer’
(North Sea), and ‘Das pomerisch mer’ (Baltic Sea). The principal
pilgrim routes are marked in as lines of dots, each of which stands
for a German mile, and begin at Nieuwpoort at the mouth of theYser near Oostende, Utrecht, Marburg, Bremen, Ribe in northern Denmark, Rostock, Gdan¤sk, and Cracow; a further routeleads on to the Chiesa della Casa Santa in Loreto south ofAncona. Mountains, forests (most notably the Bohemian forest

37

encircling Prague) and rivers are all marked in, the latter sometimes named. Several hundred towns are indicated by a small circle and identi¢ed by name, the most important towns andpilgrimage centres being marked out by pictograms with towers,
gates, or a church. The map is framed by a border, double-lined toleft and right, treble-lined at top and bottom, within which are
inscribed the names of the points of the compass (‘Mittag’ forsouth at the top, ‘widergang’ for west to the right, ‘Mittenacht’for north at the bottom ^ wanting in the Bodleian copy ^ and‘Aufgang’ for east to the left), in the upper border the title of themap ‘Das ist der Rom.weg von meylen zu meylen mit puncten verzeychnet von eyner stat zu der andern durch deuczsche lantt’, inthe left-hand border the latitudes from 41 to 58 degrees in arabic
numerals, in the right-hand border the number of daylight hours
in the longest day measured in quarters from 1514 at the latitude ofNarbonne to 18 at the latitude of Skaîne and Viborg, and in thelower border a ruler for measuring distances in German miles. A
panel at bottom left contains six lines of text with instructions forcalculating distances, using a compass and the ruler, and for converting local systems into German miles (incipit: ‘Wer wissen wyl
wye fer von einer Stat . . .’). Bottom centre is a circular compass
with arabic numerals 1^12, in a panel to the right six lines of text
with instructions for the use of the compass (incipit: ‘Nach dem
Compast zu wandern geschigt also Den prief legt man . . .’). The
map was devised and executed by the Nuremberg cartographer
Erhard Etzlaub, probably to meet the needs of pilgrims to Romein the holy year of 1500. The most recent publications date it toshortly before 11 Aug. 1500 on the basis of a reference, plausiblyinterpreted as being to a copy of this map sent to a friend as anovelty, contained in a letter from Sebald Schreyer to Konrad
Celtis (Schanze, ‘Romweg-Karte’). There is no positive evidence
for an earlier dating. The map was originally accompanied by aRegister, printed as a broadside with movable type and attributable to a follower of Kaspar Hochfelder now known as the ‘Printerof the Bannholtzer broadside’ [Nuremberg 1500] (unique copy in
Munich BSB; Einblattdrucke, 813). Edition I is distinguished fromedition II, which is an exact copy, on the basis of minimal di¡erences in the text and the representation of the towns by small circles rather than dots. One of ten recorded copies of edition I, theothers in Copenhagen KglB, Dresden SB (now lost), Go«ttingen
SB, Harvard HoughtonL (formerly Vienna), London BL,
Munich BSB, Nuremberg GermNM, Paris BnF, andWashington NatGal; see Miedema, ‘Erhard Etzlaubs Karten’,121^2; Griese (in preparation).
ills. Schramm XVIII no. 720; I. Kejlbo, ‘‘‘Das ist der RomWeg . . .’’ FÖrste moderne vejkort. Udarbejdet af mercatorprojektionens pioner Erhard Etzlaub’, Geogra¢sk Tidsskrift, 63 (1964),28^42, plate after p. 120 (Copenhagen copy); H. G. Pollard andA. Ehrman, The Distribution of Books by Catalogue(Cambridge, 1965), ¢g. 9 (Bodleian copy); Field, Washington, ill.
281 (Washington copy); Campbell, ‘The Woodcut Map’, ill. 1(Munich copy), 2 (Harvard copy); Campbell, Maps, ill. 48(London copy); Cartographia Bavariae: Bayern im Bild der
Karte, Ausstellungskataloge Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 44(WeiÞenhorn i.B., 1988), 27 ill. 9 (Munich copy, colour); Focus
Behaim-Globus, exhibition catalogue of the Germanisches
Nationalmuseum 1992/3 (Nuremberg, 1992), II 663 (Nurembergcopy); Continental Shelf, 31 (Bodleian copy); Miedema, ‘Erhard
Etzlaubs Karten’, ill. 2 (Munich copy); Spa«tmittelalter am
Oberrhein. Alltag, Handwerk und Handel 1350^1525.

38

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

Katalogband, exhibition catalogue of the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe (Stuttgart, 2001), II/1, 120 ill. 221 (Go«ttingencopy).
refs. E. Rosenthal, ‘The German Ptolemy and its World Map’,
Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 48 (1944), 135^47; H.
Kru«ger, ‘Des Nu«rnberger Meisters Erhard Etzlaub a«ltesteStraÞenkarten von Deutschland’, Jahrbuch fu«r fra« nkische
Landesforschung, 18 (1958), 1^286; F. Schnelbo«gl,‘Life and Workof the Nuremberg Cartographer Erhard Etzlaub (À1532)’, Imago
Mundi, 20 (1966), 11^26; Continental Shelf, 30 no. 7; Field,
Washington, no. 281; T. Campbell, ‘The Woodcut Map
Considered as a Physical Object. A New Look at Erhard
Etzlaub’s Rom Weg Map of c.1500’, Imago Mundi, 30 (1978), 79^
91; F. Machilek,‘Kartographie,Welt- und Landesbeschreibung inNu«rnberg um 1500’, in Landesbeschreibungen Mitteleuropas vom
15. bis 17. Jahrhundert, ed. H.-B. Harder (Cologne and Vienna,1980), 1^12; T. Campbell., ‘Erhard Etzlaub’s Rom Weg Map: A
Postscript’, Imago Mundi, 33 (1981), 71; Campbell, Maps, 59^67;
Cartographia Bavariae 383 no. 2.2; N. Miedema, ‘Erhard
Etzlaubs Karten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der mittelalterlichen
Kartographie und des Einblattdrucks’, Gb Jb 71 (1996), 99^125,
ill. 2 (Munich copy); F. Schanze, ‘Zu Erhard Etzlaubs RomwegKarte, dem Drucker Kaspar Hochfelder in Nu«rnberg und einem
unbekannten Drucker in der Nachfolge Hochfelders’, Gb Jb 71(1996), 126^40; U. Lindgren, ‘Die Grenzen des Alten Reiches auf
gedruckten Karten’, in Bilder des Reiches, ed. R. A. Mu«ller, Irseer
Schriften, 4 (Sigmaringen, 1997), 31^50; Griese (in preparation).
COPY

Chancery sheet. 404 ¿ 293 mm (woodcut 402 ¿ 290 mm). Chainlines horizontal. Watermark: Monogram (?) with ‘quatre-dechi¡re’ in a shield. The watermark is as yet unidenti¢ed, but the‘quatre-de-chi¡re’ device suggests that the paper came from
Lorraine, in particular from the Vosges, and most likely dates
from the second half of the sixteenth century; see Briquet II 513
nos 9807^52, with three examples from the period 1524^42, all
the rest 1561^1610; J.-M. Janot, Les Moulins a' papier de la re¤gion
vosgienne (Nancy, 1952), I 49^51 (earliest example 1550). Printed
in black ink in a press on one side of the paper. Uncoloured.
Folded into four. The verso is clean, with only a little staining at
top right. The Ehrman-Bodleian copy has been described as arelatively early impression, despite the loss of the the inscription‘Mittenacht’ in the margin outside the lower border (probably,
but not necessarily, already missing in the block), but the watermark evidence makes it more likely that this copy, perhaps likethat at Harvard, was printed from the original block in the later
sixteenth century. See also the discussion of Rosenthal’s correspondence concerning the Washington and London BL Librarycopies by R. Field. Campbell associates this impression, on thebasis of a number of small defects due to damage to the block,with those in London and Paris.
refs. Rosenthal, ‘The German Ptolemy and its World Map’;
Continental Shelf, 30 no. 7; Field, Washington, no. 281 note 1;
Campbell,‘The Woodcut Map’, 84.
Binding: Mounted on card, and kept together with Ehrman’s blue
cloth-covered portfolio inscribed: ‘das ist der rom weg ^erhard etzlaub nu« rnberg’. 416 ¿ 312 ¿ 8 mm. Now kept in a
cardboard folder made for the Bodleian.
Provenance: Erwin Rosenthal (1889^1981), bookseller, at thattime in Berkeley, California. Albert Ehrman (1890^1969);[x yl- 20 ^x yl- 21

armorial book-plate; purchased in 1954 from Art Auctions for»575; ledger no.‘R 1263’. Presented in 1978 by John Ehrman.
shelfmark: Broxb. 95.24.

XYL-21 St Francis of Assisi[Southern Germany or Rhineland, c.1460]. Metalcut (dotted
print) with Latin inscriptions.
Schr. 2626 (= 2627). St Francis receives the stigmata on Mount La
Verna. The saint is portrayed in his habit (with cord), tonsured,
and with a halo, kneeling on the ground in a mountainous landscape, turning to the left and raising his hands to receive the stigmata, which are imprinted on his body by ¢ve rays, ¢lled withdrops of blood, emanating from the wounds of the cruci¢ed
Christ, who appears as a heavily bearded, aged ¢gure, on a fourwinged cross in the upper left-hand corner. To his left, in the lower
right-hand portion of the picture, Brother Leo kneels, clad in thescapular and clutching a book in his left hand. A banderole isinscribed with Christ’s words to St Francis explaining the signi¢cance of the stigmatization: ‘dedi stig(ma)ta ut sis (con)for(m)is¢as’ [!] (with ‘¢as’ for ‘¢lio’, Griese); not attested in this form in
the various lives of Francis, in which the reporting of Christ’s
words is explicitly forbidden, nor in the Fioretti. Beneath it, on asecond banderole, the opening words of St Francis’s prayer:‘Summe deus illu(m)ina tenebras cord(is) me[i]’; see the Oratio
ante cruci¢xum, usual incipit: ‘Summe, gloriose Deus, illumina
tenebras cordis mei . . .’, spoken by Francis before the cruci¢x in
San Damiano, printed in K. Esser, Die Opuscula des hl.
Franziskus von Assisi, Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, XIII
(Grottaferrata, 1976), 356^7. Whereas the clothing worn by
Francis and Leo, the mountains in the background, and the crossare executed in a decorative technique achieved by the use of several di¡erent punches (and for Leo’s garment combined with ¢necross-hatching), the area in the background above the horizon isleft completely blank, as it is also found in some other early
German metalcuts of saints (e.g. St Bernardine, dated 1454,
Schr.2567; St Barbara, Schr. 2553; St Christopher, Schr. 2569; St
George, Schr. 2633). One of six recorded copies, the others in
Dresden Kupferstichkab, Munich BSB (Clm 18741), New YorkNYPL (Weigel copy), Paris BnF, and Prague NL. An early handwritten note on the Paris copy attributes the metalcut to a certain‘Bernard Milnet’ (or ‘Cuisnet’). Schreiber, who attributes thisitem to the Master of 1454 (or follower), describes the copies in
Munich and Paris, where the image of St Francis is framed by anornamental border, as representing the second and third states;
the Munich border is identical with that used for metalcuts of St
Bernardine, Schr. 2567, and St George, Schr. 2635, that in Paris
with Schr. 2344b, most likely from the same workshop. Tobolka
attributes the print to the Master of the Aachen Madonna.
ills. Schmidt, Denkmale, 102 (Munich copy); Bouchot II pl. 53
no. 100 (Paris copy); Schreiber, Meisterwerke, III pl. 132 (Pariscopy); Blum, Origines de la gravure en bois, pl. XL, ill. 51(Paris copy); M. Escherich, Einblattdrucke der prinzlichen
Sekundogenitur-Bibliothek zu Dresden, Einblattdrucke des fu«nfzehnten Jahrhunderts, 48 (Strasbourg, 1916), pl. 12 (Dresdencopy); Z. V. Tobolka, Einblattdrucke des 15. Jahrhunderts im
Gebiete der cíechoslovakischen Republik (Prague, [1928]), ill. 11(Prague copy); W. Deluga, Einblattdrucke des 15. Jahrhunderts inder Nationalbibliothek in Prag (Prague, 2000), 121 (Prague copy);xyl-21^xyl-22]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

