[CATHOLIC CHURCH].

A good, unsophisticated copy – in an attractive, strictly contemporary binding and with early ms. annotations – of this most successful Catholic martyrology. This was the last edition printed before the Reformation. Used intensively for the writing of sermons, it is infrequently found in such well-preserved, genuine state. This copy specifies a contemporary price of 3 florins for the book, probably already bound, as the price is written on the ffep, and a later price of 17 florins, dated 1740, which provides interesting evidence for the history of book prices.

First published in Basle in 1474, this anonymous compilation, like the ‘Legenda aurea’, brought together the lives of the Apostles as well as saints, martyrs, confessors and virgins from late antiquity and (fewer) from the early middle ages. Each section includes short accounts on the life, death and miracles of each exemplary figure, with a selection from saints’ days in the Breviarium Romanum (Kalendae, Idus, Nonae). The choice provides clues as to the original authorship and intended readership: e.g., Wenceslas (10th century), mostly venerated in Bohemia and England, embodied political resistance against the Holy Roman Empire and was especially dear to C15 and C16 Hussites; Winibald (8^th century) was a German monk and missionary of English origin, whose relics were donated to Henry VII of England in 1492.

The early C16 Germanic annotator of this copy, a cleric and preacher, copied down an abridged version of the ‘lectio’ for Christmas Eve as well as the Vulgate text of Isaiah 2-7, with a marginal note reminding him to highlight the legend of St Bernard. The Isaiah excerpt was intended for a ‘lectio capitularis’ – a sermon delivered at a ‘Capitul-Kirche’, a collegiate church, generally a cathedral. In this case, the annotator specified that the place of the sermon was a church dedicated to St Paul. The late C17 annotator, the unidentified Joannes Petrus Hörner, was probably an apostolic legate; he noted an episode from the life of St John Chrysostom. The C18 annotator, Joannes Jacobus Franciscus, Count of Eltz-Kempenich, was a theology student at Strasbourg in 1764 and canon at Mainz and Trier, like his famous relative Philipp Karl von Eltz-Kempenich (d.1743), Archbishop-Elector of Mainz. He glossed two passages with references to Charlemagne and Pipin.