Part of a bifolium from a didactic theological text, in Middle High German, manuscript on parchment in situ on the binding of a seventeenth-century printed sammelband [probably border region of southern Germany, mid-fifteenth century]

Part of a bifolium from a didactic theological text, in Middle High German, manuscript on parchment in situ on the binding of a seventeenth-century printed sammelband [probably border region of southern Germany with northern Austria and Switzerland, mid-fifteenth century]

2 conjoined leaves pasted around the pasteboards of 2 later printed books (M. Laurentus Fabricus Dantiscanti, Partitiones Codicis Hebraei …, Wittenberg: Clement Berger, 1626 & Thomas Erpenius, Grammatica Ebrea generalis …, Geneva: Ioannes de Tournes, 1627, the latter printed from right to left, and the sammelband thus having 2 front covers, some blank paper leaves bound between the two volumes, these with 3 pages of contemporary pen notes on Hebrew words), with each leaf aligned so that it sits over each board, and with the blank gutter over the spine of the printed book, the leaves then folded around each board and pasted in place there, each visible section of leaf with remains of double column of 23 lines in an angular and spiky German bookhand, capitals touched in red, red rubrics and simple red initials, some scuffing, but most text perfectly legible, more certainly preserved under pastedowns, total visible: 180 by 110mm.

An eighteenth-century inscription on the endleaf of the printed book here shows that its owner was a Petrus Fincklus apparently of Austria (Noricus). To this a second hand has added the note that he was Pastor Happurgens, probably Habsburg on the northern border of Switzerland.

The text here is laid out as a series of stock questions and answers, opening with the rubrics: ein vrage and den entlosung, most probably for use in a master-pupil teaching situation, with subjects here including the Virgin Mary, gotes sun and religious sight.