Schmidt, Gedruckte Bilder, ill. 152 (Munich copy); BodleianFilmstrip Roll 245, no. 8.
refs. Weigel^Zestermann II 214^5 no. 322 (Southern Germany,
2nd quarter 15th century); Schreiber, Manuel, III 151 (no. 2626 =
2627); Bouchot I 211^12 no. 100 (‘Re¤gion du Rho“ne, 1440’);
Schreiber, Handbuch, V 159; VII 77; Griese (in preparation);
Nicholson no. 109.
COPY

Quarter-sheet. 205 ¿ 135 mm (181 ¿ 124 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. No watermark. Printed in black ink in a press on one sideof the paper. The colouring, probably original, is in dark red,green, yellow, and pale brown. The upper left-hand portion of theimage is damaged by water and by adhesion to the opposite pageof the host volume.The green colouring of the tree on the right has
oxidized and eaten into the paper. Pasted to the otherwise completely blank verso of fol. ai of [Gerardus van Vliederhoven],
Cordiale quattuor novissimorum (Paris: Philippe Pigouchet,c.1490; C-450; chancery 4o ; 205 ¿ 135 mm), which is boundtogether with [Ps.-Bonaventura], Sermones quattuor novissimorum (B-449), [Jacobus de Gruytrode], Speculum aureum
anime peccatricis (S-257), [Matthaeus de Cracovia], attrib.
Thomas Aquinas, De modo con¢tendi et puritate conscientiae(M-155), and Alanus [de Insulis], Doctrinale altum seu Liberparabolarum (A-073), all printed in Paris c.1489^92 by
Philippe Pigouchet (except for the last item by Pierre Levet, Parisc.1485/6). An added bifolium at the front of the book, precedingthat with the metalcut, announces the dominant theme of the‘Sammelband’ : ‘Memor esto quoniam mors non tardat’. A small
worm-hole provides evidence that the metalcut was added at an
early date. The colouring of the frontispiece to Douce 96(2)(B-449) and that of the initial letters added by hand at the beginning of all ¢ve printed books is quite distinct from that of themetalcut, suggesting that the latter is an older leaf reused in the1490s to provide a frontispiece for the Parisian ‘Sammelband’.
Binding: For details of the late ¢fteenth-century (Flemish?)stamped and ruled binding see A-073.
Provenance: Franciscus de Ponte (c.1500). Ghent, Jesuits. JeanFranc°ois Van deVelde (1743^1823); sale on 5 Aug. 1833 (catalogue
vol. 1, 1831, lot 4009). Francis Douce (1757^1834); armorial bookplate. Bequeathed in 1834. For details of the early owners of thehost volume see A-073.
shelfmark: Douce 96(1), fol. aiv.

XYL-22 St Francis of Assisi[Southern Germany, c.1490^1520].Woodcut with inscription
and monogram.
Schr. 1432b. St Francis before the cruci¢ed Christ on Golgotha.
The saint is portrayed in his habit (with cord), tonsured, and witha halo, kneeling in the foreground to the right, and with his hands,
which are marked with the stigmata, outstretched in prayer.
Before him the ¢gure of Christ, with £uttering loincloth, a⁄xedby three nails to the cross, which is inscribed ‘INRI’, blood dripping from his wounds. The cross stands upright in the ground; atits base lies a skull. An inscription in the foreground, consisting ofa monogram and a date, reads ‘14 B-E 41’. Double-lined frame,
surrounded by a thick black border. Unique copy. This iconography is not attested in other woodcut images of St Francis. The ‘BE’ monogram is identical with that on a woodcut of St Sebastian,39

Schr. 1690a, dated by Schreiber not before, and probably later
than 1480, but the technique of execution is quite di¡erent (seethe reproduction in E. Vischer, Formschnitte des XV. Jahrhunderts in der GroÞherzogl. Hof- und Landesbibliothek zu Karlsruhe(Baden), Einblattdrucke des fu«nfzehnten Jahrhunderts, 27(Strasbourg, 1912), pl. 12). Dodgson, believing the date to be
retouched (?), interprets it as 1497, or possibly 1491. SC speculates
that it might be read ‘1442’.
ills. Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 12.
refs. Schreiber, Handbuch, VI 95 (monogram); Dodgson,
Ashmolean, 31 (Bodl.5); Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII 85;
Nicholson no. 108.
COPY

One sixteenth of a chancery sheet. 92 ¿ 69 mm (woodcut 80 ¿59 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. No watermark. Printed in black
ink on one side of the paper in a press. Coloured in green, red, pale
brown, and brownish yellow. The bottom left-hand corner is torn,
but intact. Attached to the otherwise completely blank upper
pastedown of a small-format preacher’s manuscript, on paper in
8o (148 ¿ c.100 mm), written in Latin, and made up of about ten
separate booklets evidently collected over a longer period andprovided with additions. The manuscript displays a variety ofGerman cursive hands typical of the period c.1380^1420. The¢rst section contains an unattributed text of Nicolaus de Lyra’scommentary on the Passion gospels (see Stegmu« ller, Repertorium biblicum, 5896^5900, 8545), followed by an extensive collection of sermons by Franciscus de Mayronis OFM and others. A
set of ¢ve sermons for the feast of St Francis (fols 155r ^166v), the¢rst three attributed in other manuscripts to Johannes Contractus
OFM (see Munich BSB, Clm 28510), is prominently marked out
with rubrics and marginalia and provides a context for the addition of the woodcut depicting St Francis, at a later date, at thefront of the book. Some of the texts have marginal notes in Latin
and German in the distinctive hand of the Wu«rzburg Franciscan
Johannes Sintram, e.g. fols 52v ^54v, 106v, 156v, 158v, 164r ^166v,
226v (register); some of the texts may well also be in his hand, forwhich see the plate in A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated andDatable Manuscripts c. 700^166 in The Department of Manuscripts, The British Library (London, 1979), II pl. 340.
refs. SC 21632; Douce Legacy, 168; N. F. Palmer, ‘Johannes
Sintram OFM’, in VL 8 (1992), 1284^7, at 1285.
Binding: Inboard binding, probably from the 1440s. 152 ¿ 113 ¿65 mm. Tawed leather over sharply bevelled beech boards, now
worn and grimed to pale brown. One copper-alloy catch plate to
the upper board, a copper-alloy semicircular anchor plate to thelower board securing the stub of a tawed-leather strap, the strap
and clasp now missing. An iron, ¢ve-link chain and staple areattached to the head-edge of the lower board. The chain staple
traps a tawed leather patch on the inner face of the board whichfolds back across the staple to protect the textblock from rustmarks. On the upper board a contemporary parchment label,
identifying the contents. A large letter ‘Z’ (?), a ‘signature’ of thetype used by Sintram on other manuscripts, is inscribed on thelower board. For an almost identical binding, also from theWu«rzburg Franciscan convent, see London BL, Add. MS. 44055.
For the pastedowns, from a late eleventh or early to mid-twelfthcentury sacramentary, leaves from which were also used in thebinding of London BL, Add. MS. 44055, see Van Dijk V 5.

40

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

Provenance: Wu«rzburg, Bavaria, Conventual Franciscans,
Inventio crucis; identi¢able, on the basis of the characteristic
binding and numerous unsigned inscriptions in the margins, as a
volume from the personal collection of the Wu«rzburg Franciscan
Johannes Sintram (c.1380^1450), and evidently, on the evidenceof an inscription in London BL, Add. MS. 30049, one of 61 manuscripts which Sintram presented to the Franciscan convent inWu«rzburg in 1444 to be chained to four desks in the convent
library. Anonymous sale (London: Evans, 8 Feb. 1832), lot 751;
see XYL-7. Francis Douce (1757^1834). Bequeathed in 1834.
shelfmark: MS. Douce 58, upper pastedown.

XYL-23 St George; St Maurelius[Italy (Ferrara), c.1520].Woodcut book cover with Italian
inscriptions.
Schr. 1453m. Two woodcuts printed side by side to provide decorative covering paper for a book binding; separated by a vertical
woodcut strip with a £oral and lattice design for the spine. The
design for the upper board has a roundel at the centre containing
a three-quarter ¢gure of ‘s. mavrelio’ (St Maurelius, patron saintof Ferrara ^ the s reversed), with halo and bishop’s mitre, holding
a model of a walled town in his right hand and a crozier in his left.
In the corresponding roundel on the design for the lower cover ‘szorzi.’ (St George) is portrayed on horseback slaying the dragon
with his lance. Both medallions are surrounded by a panel with aformal design, in white on black, made of foliage, with urns andwinged asses’ heads. One of two recorded copies, the otherknown from the binding of a copy of Phalaris, Epistolae, translated by Francesco Aretino (Cremona: Franciscus Ricardus de
Luere for Dominicus de Zavarisiis, 13 Jan. 1505), formerly in the
Dyson Perrins collection; see A. W. Pollard, in Catalogue Dyson
Perrins, 147 no. 170; Dyson Perrins sale (London: Sotheby’s, 17June 1946), lot 219; J. R. Abbey sale (London: Sotheby’s, 21 June
1965), part I, lot 546. See also M. Sander,‘Copertine illustrate delRinascimento’, Maso Finiguerra, 3 (1938), 26^37. The printed
covers appear to have been been designed for Ferrara booksellers,
who may or may not also have been binders. Although most likely
manufactured in Ferrara, the covers were not necessarily used
exclusively there.
ills. Catalogue Dyson Perrins, no. 170, frontispiece and pl. facing
146 (both woodcuts); Hind I 75 (Dyson Perrins copy); Nixon,
Broxbourne, 37^8 no. 16, with full description and illustration of
the Bodleian copy; Baer, Holzschnitte, no. 10; Sander, Copertine,pl. III.
refs. Schreiber, Handbuch, III 101^2; Hind I 74^5.
COPY

