Balbus's Catholicon

Balbus's Catholicon
The R-Printer (Adolf Rusch), not after 1475
BALBUS, Johannes (d. 1298). Catholicon. [Strasbourg: The R-Printer (Adolf Rusch), not after 1475.]

Third edition of the most popular and important encyclopedia of the later Middle Ages. Balbus, a Dominican friar from Genoa, completed this work in 1286. It contains treatises on orthography, etymology, grammar, prosody, and rhetoric, but is best known for its etymological dictionary of the Latin language, which occupies the greater part of the text. This was apparently the first lexicographical work to achieve complete alphabetization from the first to the last letter of each word. It remained the standard Latin dictionary into the sixteenth century. Many manuscripts survive, and there were no fewer than 24 incunable editions. The first edition, sometimes attributed to Johann Gutenberg and extant in three issues, was printed by a revolutionary technique using two-line “stereotyped” slugs, but the subsequent editions were printed using moveable type in the standard manner. The printed of this edition, known as the R-printer, so named from the “bizarre” shape of the capital R that appears in his works, is now considered to have been Adolf Rusch von Ingweiler. Rusch printed in Strasbourg in the 1460s and 1470s, often in collaboration with Johann Mentelin, the first printer in Strasbourg, whose daughter he married. HC 2253; BMC I 64; GW 3184; Sack 427, BSB-Ink B10; CIBN B-B15; Goff B-22; ISTC ib00022000.

Imperial folio (480 x 350mm). 398 leaves (of 400, without blanks). Larger initials in red, blue or green, often divided, infilling of “maiblumen” and flourishing in contrasting color, smaller initials in red and green (minor soiling to first and last pages, old mend to one leaf without loss of text). Contemporary calf over wooden boards, leather straps, brass bosses, corner pieces and edge protectors, contemporary title label on front cover, a few contemporary leather index tabs, front pastedown formed of fragments from two Hebrew manuscripts (tooling indistinct, tail of spine splitting in two compartments, front flyleaf and back pastedown of later paper, front hinge repaired). Provenance: later paper label on spine.