Chancery sheet, now no longer intact and divided into two pieces.
215 ¿ c.156 mm (woodcut 207 ¿ 154 mm); 215 ¿ 154 mm (woodcut
207 ¿ 149 mm). Originally 304 ¿ 426; these measurements include
the strips which now serve as turn-ins. Chain-lines vertical (inrelation to the two woodcuts). Printed in black ink in a press on
one side of ¢ne paper. No watermark visible. The reverse, which
is now pasted down and cannot be seen, is printed with a typographic broadside in Italian set out in long lines and with a woodcut image of unidenti¢able design (width 45 mm) centred at thehead of the sheet; the upper part of the broadside is on the reverseof the Maurelius woodcut. The Dyson Perrins copy is printed on
the reverse of a similar printed item. Uncoloured. Both covers are[x yl- 22 ^ x yl- 23

worn and damaged. Of the decorative strip for the spine only aminute fragment remains; see Nixon’s comments, based on theevidence of the Dyson Perrins copy, and Sander, Copertine,pl. III.
Binding: The two woodcuts and the spine piece provide the decorative covering of the sixteenth-century inboard binding of a
volume in chancery 4o (208 ¿ 153 mm) containing: 1. Paulus
Venetus, Tractatus summularum logice (Venice: Lucantonio
Giunta, 29 Dec. 1517); 2. Menghus Blanchellus, In Pauli Veneti
logicam commentum cum questionibus nonnullis (Venice:
Johannes Leoviler, for Franciscus de Madiis, 21 Mar. 1488) (B352). 216 ¿ 156 ¿ 34 mm. There are no endleaves. The textblock issewn all-along on two £at, slit supports of tawed leather, though
the sewing is now loose and in places broken. The boards are alaminate of two pasteboards, the sewing supports pasted between
the two layers of board at the spine-edge. The remains of threetransverse parchment spine liners are pasted to the inner faces ofthe boards; only the centre liner survives across the spine. There
are no endbands. Prior to covering with the printed paper, thespine was lined with a further layer of paper consisting of ¢vepieces and extending onto the outer face of the boards some 25^
50 mm at the spine-edge; three are from a sheet of plain paper,
whereas the two narrower strips which covered the sewing supports display woodcut printing in white on black similar tothough not the same as the borders of the cover. The small
remaining fragment of the spine covering is pasted to the centre
parchment spine liner and consists of two layers of paper. Eachboard originally had two tawed ties, pierced through the boards
and pastedowns, pasted to the boards, and covered with plain
paper patches. These ties are now cut £ush with the boards. Twolater holes are pierced through each board for replacement ties,
now missing. The printed covering paper on the outer faces ofthe boards appears to have been coated with a layer of glue orsize, giving it a warm light-brown colour. There are some paper¢bres caught in this layer of size and the remains of nine red sealing-wax (?) spots, six to the upper board and three to the lower. It
is not clear what these spots relate to. Kept in a red quarter-morocco case with the title of Blanchellus’ treatise in gold, ‘in ferrarese paper covers with woodcut designs’, and the
Broxbourne shelfmark.
Provenance: ‘Loci Sancte Marie de [erased] 1649’. ‘Conventu S.
Antonij Fran’ (item 1). Maciano, province of Urbino, Franciscanhouse (?) (item 2). Montemaggio, province of Urbino, Observant
Friars Minor; modern library stamp. For details of the evidence
for early ownership see B-352. Albert Ehrman (1890^1969);
armorial book-plate; purchased from H. P. Kraus (New York) in
1950 for »450; ledger no. ‘R 894’. Presented in 1978 by John
Ehrman.
shelfmark: Broxb. 30.13.

‘Gnadenstuhl’, see under XYL-35 The Trinity (‘Mercy
Seat’)St Gregory, Mass of, see under XYL-8 St Barbara, etc.

xyl-24]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

XYL-24 King Henry VI of England[England, c.1490^1500].Woodcut, with inscriptions in Latin
and French.
Schr. 1499. Henry VI, King of England, invoked as a saint. The
king is portrayed with his crown, holding the sceptre in his righthand and the orb in his left, and wearing a mantle trimmed withermine, standing on a carpet. He is positioned at the centre of anarch supported by pillars, which frame the picture, and surrounded by kneeling ¢gures of smaller stature. At his feet theseated ¢gure of a fantastic beast with serrated horns and tusks,
to be identi¢ed as the antelope which Henry VI used as a badge.
Two women and a man are shown kneeling to his right, three
women and two men to his left. The man on the king’s right has arope round his kneck. The woman kneeling in the foreground at
his feet, on his left, holds a knife to her throat. The young man
behind her is trans¢xed by an arrow. The second man on the
king’s left has a javelin protruding from his throat. All eight ¢gures are raising their hands as in prayer, evidently invoking
Henry as their intercessor. Behind the king a brocaded hanging,adorned with a shield displaying the quartered arms of Englandand France. On either side of the curtain votive o¡erings hang or
are a⁄xed to the wall: to the left, where the woodcut is badly mutilated, a rosary, a taper, a naked ¢gure and horse standing on aledge, two legs (of a hanging ¢gure?), and to the right a model
ship, a chain, a shirt, a pair of crutches, and an inscribed tablet.
There are two inscriptions, both almost totally lost through mutilation. All that remains of that above the frame are the letters ‘cu’(from ‘Henricus’?), and of that inscribed over the pavement at bottom ‘mon d[:::]t’ (from ‘Dieu et mon droit’). Framed with a thickblack line (preserved only in the right-hand margin). Uniquecopy. Dodgson, Grosjean, and Ettlinger have identi¢ed the supplicant ¢gures as referring to speci¢c miracles recorded after thedeath of Henry VI, as described in the Miracula postuma Henrici
VI Angliae regis (ed. Grosjean). Henry VI, who was murdered in
the Tower of London in 1471, came into particular favour during
the reign of Henry VII (1485^1509), who built the chapel at
Westminster Abbey in which he himself was to be buried with aview to the transfer of Henry VI’s remains from Windsor,
although this was never brought about. In 1490 an application
was made for his canonization, and in 1494 Pope Alexander VI
appointed an investigatory commission for whom the collectionof Latin miracle stories, covering the years 1481^1500, appears
to have been compiled. This is the context in which this unusual
woodcut must have been executed, and the inclusion of thenumerous ex votos in the image makes it certain that it was speci¢cally associated with the cult of Henry VI in St George’s Chapel,
Windsor Castle, where the remains of the martyr king long
attracted pilgrimages.
ills. Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, pl. XXXVII;
Hind II ¢g. 470; Dodgson, English Woodcuts, ¢g. 22; Hodnett¢g. 18; Du¡y, Altars, ¢g. 77; Gothic: Art for England, 75 pl. 46(incorrectly identi¢ed as contained in MS. Digby 227).
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 35^6 (Bodl.26); Dodgson, ‘English
Devotional Woodcuts’, 104^8; Schreiber, Handbuch, VIII 90; P.
Grosjean (ed.), Henrici VI Angliae regis miracula postuma ex
codice Musei Britannici regio 13. C. viii, Subsidia hagiographica,
22 (Brussels, 1935), 257*^258*; Dodgson, English Woodcuts, 10^
11 no. 22; Hind II 739^40; STC 14077 c.23B; Hodnett no. 2514; E.
Ettlinger, ‘Notes on a Woodcut depicting King Henry VI being

41

Invoked as a Saint’, Folklore, 84 (1973), 115^19 (with plate); B.
Spencer, ‘King Henry of Windsor and the London Pilgrim’, inCollectanea Londiniensia. Studies in London Archaeology andHistory presented to Ralph Merri¢eld, ed. J. Bird and others(London, 1978), 235^64 (with ¢g. 1); B. P. Wol¡e, Henry VI, 3rdedn (New Haven and London, 2001), 353 (with pl. 24); R. Marks,‘Images of Henry VI’, in The Lancastrian Court. Proceedings ofthe 2001 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. J. Stratford (Donington,2003), 111^24, at 117 with pl. 16 (‘early sixteenth century’);
Nicholson no. 150.
COPY

Chancery sheet. c.370 ¿ c.240 mm (woodcut 338 ¿ c.230 mm).
Chain-lines horizontal. Remains of a watermark (?) in the upper
part of the leaf do not permit identi¢cation. Printed in black ink in
a press on one side of the paper. Uncoloured. Much of the upper
left-hand portion of the print (including the king’s face), as well as
the upper, left-hand, and lower margins have been torn or
scratched away, evidently as an act of wilful iconoclasm. Pasted
to the otherwise completely blank verso of an original parchment£yleaf (fol. 376v), facing the lower pastedown (now lifted), at theend of MS. Bodl. 277, a large-format illuminated parchment
manuscript of the complete Bible in English, c.1415^30 (408 ¿260 mm), from King Henry VI’s own collection.
refs. SC 2124; Pa«cht^Alexander III no. 880; King Henry’s Bible,
MS Bodley 277: The Revised Version of the Wyclif Bible, ed. C.
Lindberg, vols I^IV (Stockholm, 1999^2004); Index of Images, I
58 no. 183.
Binding: Nineteenth-century inboard binding for the Bodleian
Library, retaining the sewing from an earlier binding, rebacked
in the late twentieth century. 422 ¿ 285 ¿ 115. Blind-tooled midbrown straight-grained morocco over millboard. The binding
retains an earlier all-along sewing on eight raised double (?) supports. An inscribed fragment, from the earlier upper endleaves, isnow mounted on the upper doublure. The lower endleaves are
retained in the binding as fols 376^7. The verso of fol. 377, the original pastedown, has adhered remains of red-tawed leather indicating a chemise pocket, impressions of board lacing which matchthe eight supports, and impressions and corrosion from two copper-alloy side pins. The edges of the textblock are stained yellow,
with many parchment and red-stained tawed-leather place tabs
on the fore-edge. The volume was rebacked with dark-brown morocco and provided with new paper £yleaves in the late twentiethcentury. The lower £yleaf has the watermark ‘J Green 1966’.
Provenance: London, Carthusians, Domus salutationis matris
Dei; inscription at fol. 375r : ‘Hic liber erat quondam henrici sextiqui postea donabatur domui Cartusianorum quae Londino contigua est’ (early sixteenth-century); liturgical lection indicators
added in the margins suggest that the manuscript was used forreadings in the Charterhouse. The inscription is evidence that at
a previous date the host volume belonged to Henry VI, King ofEngland (1421^1471), a circumstance which no doubt gave rise to
the addition of the woodcut; possibly to be identi¢ed with the
Bible ‘in Engelyssh’ recorded as having belonged to Henry IV,
King of England (1367^1413), appropriated from the royal collection after the king’s death by the London stationer ThomasMarleburgh (À1427). George More (1553^1632). Presented in
1604; see SC I 88. See also: C. Meale, ‘Patrons, Buyers andOwners: Book Production and Social Status’, in Book
Production and Publishing in Britain 1375^1475, ed. J. Gri⁄ths

42

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

and D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), 201^38, at 203 and notes 10
and 14; A. I. Doyle, ‘English Carthusian Books not yet Linked
with a Charterhouse’, in ’A Miracle of Learning’. Studies in
Manuscripts and Irish Learning. Essays in Honour of William
O’Sullivan, ed. T. Barnard and others (Aldershot, 1998), 122^36,
at 132 n. 32. Former Bodleian shelfmarks: Th. B 24 9; NE.C.7.1.
shelfmark: MS. Bodl. 277, fol. 376v.

Image of Pity, see under XYL-11^XYL-13 Christ as
the Man of Sorrows
XYL-25 Johannes Metensis: Turris sapientiae[Germany, c.1475].Woodcut, with Latin inscriptions.
Schr. 1858c. The Tower of Wisdom is constructed of a basement
supported by 4 buttresses, a ¢rst £oor with 5 windows and adouble door reached by a staircase of 7 steps, above which rises
the keep of a castle constructed with 12 courses of 10 stones
inscribed with the names of religious virtues and topped by battlements. The reader is guided upwards in a process of edi¢cation
marked by 22 letters of the alphabet from A to Y. The foundation‘Humilitas’ (A) supports 4 bases (B) on which rest the columns of
the 4 cardinal virtues (C) with their 4 capitals (D), each with theirinscriptions. The 7 steps (E) inscribed with the names of 7 acts ofpenitence lead upwards to the doors of the tower, whose breadth(F) is love and whose height (G) is perseverance in what is good.
The doors (H) are inscribed ‘Obedien(c)ia’ and ‘Paciencia’, thewindows (J) with the names of 4 religious qualities. The 12 lettersfrom K rising to X, each inscribed against a row of stones on thetower, signify a sequence of virtues from ‘Amor’ through to ‘¢des’.
The 12 courses of stonework allow a tabular presentation of the 12
virtues and their 9 respective sub-virtues. The 6 battlements (‘propugnacula’) at the top (Y) are stated to stand for innocence, purity, fear of God, chastity, restraint, and virginity. Incipit: ‘Turris
sapiencie legatur ab inferiori asce(n)de[ndo] p(er) seriem l(itte)raru(m) alphabeti e A. Fundamentu(m) turris sapiencie e(st) humilitas que es[t] mater virtutum e .B. bases dilige(n)cia requies veritas
modus . . .’ The Turris sapientiae, which is known from an extensive manuscript tradition as well as three xylographic editions, ismost commonly found as part of the Speculum theologie, a set ofnine or more full-page diagrams with complex inscriptions, where
it is sometimes accompanied by an additional explanatory text,
and which is attributed in ¢ve manuscripts to the Franciscan
Master Johannes Metensis (of Metz?), probably to be identi¢edwith the Paris preacher of that name attested in 1273; see F. Saxl,‘A Spiritual Encyclopaedia of the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), 82^134, at 110^11;
L. F. Sandler, The Psalter of Robert of Lisle in the British Library,
2nd rev. edn (London, 1999), 23^7 with n. 52, 107^15; Sandler,‘John of Metz, The Tower of Wisdom’, in The Medieval Craft ofMemory. An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, ed. M. Carruthers
and J. M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia, Pa., 2002), 215^25. Fourlater manuscripts attribute the work to the Italian Dominican
Bonacursus de Gloria, Archbishop of Tyre (1272^91). The two
attributions, both to little-known but positively attested ¢guresin the right period, seem of equal merit and must both be taken
seriously. For Johannes Metensis see Schneyer, Repertorium, III
578; for Bonacursus see H. E. Mayer, ‘Das Ponti¢kale von Tyrus
und die Kro«nung der lateinischen Ko«nige von Jerusalem’,[x yl- 24 ^ x yl- 25

Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 21 (1967), 141^232, at 149^50. The textof the Turris sapientiae is printed by Weigel^Zestermann I 186^
8; M. Castelberg, Wissen und Weisheit: Die spa«tmittelalterliche
Tafelsammlung Washington D.C., Library of Congress,
Rosenwald Collection, MS 4, typescript dissertation, Fribourg(Switzerland) 2003, 61^4 (inscriptions), 442^3 (explanatory text).
The xylographic version, which is known in three di¡erent editions, is distinctive only in the total omission of personi¢ed ¢gures, in the depiction of the double doors and four shutteredwindows on the ¢rst £oor of the tower, and in the omission of the¢ve guards (‘custodes’, with the letter Z) who in the manuscripts of
the Turris sapientiae usually populate the uppermost level of thetower. For a manuscript version very close to the xylographic editions, see that sold by Hoepli in Zurich in 1937, illustrated by M.
Evans, ‘The Geometry of the Mind’, Architecture Association
Quarterly, 12 no. 4 (1984), 32^55, at 41. The present edition is
attested in four copies, the others in Jena ULB, London BL (IC30), and Nuremberg GermNM, whereas the impressions preserved in Berlin Kupferstichkab, Heidelberg UB, Leipzig UB,
Munich BSB, a second copy in Nuremberg GermNM, andTu«bingen UB (ill. Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 173), for which
see Schreiber, Handbuch, IV 42 (nos 1858a^b), are clearly printed
from a di¡erent block or blocks.
ills. E. Reicke, Lehrer und Unterrichtswesen in der deutschen
Vergangenheit, Monographien zur deutschen Kulturgeschichte,
9 (Leipzig, 1901), ill. 21 (Nuremberg copy); Sotheby II, pl. lxxxvii(London BL/Libri copy); Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 21.
refs. Pr 30; BMC I 11; Schreiber, Handbuch, IV 42 (no. 1858c);
Blockbu«cher des Mittelalters, 173^4; Griese (in preparation);
Sheppard no. 11.
COPY

Chancery sheet. 399 ¿ 245 mm (woodcut 387 ¿ 245 mm). Chainlines horizontal. Watermark: Bull’s head, belonging to the group
PiccO XV 381^390 (1475^89), closest to (but distinct from) XV
387 (1475^77). Printed in brown ink by rubbing on one side of thepaper. Some colouring in yellow, green, red, and brown. A little
damage at the bottom, leading to the loss of a few letters of text.
Binding: Half dark blue morocco over cloth-covered pasteboards, made for the Bodleian. 400 ¿ 261 ¿ 4 mm. Bound
together with H-098, with which this item does not share a common provenance.
Provenance: Purchased by the Bodleian in 1853 for »6. 6. 0; seeBooks Purchased (1853), 71. A cutting, probably from a Sotheby’s
sale catalogue from the years 1848^53, is pasted inside the front
cover of the binding and describes the leaf as ‘Zilographicum.
Propugnacula sive Turris sapiencie’. See Macray 464 note 1.
shelfmark: Auct. M 3.16(1).

Judith, see under XYL-4 Angel Playing the Lute;
JudithLast Judgement, see under XYL-19 Death and the Last
Judgement
The Last Supper, see under XYL-1 The Agony in The
Garden of Gethsemane, etc

xyl-26]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

XYL-26 Limperger, Tilman: Bishop Tilman
Limperger praying before St Augustine[Switzerland (Basel?), c.1498].Woodcut with Latin inscription,
possibly attributable to Master DS.
To the left, in the foreground, a kneeling ¢gure in prayer, wearing
a bishop’s mitre and robes, and identi¢ed by the initials‘ . F . T . E . T’ (presumably ‘Frater Telamonius Episcopus
Tripolitanus’) as Tilman Limperger OESA (£. 1491^1534), from
3 Dec. 1498 Su¡ragan Bishop of Basel and Titular Bishop of
Tripoli. To the right, supported by a bishop’s crozier, a shieldwith the arms of Tripoli (three castles) quartered with those of
the Limperger (river and star) surmounted by a mitre. In theupper right-hand corner, appearing in the clouds, a second mitred¢gure with a halo carrying a bishop’s crozier, representing
St Augustine. Bishop Tilman’s prayer to St Augustine isinscribed on a banderole: ‘ORA . P(ro) . ME . B(eat)E . P(ate)R .
AVG(ustine) . ’. In the bottom right-hand corner the date ‘1498’.
Possibly to be identi¢ed, on stylistic grounds, as an early woodcut
of Master DS; see Hieronymus, Basler Buchillustration 1500^
1545, 1 no. 2. For Master DS see F. Hieronymus, in The
Dictionary of Art, ed. J. Turner, vol. 20 (London and New York,
1996), 793^4. This attribution was proposed to Albert Ehrman in
a letter dated 13 Jan. 1960 by A. Frauendorfer of L’Art ancien in
Zurich, now kept together with the Bodleian copy. Earlier attributions, by Gerster to Urs Graf and by Geisberg to Albrecht Du« rer,
have not found acceptance. One of three known copies. The one¢rst reported by Gerster, ‘Ein altes Kleeblatt’, was found pasted
inside the upper board of a volume that had originally belonged
to a Swiss monastery (presumably Engelberg), at that time in thepossession of a chaplain in the Melchtal (a short distance to thewest of Engelberg), after whose death the book is said to havebeen returned to the Engelberg library. A further copy is theimpression on a typographic broadside in the Newberry Library,
Chicago, where it accompanies a Latin poem by Tilman
Limperger in honour of St Augustine and thus serves as an author
portrait: Tilman Limperger, In doctorem ecclesiae sanctum
Augustinum (Basel: Jakob Wol¡, not before 1498); Go¡, L-222.
For Tilman Limperger, see Helvetia Sacra, I/1 (Bern, 1972), 229;
I/2 (Basel, 1993), 514^5. In what context this woodcut was originally intended to commemorate the bishop and his devotion to thepatron of his order is not clear, for its use as an author portrait on
the broadside would appear, on the basis of parallels, to be secondary. A document relating to the Dominican convent of St
Maria Magdalena von den Steinen in Basel records a comparable
image of Bishop Tilman, with coat of arms and a similar inscription, no longer extant, in a stained-glass window; see F. Maurer,
Die Kunstdenkma«ler des Kantons Basel-Stadt, vol. IV (Basel,1961), 306. The further use of such commemorative images is
attested by a woodcut of Balthasar Brennwald OP, from 1494
Su¡ragan Bishop of Chur and Titular Bishop of Troy, dated
1502, discussed and illustrated by Gerster, ‘Ein altes Kleeblatt’,83^6. Both the Engelberg and Broxbourne/Bodleian copies havetraditionally been interpreted as ex-libris.
ills. L. Gerster, ‘Ein altes Kleeblatt’, Schweizerische Bla«tter fu«r
Ex Libris-Sammler, ed. E. Stickelberger, 2 (1902/3), 81^6, at 82(Engelberg copy); [Gerster], ‘Anfa«nge schweizerischer Bibliothekszeichen’, 1. Jahrbuch des Ex libris-Club ‘‘Basilea’’ (Basel,
1903), 15^20, inserted between pp. 18/19; E. Stickelberger, Das
Exlibris (Bibliothekszeichen) in der Schweiz und in Deutschland

43(Basel, 1904), 30 ¢g. 11; Gerster, ‘Ein altes Holzschnittblatt von
1498’, Archives he¤raldiques suisses: Organe de la Socie¤te¤ Suissed’He¤raldique (Zurich, 1913), 140^2 ¢g. 105; G. Amweg, Les Exlibris de l’ancien e¤ve“che¤ de Ba“le (Jura Bernois) (Neucha“tel, 1932),
15; Schramm XXI pl. 137 ill. 796; M. Geisberg, Geschichte derdeutschen Graphik vor Du«rer, Forschungen zur deutschen
Kunstgeschichte, 32 (Berlin, 1939), pl. 54 (Chicago copy); W. R.
Staehelin,‘Tilman Limperger,Weihbischof von Basel 1498^1527’,
Der Schweizer Familienforscher: Le Ge¤ ne¤alogiste Suisse, 14(1947), 26^9, at 28 (Engelberg copy); A. Ehrman, ‘The Earliest
Dated Woodcut Bookplate’, The Book Collector, 8 (1959), 426^7
and plate (Broxbourne/Bodleian copy); V. Lieber, Les Ex-libris
genevois. Catalogue des ex-libris imprime¤s des familles rec°ues a' labourgeoisie de Gene've avant 1792 (Nyon, 2002), ill. 1.
refs. Gerster, ‘Ein altes Kleeblatt’, 81^3; Gerster, ‘Anfa«nge’, 19^
20; Stickelberger, Das Exlibris, 28; Gerster, ‘Holzschnittblatt’,140^2; Amweg, Les Ex-libris de l’ancien e¤ve“che¤ de Ba“le, 14 no. 12;
A. M. W. Wegmann, Schweizer Exlibris bis zum Jahre 1900
(Zurich, 1933^7), I 26 no. 288; Schramm XXI 24 and 28;
Geisberg, Geschichte der deutschen Graphik, 152; Ehrman, ‘The
Earliest Dated Woodcut Bookplate’; Hieronymus, Basler
Buchillustration 1500^1545, 1 no. 2; F. Eisermann, Verzeichnis
der typographischen Einblattdrucke des 15. Jahrhunderts im
Heiligen Ro«mischen Reich Deutscher Nation (VE 15) (Wiesbaden
2004), L-63.
COPY

Chancery quarter-sheet. 195 ¿ 153 mm (woodcut 142 ¿ 103 mm).
Chain-lines horizontal. Printed in black ink in a press on one sideof the paper. No watermark. The upper and lower left-hand corners slightly rounded, indicating that the leaf once formed partof a volume in 4o. The alignment of the paper shows that it cannot
be a cut-out from the typographic broadside from the press of
Jakob Wol¡, as this is printed on a chancery half-sheet. Removed
in the earlier twentieth century from an unidenti¢ed volume,
where it is said to have been pasted inside the upper board.
refs. Ehrman,‘The Earliest Dated Woodcut Bookplate’.
Binding: Kept in a brown cloth-covered portfolio made for the
Broxbourne Library, inscribed ‘ex libris telamonius limberger 1498’.
Provenance: Albert Ehrman (1890^1969); armorial book-plate;purchased from A. L. van Gendt, Amsterdam, in 1955 (cat. no.
93) for »25; ledger no. ‘R 1365’. Presented in 1978 by John
Ehrman.
shelfmark: Broxb. 95.28.

Lions, see under XYL-28 Maiden; Two Lions
Madonna and Child, see under XYL-10 St Catherine ofAlexandria, etc
The Madonna and Child in a Glory, see under
XYL-8 St Barbara, etc.; XYL-10 St Catherine ofAlexandria, etc.

44

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

XYL-27 The Madonna and Child in a Glory with theInstruments of the Passion[England (?) or Netherlands (?), c.1480^1500].Woodcut with
Latin inscription.
Schr. 1053. The Virgin Mary, half-length and with one breast
exposed, and Christ child, both with haloes surrounded by aglory, positioned in a double-contoured roundel within a square
frame. The Virgin is standing on the crescent moon, and her halo
is ornamented with twelve stars. The Christ child is holding thehost. In the four corners the bleeding Sacred Heart and instruments of the Passion. Beneath the image a Latin antiphon andprayer based on the doctrine of the immaculate conception, occupying eight lines: ‘Aue sanctissima maria mater dei regina celi
porta paradisi domina mundi tu es singularis virgo pura tu concepta sine peccato concepisti iesum sine macula tu peperisti.
creatorem et saluatorem mundi in quo ego non dubito ora pro
me iesum dilectum ¢lium tuum et libera me ab omnibus malis
Amen:. J. C.’ The upper and outer borders are made up of clouds
and wavy or serrated lines; the lower border contains the usual
indulgence of 11,000 years said to have been granted by Pope
Sixtus IV (1471^84): ‘A sixto papa quarto xj .m. ann(i) conced(untur)’. The prayer, which is commonly associated with the devotionto‘Maria in sole’and presented as a composition of Pope Sixtus, isprinted at [a4r], as an appendix, in the Copie bullarum concilii
Basiliensis et Pape Sixti quarti in materiam conceptionis beatissime Marie virginis (Heidelberg: [Heinrich Knoblochtzer,
c.1500]; C-412); Hortulus animae, ed. Sebastian Brant and Jakob
Wimpfeling (Strasbourg: Johannes Wehinger, 1503), sig. l iiiv; seePaulus, Geschichte des Ablasses, III 297; Haimerl 57 and index s.v.
Sixtus IV.The presumed country of origin was originally recorded
by Nicholson as ‘?England’, but then changed in his hand to‘Netherlands’; Dodgson lists the print in his publication on
English woodcuts; Schreiber and Sheppard follow Dodgson. The
preservation of the unique copy in an English manuscript is not in
itself strong evidence for English origin of the woodcut.
ills. Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, 103; Dodgson,
English Woodcuts, ¢g. 17; The Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement),
164.1053.
refs. Pr 52; Schreiber, Manuel, I 315; Schreiber, Handbuch, II
126; Dodgson, Ashmolean, 35 (Bodl.23); Hind II 738; Dodgson,‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, 97 and 103^4 (no. 10); Dodgson,
English Woodcuts, 10; STC 14077c.19; Griese (in preparation);
Nicholson no. 13; Sheppard no. 9.
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. 155 ¿ 104 mm (woodcut 105 ¿75 mm). Chain-lines vertical. No watermark visible. Printed inblack ink in a press on one side of the paper. Uncoloured. Pasted
into a manuscript book of hours, according to the use of Sarum(Latin with some rubrics in English), dated by Pa« cht^Alexander
to the second quarter of the ¢fteenth century. Stitching holes indicate that the print may once have been sewn into a di¡erent book.
The prickings visible above, at the top of fol. 13v, are likely to havebeen for a protective curtain to separate the print from the gold
illumination on fol. 14r. The calendar, with the translation of St
Erconwald, suggests a London provenance. The woodcut ispasted to the otherwise completely blank verso at the end of a setof prayers, facing the opening page of matins of the Hours of theVirgin Mary. Just how early it came to be pasted into the[x y l- 27^x yl- 28

manuscript is not at all clear, for the theme of mariological devotion would still have been of interest to a recusant owner in thelater sixteenth century. For the host manuscript, see SC 1971;
Pa«cht^Alexander III no. 922.
Binding: Early eighteenth-century blind-tooled inboard binding
for the Bodleian Library, retaining the sewing from an earlier
binding. Sprinkled brown tanned leather over heavy millboard.
225 ¿ 146 ¿ 47 mm. The binding retains an earlier all-along sewing on six raised tawed supports, though only the ¢rst and last are
laced into the boards. The spine has an earlier gold-tooled shelfmark ‘NE . B . 2 . 6’ to the second panel.
Provenance: Ricardus Huggyns or Hyggyns; his name inscribedon fol. iir (second quarter of the ¢fteenth century?). Henry
Himbelton (£. 1525, À1588); William Thornhill (£. 1584^1626);
inscription ‘Hunc librum inveni in cista Henrici Himbleton etinde accepi June 13 1588, G. Thornhill’ (fol. iiv), indicating that at
this time the manuscript was at Worcester Cathedral; see
Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Wigorniensis
made in 1622^1623 by Patrick Young, ed. I. Atkins and N. R. Ker(Cambridge, 1944), 13 with notes 1 and 4. Listed in the Bodleianprinted catalogue of 1620, and most likely acquired by the library
between 1613 and 1620; see SC I 102. Old Bodleian shelfmarks:
NE. B. 2. 6; 4o D 3 Th.
shelfmark: MS. Bodl. 113, fol. 13v.

XYL-28 Maiden; Two LionsXYL-28.1 Maiden
Cutting.
[Germany, c.1500^20].Woodcut.
Maiden with long, £owing hair and laywoman’s costume, holding
a leafy or £owering sprig in her outstretched left hand. The ¢gureis likely to be a cutting from a larger, as yet unidenti¢ed single-leaf
woodcut or incunable leaf.
COPY

Paper cutting. 21 ¿ 21 mm. Printed in black ink in a press on one
side of the paper. Coloured in yellow, £esh-colour, red, dull red,bright red, and green. Like XYL-28.2, the cutting is an isolated
piece of printing which has been integrated into the painted border decoration of a late ¢fteenth-century small-format prayerbook on parchment (124 ¿ 90 mm), containing Latin and a few
Middle Low German texts for the use of Cistercian nuns during
the Easter period. The principal decorative elements in the manuscript are the numerous coloured and gilded initials, the decorated outer borders of fol. 20 r (seven angels with musicalinstruments in a vine scroll), and a cycle of 57 rudely but colourfully executed miniatures in the lower borders depicting ¢gures,
mostly with inscribed banderoles, who are to be understood asassociated with the individual prayers and paraliturgical texts.
The woodcut cutting, whose dating is dependent upon that of thehost volume (c.1500^20, not before 1494), provides the central element in the thirty-¢rst miniature of the sequence, in the lower
margin of fol. 141v, in which a maiden is shown standing in agreen ¢eld full of £owers and carrying a banderole with a rhymed
Latin inscription ‘Estuantes pro amo/re/ nos consperge dulci ro/re/’. It forms part of the miniature as originally conceived by theartist. The context suggests that the maiden may be intended torepresent the impassioned devout soul, the bride of God. It is
associated with a speech spoken in a Latin Easter play, in whichxyl-28^xyl-29]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

the bride addresses the risen Christ as her lover and bridegroomwith the words ‘Aduenisti desiderabilis O Jhesu dulcissime O
dilecte my pulcherrime . . .’ (fols 141r ^142r). A similar but now
lost cutting appears to have formed part of the miniature in thelower margin of fol. 52v, forming the thirteenth picture in thesequence. For the host manuscript, see: SC 29743; Van Dijk II(ii)370.
Binding: Sixteenth-century inboard blind-tooled roll binding,later rebacked. 139 ¿ 99 ¿ 83 mm. Mid-brown tanned calf overwooden boards, probably of oak. The upper board has two copper-alloy catch plates each attached by two iron nails. The lower
board has the stubs of two tanned-leather straps each attachedby two iron nails.The straps and clasps are now missing.The tooling, all blind, is executed with a ¢llet and a single roll. The roll(135 ¿ 14 mm) forms a frame to each board, which is then ¢lledwith three vertical strips imprinted from the same roll. It has
images of Prudentia, Lucretia, and Venus, with a foliate ornament above Prudentia, a grotesque above Lucretia, and Cupid
above Venus; lettered ‘prvden e lvcrecia e venvs’; similar but
not identical to EBDB roll no. r000303 (http://db.hist-einband.de, last accessed 13 Apr. 2004); evidently the same roll asthat used for the binding of Berlin SB, Ms. germ. 8 o 48, also from
Medingen (see Aderlass und Seelentrost, 272; ex informatione
Regina Cermann). Rebacked with light-brown tanned leather.
The hooked pastedowns are cut from leaves of a late thirteenthcentury missal. On the upper board a nineteenth-century label
inscribed ‘XXII’.
Provenance: Medingen, near Lu«neburg (Lower Saxony),
Cistercian nuns, BMV. Identi¢ed by Lipphardt as one of an extensive group of manuscripts made for this convent, all datable to theperiod 1470^1520 (Achten); see the prayer naming the town ofLu«neburg on fol. 28v, with mention of an abbess. The ¢rst holderof this o⁄ce in Medingen was Margarete Pu¡en, attested
from 1479 as prioress, elevated to the rank of abbess in
1494. Whereas Lipphardt dates the manuscript on stylistic
grounds and with reference to the sixteenth-century binding to
the period of Abbess Elisabeth von Elvern (1513^24), UhdeStahl argues, on the basis of close a⁄nities between the script of
this manuscript and Hannover LB, Ms. I 74, which she considers
to be datable before 1479, and an association between the lions
on fol. 217v (see XYL-28.2) and the arms of Tylemannde Bavenstede, Provost of Medingen 1478^97, for the period
1494^97. See W. Lipphardt, ‘Niederdeutsche Reimgedichte
und Lieder des 14. Jahrhunderts in den mittelalterlichen
Orationalien der Zisterzienserinnen von Medingen und
Wienhausen’, Niederdeutsches Jahrbuch, 95 (1972), 66^131;
Lipphardt, ‘Die liturgische Funktion deutscher Kirchenlieder inden Klo«stern niedersa«chsischer Zisterzienserinnen desMittelalters’, ZFKT 94 (1972), 158^98, at 164 no. 18; Lipphardt,‘Medinger Gebetbu« cher’ (‘Medinger Lieder und Gedichte’), in
VL 6 (1987), 275^80; B. Uhde-Stahl, ‘Figu«rliche Buchmalereienin den spa«tmittelalterlichen Handschriften der Lu«neburger
Frauenklo«ster’, Niederdeutsche Beitra«ge zur Kunstgeschichte, 17(1978), 25^60, at 39 and 45^6, ills 19, 23, and 28; G. Achten, ‘De
gebedenboeken van den cistercie«nzerinnenkloosters Medingen
en Wienhausen’, in Miscellanea Neerlandica. FS Jan Deschamps,
ed. E. Cockx-Indestege and F. Hendrickx (Louvain, 1987), III
173^88. The use of numerous similar printed cuttings, integrated
into border miniatures, is recorded in another Medingen manuscript, Hannover LB, Ms. I 74, whose script, initials, and45

illumination are virtually identical with those employed here; see
H. Ha«rtel and F. Ekowski, Handschriften der Niedersa«chsischen
Landesbibliothek Hannover. Erster Teil Ms I 1çMs I 174(Wiesbaden, 1989), 62, who assign this book to the second quarterof the sixteenth century on the basis of a watermark supposedly
datable to c.1540 (?). For a close parallel to script and illumination, in a manuscript datable to c.1515^20, see Berlin SB, Ms.
germ. 8o 48, illustrated in Achten 180; Aderlass und Seelentrost,
273 (colour plate). Purchased by the Bodleian at the James Bricesale (Sotheby’s, 27 July 1887), lot 535, for »8.
shelfmark: MS. Lat. liturg. f. 4, fol. 141v.

XYL-28.2 Two Lions
Cuttings.
[Germany, c.1500^20].Woodcut.
Two lions passant with raised forepaws, facing each other. Likely
to have been taken from an as yet unidenti¢ed woodcut illustration in a printed book.
COPY

Two paper cuttings. 25 ¿ 24 mm; 26 ¿ 22 mm. Printed in black ink
in a press, with traces of woodcut printing on the reverse.
Coloured in pale yellow. The cuttings are incorporated into ascene showing the two lions pacing towards each other on agreen ¢eld full of £owers. The miniature occurs in the lower margin of fol. 217r in a prayerbook for Eastertide made for the
Cistercian nuns of Medingen in Westphalia (datable c.1500^20,
not before 1494), where it is the ¢ftieth in the sequence of marginal
miniatures. The context is a prayer for the Sunday after Easter(incipit: ‘Benedico dei¢ce maiestatis consubstancialis qui illuxisti
seculis splententem [!] eternaliter Resurrectionis decore perfusus
et veste multifarie fulgoris ac glorie indutus . . .’). The lions are to
be understood as symbols of the resurrection, as for example inverse 2 of the hymn ‘Chorus novae Jerusalem / Novam meli dulcedinem’ (Chevalier, Rep. hymn., 2824), sung by Cistercians atterce on this day. Uhde-Stahl, ‘Figu«rliche Buchmalerei’, 57^9,
note 88, notes that the right-hand lion is identical with that on
the arms of Tylemann de Bavenstede, Provost of Medingen 1478^
1497, and considers that he may have had a close association withthe production of this manuscript.
Provenance: Medingen, near Lu«neburg (Lower Saxony),
Cistercian nuns, BMV. Purchased by the Bodleian in 1877. See
XYL-28.1.
shelfmark: MS. Lat. liturg. f. 4, fol. 217r.

Man of Sorrows, see under XYL-11^XYL-13 Christ as
Man of Sorrows (‘Image of Pity’)
XYL-29 St Mary Magdalen[Southern Germany (Augsburg?), c.1470^80].Woodcut.
Schr. 1603c. The ecstasy of St Mary Magdalen. The saint, portrayed with a halo and her body covered with hair, is raised up by
four angels. Single-lined frame. Unique copy. Plausibly describedby Nicholson as Swabian, but his suggestion for dating (‘c.1450?’),later changed by an annotator of his catalogue to ‘1470^80’, is too
early; Schreiber proposes c.1470.
ills. Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 11.

46

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 32 (Bodl.7); Schreiber, Handbuch,
VIII 94; Nicholson no. 103.
COPY

One sixteenth of a chancery sheet. 85 ¿ 68 mm (woodcut 65 ¿51 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. Printed on the reverse of a leafof paper printed in two columns with typographic text (unidenti¢ed). Coloured in red, yellow, green, and grey. Pasted to the ¢rst
leaf (fol. [a1r]), otherwise completely blank, of Jacobus Magni,
Sophilogium (Strasbourg: Printer of Henricus Ariminensis(Georg Reyser?), c.1476), in folio (302 ¿ 200 mm), for which see
M-013 (¢rst copy). Old worm-holes in the lower right-hand corner, not matched in the host volume, are an indication of reuse.
Binding: For full details of the ¢fteenth-century binding, blindtooled half calf over wooden boards from the workshop of Jo« rg
Schapf in Augsburg, see M-013.
Provenance: Martinus Hegelin of Augsburg; inscription in a late¢fteenth-century hand. Hammelburg, Thuringia, Franciscans(purchased 1666). For full details see M-013.
shelfmark: Auct. 6Q 4.20, fol. [air].

Master DS, see under XYL-26 Limperger, Tilman
St Maurelius, see under XYL-23 St George; St
Maurelius
Mercy Seat, see under XYL 35 The Trinity (‘Mercy
Seat’)
Monstrance, see under XYL-10 St Catherine ofAlexandria, etc.
Naked Putti, see under XYL-3 Andrea, Zuan:
Ornamental design with naked putti and sphinxes
XYL-30 The Pieta' with the Instruments of the Passion[England (Syon Abbey?), c.1499].Woodcut, with English
inscription.
Schr. 976. The Virgin sits before the cross, bending her head to theleft over the body of the dead Christ, naked but for his loincloth,
who rests on her knees. They are £anked by the lance and the reedwith sponge. The inscription on the tablet over the cross reads‘.I.N.R.I.’ In the background, on either side of the Virgin, there
rises a hill with two groups of forti¢ed buildings with towers andsteeples. The picture is framed by a border of 26 compartments
containing instruments of the Passion. The panel beneath theimage contains a three-line indulgence of 6,755 years for the performance of a devotion before the Arms of the Passion:‘Who sum
euer deuoutly beholdith. e these armys o¡ cristis passyon hat e
vj.M.vij C lv yeris o¡ pardon:-’. This unique item is one of only
two recorded single-leaf woodcuts from England depicting the
Pieta' (for the second see Dodgson, English Woodcuts, ¢g. 14),although close copies of this design were used as illustrations in
Wynkyn de Worde’s editions of the Imytacion of crist (?1515,?1520; Hodnett nos 455, 461^2; ¢g. 27^8, 35).
ills. Schreiber, Manuel, VI pl. XXII; Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, pl. XXXV (d); Dodgson, English Woodcuts,[x yl- 29 ^ x yl-31¢g. 13; D. Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval English
Religious Lyric (London and Boston, 1972), pl. 6; Illustrated
Bartsch (Supplement), 163.976; Du¡y,‘Devotion’, ¢g. 3.
refs. Schreiber, Manuel, I 284; Schreiber, Handbuch, II 976;
Dodgson, Ashmolean, 34 (Bodl.21); Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, 96 and 100 (no. 7); Dodgson, English Woodcuts, 9; Hodnett no. 2512; STC 14077c.22; Driver, ‘Bridgettine
Woodcuts’, 239; Nicholson no. 91. See also: The Bodleian
Library in 1882^7. A Report from the Librarian published by permission of the Curators (Oxford, 1888), 49^50.
COPY

Chancery half-sheet. 224 ¿ c.180 mm (woodcut 148 ¿ 108 mm).
The watermark is a distinctive cu¡ed hand surmounted by alarge quatrefoil; Nicholson’s suggestion that this watermark
might be associated with Wynkyn de Worde has not proved veri¢able. Chain-lines vertical. Printed in black ink in a press on one
side of the paper. Uncoloured. The text of the indulgence has
been scored through. The lower part is torn, but has been
repaired. The third of three woodcuts placed at the beginning ofa set of devotional texts in Latin for the use of Birgittines. For thefunction and context of the woodcut, see XYL-13.
Binding: See XYL-13.
Provenance: Syon Abbey, Middlesex, Birgittines. Richard
Rawlinson (1690^1755). Bequeathed in 1755. See XYL-13.
shelfmark: MS. Rawl. D. 403, fol. 1v.

The Resurrection, see under XYL-1 The Agony in the
Garden of Gethsemane, etc.
XYL-31 The Sacred Heart and the Wounds of Christ
displayed on a Cross (‘Arms of Jesus Christ’)[England, c.1495].Woodcut with inscriptions.
Schr. 1795g. The ¢ve wounds are displayed as fragments ofChrist’s body set out heraldically on a shield, with the bleeding
Sacred Heart at the centre, the hands with bleeding wounds inthe upper corners on either side of the name ‘ih’s’ superimposedon a star, the feet with bleeding wounds in the lower part, between
them a chalice into which the blood from the Sacred Heart is seen
to £ow. The shield hangs on a cross with three nail-holes, surmounted by a large crown of thorns and a panel with the inscription ‘.I.N.R.I.’ (the letter N in reverse). Behind the shield,
positioned diagonally, are the reed with sponge and the lance.
Single-lined frame. Unique copy.This appears to be a slightly simpli¢ed copy, lacking the supporting angels and typographic
inscription, of XYL-32.
ills. Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, pl. XXXVI (b);Dodgson, English Woodcuts, ¢g. 19; Du¡y, ‘Devotion’, ¢g. 1;
Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 3.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 35 (Bodl.24); Dodgson, ‘English
Devotional Woodcuts’, 102; Schreiber, Handbuch, IV 6^7; Hind
II 738; Dodgson, English Woodcuts, 10 no. 19; Hodnett no. 2503;
Nicholson no. 87.
COPY

An irregular paper cutting, trimmed close to the frame of thewoodcut on three sides, but preserving the full width of the handwritten inscription below. 130 ¿ 74 mm (woodcut 91 ¿ 68 mm) /xyl-31^xyl-33]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

130 ¿ 110 mm. Chain-lines vertical. Traces of a watermark (possibly a gothic letter P) at top right, positioned as in a sheet folded in
8o. Printed in black ink in a press on one side of the paper.
Coloured in green, light blue, light brown, red, yellow, and £eshcolour. A four-line handwritten inscription beneath the woodcut
reads ‘I haue sent vnto yor Lordship. a litill’ englysh’ boke not topasse e tyme with e whill’ ye be here and haue leyser but for to
kepe tyme wt. which’ we shuelde desire in or wyll’ and intente.
Impute it not to presumpton but raer to e wantyng’ of wytte.
Amor non timet e yor pore bedemen for euer e .d.E.G.’ (the Latin
motto underlined). A small hole in the right-hand frame, traces ofpaste on the reverse. This item and another version of exactly thesame iconographical motif, XYL-32, were removed in 1928 froma printed Sarum primer: Hore intemerate beatissime virginisMarie secundum vsum Sarum ([Paris: n. pr.], 1495; chancery 4o ;193 ¿ 133 mm), shelfmark Douce 24 (Du¡ no. 186; H-188). Linesand discolouring visible on the blank verso show that the leaf was
folded before it came to be pasted into the printed primer.
Nicholson (À1912) reports in his description that the woodcut
was positioned between fols e1 and e2 (‘pasted on the latter’); see
XYL-32. Dodgson, in his publications of 1928/9 and 1936,
reports that XYL-31 and XYL-32 were detached from the hostvolume in 1928. A later note in the hand of David Rogers (1917^
1995), kept together with the woodcut, incorrectly states that thetwo prints were ‘sewn originally to leaf e ij’. A note in Douce’s
hand on the front £yleaf of the host volume mentions a single
leaf sewn to fol. e2, presumably referring to XYL-32. It seems
quite likely, therefore, that XYL-31 was added to the volume by
Douce at a later date, the addition of such cuttings being a common feature of his collecting practice. There is no positive evidence that its association with XYL-32 and Douce 24 goes backbefore the early nineteenth century.
Binding: Mounted between glass and kept, together with XYL32, in a dark blue case, made for the Bodleian. 185 ¿ 152 ¿ 25 mm.
Provenance: Francis Douce (1757^1834). Bequeathed in 1834.
shelfmark: Arch. G f.13.

XYL-32 The Sacred Heart and the wounds of Christ
displayed on a Cross, with Angels (‘Arms of Jesus
Christ’)[Sheen, England, c. 1495].Woodcut with xylographic and typographic inscriptions in Latin.
Schr. 1795^6. The ¢ve wounds are displayed as fragments ofChrist’s body set out heraldically on a shield (and with the same
xylographic inscriptions), as in XYL-33, which appears to be aslightly simpli¢ed copy of this woodcut. The shield is supported
by two angels. The lance is pointed at both ends. Single-lined
frame. A typographic inscription, positioned above the woodcut,
reads: ‘ð Ex domo Jhesu de Betheleem.’ A three-line xylographic
inscription (not an indulgence, as implied by STC) on a scroll
beneath the shield contains an injunction to prayer: ‘Of your charyte in the worshyp of e e .v. wondes of our lord (and) e .v. ioyes e ofour lady say. P(ate)r n(oste)r (and). Aue.’ Unique copy. The typographic inscription refers to the Carthusian priory of Sheen(Richmond), known as Bethlehem, for which institution thiswoodcut may be presumed to have been printed. The words ‘Exdomo’, which have been interpreted as an indication that the
woodcut was designed as an ex-libris, are better interpretated as

47

an indication that it was issued as a souvenir to pilgrims or visitors
to the monastery (Dodgson/Hind). STC and Hodnett attributethe printing to ‘Wynkyn de Worde (?)’.
ills. Dodgson, ‘English Devotional Woodcuts’, pl. XXXVI (c);Dodgson, English Woodcuts, ¢g. 18; Du¡y, Altars, ¢g. 99; Du¡y,‘Devotion’, ¢g. 2; Bodleian Filmstrip Roll 245, no. 4.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 35 (Bodl.25); Dodgson, ‘English
Devotional Woodcuts’, 102^3; Schreiber, Handbuch, IV 6; Hind
II 738; Dodgson, English Woodcuts, 10 no. 18; STC 14077c.15;
Hodnett no. 454a ; Nicholson no. 88.
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. 140 ¿ 95 mm (woodcut 115 ¿82 mm). Chain-lines vertical. No watermark. Printed in black
ink in a press on one side of the paper. Uncoloured. Stitchingholes are visible in the upper border. Removed in 1928 from thesame printed Sarum primer as XYL-33 (Paris, 1495: H-188),
where it was sewn to the recto of fol. e2, which contains the beginning of a prayer to the Virgin ‘Obsecro te domina sancta’(Leroquais, Livres d’Heures, II 346^7). The top edge of the woodcut is gilded, providing evidence that it formed part of the hostvolume at the time of binding; for the seventeenth-century (?)
gold-tooled, brown morocco binding, with gilt edging, see H188. The volume appears to have contained a number of further
images sewn to the upper edge of individual leaves, as is evident
from stitching holes on fols A1, C4, D7, D8, a1, c5 (?), f7, i1. A listof woodcuts in Douce’s hand on the lower pastedown includes
this item, but otherwise refers only to woodcut illustrations thatform an integral part of the printed volume.
Binding: Mounted between glass and kept in the same dark bluecase as XYL-31.
Provenance: Francis Douce (1757^1834). Bequeathed in 1834. For
details of Alexander Frogenhall (£. 1505), William (À1509) andAnne Reede,Thomas Reede, the Withypoll family (sixteenth century), Ralph Sheldon (1623^1681), and J. Newman (born 1757),
who are attested by marginalia and other inscriptions as ownersof the host volume, see H-188 and Coates^Jensen 252^3, no. 18.
shelfmark: Arch. G f.14.

XYL-33 The Sacred Heart and the wounds of Christ
displayed on a Cross (‘Arms of Jesus Christ’)[Unknown, c.1490^1530].Woodcut.
The Sacred Heart, pierced by the lance and surrounded by thehands and feet, is displayed on a cross. All that is now visible ofthe printed image, on account of the exceptionally heavy overpainting, is the single-lined printed frame. Unique copy. Closely
related in design and technique to XYL-17, and undoubtedly
from the same workshop.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 31 (brief mention).
COPY

Parchment. 63 ¿ 50 mm (woodcut 56 ¿ 37 mm). Printed in blackink, probably in a press, on one side of the parchment. Painted
over, by the same hand as XYL-11, in purple, blue, green, and silver. Sewn to fol. P1v of a printed Sarum primer (Paris: Franciscus
Regnault, 1534), and later owned by recusant gentry in
Lancashire: see XYL-15.
Provenance and binding: See XYL-15.
shelfmark: Gough Missals 177, fol. P1v.

48

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

XYL-34 Sixtus IV, Pont. Max.: Forma Confessionalis
et Absolutionis ad Opus Sanctae Cruciatae, 1482
Schr. 2989 state 2. Incipit: ‘Pateat vniuersis presentes litteras
inspecturis. Qualiter deuot[ ] in christo [ ] diocesis ad opus sancte
cruciate . . . Quapropter auctoritate prefati domini . . .’ The‘Forma confessionalis’ of 1482, issued and sealed in the name of
the commissary Petrus (Petrus Cristannus, also known as
Cristini or Christmann, of Breslau), Warden of the Munich
Franciscan convent, records the right of the recipient, whosename is to be added by hand, to be granted the plenary indulgenceinstituted by Pope Sixtus IV in his bull ‘Domini et Salvatoris’ (4Dec. 1480) after the capture of Otranto by the Turks; see
Bullarium Franciscanum, ns III, ed. J. M. Pou y Marti(Quaracchi, 1949), 684 no. 1367 and note. It is followed by the‘Forma absolutionis’. The letter of indulgence was printed manytimes, with almost identical wording, in the years 1482 and 1483,
mostly on behalf of the individual commissaries, under whosenames the letters are often listed in modern catalogues; for a complete list see Einblattdrucke, 6, and Paulus, Geschichte desAblasses, III 206; see Johannes Kaufmann (K-002). The full textof the xylographic edition is given in Griese (in preparation).
refs. Analecta Franciscana, 2 (1887), 481; Paulus, Geschichte desAblasses, III 205^7; F. Eisermann, ‘Der AblaÞ als Medienereignis. Kommunikationswandel durch Einblattdrucke im 15.
Jahrhundert. Mit einer Auswahlbibliographie’, in Tradition andInnovation in an Era of Change, ed. R. Suntrup and J. R.Veenstra(Frankfurt a.M., 2001), 99^128, at 107^9.
[Augsburg: Johann Blaubirer, 1482]. Single-leaf woodcut with
Latin text.
23 lines. The xylographic edition is an exact copy of the typographic indulgence [Nuremberg: Friedrich Creussner, 1482], forwhich see Einblattdrucke, 22, 23; GW 32; Go¡ 32; BSB-Ink F191. At one time wrongly thought to be a forgery. The Bodleian
impressions all represent the second state, in which line 4 has
been corrected to read ‘potestatem habeat eligendi’. The suggestion by Voullie¤me, followed by Schreiber, that Johann Schaurof Munich may have been the woodcutter is circumstantial.
Assigned here to the workshop of Johann Blaubirer in Augsburg
on the basis of the paper (with a distinctive ‘scales’ watermark incopies 1 and 2, as also in the London BL copy IB. 38), which is
identical with the paper stock used for Sixtus IV, Summarium
indulgentiarum bullae apostolicae contra Turcos ([Augsburg:
Johann Blaubirer, after 4 Dec. 1480])(S-237), a copy of which
was preserved as a pastedown in the same binding as that fromwhich Bodleian copies 2 and 3 of the letter of indulgence were
removed. The attribution of this edition of the Summarium to
Blaubirer is based on the use of his type 118/119 G (illustrated in
GfT pl. 465).
ills. Breslauer & Meyer, cat.VII (Berlin, [1900]), 116 (no. 420); E.
Weil, Die Wiegendrucke Mu« nchens. Ein bibliographisches
Verzeichnis mit neun Typentafeln (Munich, 1923), pl. I; K.
Haebler, Einblattdrucke von den Anfa« ngen der Druckkunst bis
zum Tode Maximilians I. 1455^1519, Jacques Rosenthal catalogue
92 (Munich, [1931]), 27.
refs. Pr 9; C 5540; Einblattdrucke, 22, 23 note 1; Schreiber,
Handbuch, VI 55; GW 32 note 1; Sheppard no. 10. See also: K.
Dziatzko, ‘Bibliographische Miscellen 7’, ZfB 9 (1892), 335^9, at[x y l-34

338^9; E. H. Voullie¤me, ‘Der gefa«lschte Mu«nchener xylographische Ablassbrief’, ZfB 21 (1904), 566; G. Leidinger, ‘Der
Mu«nchener xylographische Ablassbrief von 1482 ist echt’, ZfB 22(1905), 138^41.
FIRST COPY

Chancery half-sheet, oblong format. 216 ¿ 253 mm (printed area
128 ¿ 228 mm, originally 128 ¿ c.230 mm). Upper margin: 11 mm.
Printed in black ink in a press on one side of the paper. Chainlines horizontal. Watermark: Scales; PiccW VI 311 (Ulm 1481).
The right-hand edge has been trimmed, resulting in the loss of
the last printed letter of each line; made good with a paper strip
128 ¿ 31 mm, the letters added by hand. Despite the applicationof an oval seal, which has left a red stain in the wide margin
beneath the ‘Forma absolutionis’, no name of a recipient has
been added in the blank space in line 2. The blank side of the
sheet shows signs of pasting.
Binding: Bound in a modern cloth-covered guard-book,assembled in 1954. 489 ¿ 433 ¿ 17 mm.
Provenance: Munich, Franciscan Observants; see copy 2. Ludwig
Rosenthal (1840^1928); cat. 90 no. 102. Purchased in 1892.
Former Bodleian shelfmark: Auct. 4Q 1.21(12a).
shelfmark: Arch. B b.5(1a).
SECOND COPY

Chancery half-sheet, oblong format. 197 ¿ 233 mm (printed area
128 ¿ 207 mm, originally 128 ¿ c.230 mm). Upper margin: 17 mm.
Printed in black ink in a press on one side of the paper. Chainlines horizontal. Watermark: Scales (as in copy 1). The righthand edge is trimmed and damaged, with loss of text. Beneaththe ‘Forma absolutionis’ a red stain marks the position of theseal, now lost. No name of a recipient has been added in theblank space in line 2. Badly wormed.
This is one of two copies removed in Apr. 1918 from the binding ofAuct. 4Q inf. 1.8: Antoninus Florentinus, Summa theologica, part
III (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 26 Jan. 1478)(A-344, part III).
A typographic broadside, summarizing the content of the bull
‘Domini et salvatoris’ and printed on the same paper stock as theletter of indulgence, was also used in the binding of this volume:
Sixtus IV, Summarium indulgentiarum bullae apostolicae contra
Turcos ([Augsburg: Johann Blaubirer, after 4 Dec. 1480])(S-237).
Leidinger, ‘Der Mu«nchener xylographische Ablassbrief’, discusses 11 similarly unused copies, all originally sealed but without
recipients’ names, now in the Munich BSB which, like copies 2
and 3 in the Bodleian, were used to form pastedowns in incunabula bound for the library of the Franciscan convent in Munich.
It is very likely, although no longer demonstrable, that copies 1
and 4 also derive from bookbindings made for the Munich
Franciscans.
Binding: Bound in a modern guard-book.
Provenance: Munich, Franciscan Observants; see A-344, part III.
Munich, Royal Library. Acquired by the Bodleian between 1847
and c.1892. See A-344. Former Bodleian shelfmark: Auct. 4Q
1.21(12b).
shelfmark: Arch. B b.5(1b).
THIRD COPY

Chancery half-sheet, oblong format. 212 ¿ 251 mm (printed area
128 ¿ 230 mm). Upper margin: 7 mm. Printed in black ink in apress on one side of the paper. Chain-lines horizontal. No watermark. The right-hand edge is damaged, with loss of text. Beneaththe ‘Forma absolutionis’a red stain marks the position of the seal,
now lost. No name has been added in the blank space in line 2.

xyl-34 ^xyl-35]

block b o oks, wo o dcut an d m eta lcut s i ngle s h e ets

Badly wormed. Removed in Apr. 1918 from the binding of thesame printed book as copy 2.
Binding: Bound in a modern guard-book.
Provenance: Munich, Franciscan Observants; see copy 2. Former
Bodleian shelfmark: Auct. 4Q 1.21(12c).
shelfmark: Arch. B b.5(1c).
FOURTH COPY

Chancery half-sheet, oblong format. 190 ¿ 280 mm (printed area
128 ¿ 230 mm). Upper margin: 14 mm. Printed in black ink in apress on one side of the paper. Chain-lines horizontal. No watermark. Beneath the ‘Forma absolutionis’ a red stain marks the
position of the seal, now lost. No name has been added in theblank space in line 2. Perfectly preserved, apart from a few
worm-holes.
Binding: Kept in a brown cloth-covered portfolio, with a printed
inscription speculatively attributing the leaf to Johann Schaur of
Munich. 300 ¿ 214 ¿ 6 mm.
Provenance: Munich, Franciscan Observants. Munich, Royal
Library; see the modern library stamps and shelfmark ‘Inc. 742 ac.a.’ on the reverse of the leaf. Jacques Rosenthal (1854^1937);
Jacques Rosenthal catalogue 92 (Munich, [1931]), no. 32. Albi
Rosenthal (1914^2004). Albert Ehrman (1890^1969); armorial
book-plate; purchased from Albi Rosenthal in 1951 for »75. 0. 0;
ledger no. ‘R 992’; see invoice, 30 Mar. Presented in 1978 by John
Ehrman.
shelfmark: Broxb. 95.8.

Sto«ger-Passion, see under XYL-1 The Agony in the
Garden of Gethsemane, etc.
XYL-35 The Trinity (‘Mercy Seat’)[Southern Germany (Franconia?), c.1440^50].Woodcut.
Schr. 741e. Mercy Seat (or ‘Gnadenstuhl’). God the Father, withhalo, seated on a bench in the centre of the image and supportingwith his outstretched arms the body of the Son (only part of theright-hand sleeve of the Father and the right arm of the Son preserved), who is a⁄xed by three nails to the cross: its stem extends
to the centre of the lower margin. Above the head of God the Sonhovers the dove representing the Holy Spirit (only one wing preserved). The ¢gures are positioned under a decorative trefoil arch,through which can be seen, forming the background, a vaulted
ceiling with windows on either side. Double-lined frame. Uniquecopy. Incorrectly described in SC as an image of the Annunciation; unaccountably described in Index of Images as a ‘watercolour drawing or print’ depicting ‘the Virgin and Child or a
Christ in Majesty’. This woodcut is in virtually every detail identical, except for the lack of a decorative border (which seems likely
to have been cut away in the Bodleian copy), to Schr. 741d, theunique impression of which is preserved as an integral part ofa manuscript from the Katharinenkloster in Nuremberg,
Nuremberg StB, Cent. VI,56, dated 1446^7; see the illustrations
in M. Weinberger, Die Formschnitte des Katharinenklosters zu
Nu«rnberg. Ein Versuch u«ber die Geschichte des fru«hestenNu«rnberger Holzschnittes (Munich, 1925), colour pl. 5 (and discussion pp. 39^40); Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 163.741^4;
Schmidt, Gedruckte Bilder, ill. 46. The Gulden puchlein of c.1450,
now kept in Munich BSB, in which the woodcut border of Schr.
741d is used for three di¡erent images (Schmidt, Gedruckte
Bilder, 32), and Nuremberg StB, Cent. VI,56 provide the points

49

of reference that allow a dating of this item to the mid-century.
Nuremberg is a possible place of origin, but the state of preservation of this unique copy is too poor to allow any such hypothesis tobe tested. For another woodcut from this group, preserving a decorative border in the manner of the Gulden puchlein woodcuts
intact, see XYL-18.
ills. Illustrated Bartsch (Supplement), 163.741^5.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 31 (Bodl.4); Schreiber, Handbuch,
VIII 41; Nicholson no. 1.
COPY

Chancery quarter-sheet (trimmed). 139 ¿ 86 mm (woodcut 131 ¿c.84 mm). Chain-lines horizontal. Printed in grey ink on one sideof the paper by rubbing. Coloured in dull purple, pale green, red,
pale yellow, and £esh-colour. The whole of the central portion of
the woodcut has been torn away, evidently in a deliberate act of
iconoclasm. In view of the unusual format (too small to be a fullquarter-sheet, but horizontal chain-lines), and in view of theextremely close relationship to Schr. 741d, which Weinberger
shows to be associated with a set of woodcuts with distinctive decorative borders, it seems likely that the Bodleian impression originally had a similar border, now trimmed away, and was printed
on a chancery quarter-sheet of similar dimensions to those of the
Nuremberg copy of Schr. 741d (183 ¿ 120 mm). The woodcut isa⁄xed to the blank verso of the upper pastedown (fol. iiv), now
lifted, of MS. Bodl. 608, a small-format utilitarian paper manuscript in 8o (147 ¿ 114 mm) of John of Gaddesden, Rosa medicinaesiue Rosa Anglica, copied in an English cursive hand and datableon palaeographical grounds to the second quarter of the ¢fteenth
century; followed by a few short medical texts in Latin andEnglish at the end of the volume. Fols iiir ^ivv, which follow on
immediately after the woodcut and precede the main text, containa set of medical notes dealing with diagnostic signs (incipit: ‘<D>e¡orma decubitus. Si patiens non sentit nocumentum de suo
dolore . . .’), unrelated to the subject matter of the image. The
upper pastedown is a cutting from a Latin charter relating to an
ecclesiastical court at York, with the date 1437; the blank verso,
to which the woodcut is pasted, is completely unmarked, suggesting that the leaf was positioned here when the manuscript was ¢rst
made.
refs. SC 2059; Index of Images, I 68 no. 259.
Binding: Inboard binding, later rebacked. 146 ¿ 115 ¿ 90 mm.
Red, surface-stained, reversed tawed leather over oak boards.
The tawed leather is now entirely faded to pale brown except at
the turn-ins, which retain a muted red colour. The original pastedowns are now lifted and a later paper upper £yleaf has been
added. A brown tanned-leather strap, with a copper-alloy clasp,is anchored by brass pins to the upper board and closes on a copper-alloy catch plate on the lower board. The clasp has an eye for a
now missing pull. Manuscript title ‘Rosa medicine’ to fore-edge,
reading from tail to head. Rebacked with light brown reversed
tanned calf.
Provenance: Christophor Materas (£. early sixteenth century);
inscription fol. 420 v. Sir Henry Savile (1549^1622). Presented to
the Bodleian in 1620; see SC I 104. Former Bodleian shelfmark:
NE.C.1.3.
shelfmark: MS. Bodl. 608, fol. iiv.

Turris sapientiae, see under XYL-25 Johannes Metensis

50

blo ck b o oks, wo o dcut a n d m eta lcu t si ngle sh e ets

XYL-36 St Veronica[France (?), early 16th century (c.1520?)].Woodcut.
Schr. 1724d. The saint is portrayed with a halo, wearing a £owing
head-scarf or veil and ornate clothing. She stands facing the
onlooker holding the cloth on which the Holy Face is displayedin her outstretched hands, so that it covers almost her entire
body. In the background we can see a landscape, indicated by atree to the left and buildings to the right; there are stones andgrass in the foreground. The face of Christ is portrayed with eyes
open, dense hair and beard, wearing the crown of thorns, surrounded by a nimbus of rays. Single-lined frame. Unique copy.
refs. Dodgson, Ashmolean, 32 (Bodl.8); Schreiber, Handbuch,
VIII 102; Nicholson, s. n. (addition in the hand of Strickland
Gibson (1877^1958), sub-librarian and keeper of the university
archives, on the last page of Nicholson’s catalogue).
COPY

One eighth of a chancery sheet. c.92 ¿ 70 mm (woodcut 76 ¿54 mm). Chain-lines vertical. No watermark. Printed in black
ink in a press on one side of the paper. Coloured in purple, dark
pink, and brown-yellow. Prickings at the top of the leaf suggestthat it was at one time sewn into a manuscript book. Describedin a note signed by S. Gibson as having been found loose on 1
Apr. 1920 in MS. Marshall 123, a small-format illuminatedNetherlandish book of hours on parchment (137 ¿ 95 mm), consisting of three parts: calendar, simple catechetic texts, Penitential
Psalms, and litany in Dutch; Hours of the Virgin in Dutch (fols
37r ^175v); additional prayers in Dutch, including the Fifteen Oes
and the Seven Joys, and shorter texts at the end in later hands; see
H. Brugmans, Verslag van een onderzoek in Engeland naar archivalia, belangrijk voor de geschiedenis van Nederland, in 1892 op
last der regeering ingesteld (The Hague, 1895), 479; SC 5310;
Bibliotheca Neerlandica Manuscripta (www.leidenuniv.nl/ub/[x yl-36

bnm [last accessed 29 Apr. 2004]). There are no stitching marksthat might indicate that this was the host volume into which thewoodcut was at one time sewn. MS. Marshall 123 has a late ¢fteenth-, or possibly early sixteenth-century, blind-tooled inboard
binding, probably of Netherlandish origin. Brown tanned calf
over gently chamfered oak boards; the head and tail turn-ins
secured with trenails. 137 ¿ 98 ¿ 50 mm. The pastedowns are
now lifted. All tooling is blind and executed with a three-line ¢llet
and one small tool, a rosette.Two engraved fore-edge clasps (similar, though not identical to Szirmai, ¢g. 9.49 [e]) on tanned leather
straps attached to the lower board with quatrefoil anchor plates.
They closed on catch plates to the upper board, all furniture ofcopper alloy. The lower catch plate, and the upper strap andclasp, are now missing. Now kept in a maroon linen-covered box
made at the Bodleian Library. Paper label on spine, preserving old
shelfmarks ‘23’ and ‘92’. Shelfmark on the fore-edge: ‘78’. The
name of an early seventeenth-century owner, Sophia Maria
Reyers, is inscribed on fol. iiiv : ‘Dit bouck hoort toe Sophia
Maria Reyers Deym Godt is myn Troost Anno 1614’. She also
owned MSS. Marshall 109 and 119. Thomas Marshall (1621^
1685). Old shelfmarks on fol. iiiv ‘53’ and ‘78’. Bequeathed to the
University and received in 1689/90. Former Bodleian shelfmarks:
MS. Bodl. Addit. B. 29; MS. Liturg. e. 2.
Binding: See XYL-25.
Provenance: Unknown. The former host volume, MS. Marshall123, in which the woodcut leaf was discovered in 1920, belonged
in the seventeenth century to Sophia Maria Reyes (£. 1614), in
the Netherlands, and passed with the collection of Thomas
Marshall (1621^1685) to the Bodleian; see above.
shelfmark: Arch. G e.35(2).

The Visitation, see under XYL-10 St Barbara, etc