Conradus de Alemania [Halberstadt the Elder] (fl. circa 1342-1362)
Concordantiae Bibliorum.
[Strassburg: Johann Mentelin, not after 1474.]
Editio princeps, folio, 415 of 417 leaves, lacking first and last blanks; printed in gothic type, two columns throughout, sixty-six lines per page, nine-line initial Q in red and yellow on first leaf of text, large seven- or eight-line initials heading each new alphabetic section, rubricated headlines added by hand for each of the three columns per page throughout; bound in full contemporary German tanned calf over substantial wooden boards, chamfered edges, boards decorated in blind within diagonal compartments, individual handle tools (including flowers, leaves, fleur-de-lis, stars, and stag), ruling, and rolled tools, with brass clasps and catches (one catch detached), with the original endbands (endmost sewing supports); contemporary printer's waste pastedowns, front joint repaired, sound; some worming, large paper repair to final leaf; 16 1/4 x 11 1/4 in.
Goff C849; H 5629*; Schorbach 33; Pell 3933; Oates 85; Bod-inc C-428; Sheppard 164; Pr 222; BMC I 58; BSB-Ink C-497; GW 7418; ISTC ic00849000. Rare, two copies at auction, 1976 & 2004, both rebound; seven U.S. copies.
For more on Mentelin's "very peculiar" transitional method of marking signatures see, William Blades, "The Use & Development of Signatures in Books," from Books in Chains and other Bibliographical Papers, 1892, pages 110-112. The signatures are mostly preserved in this copy, as it has never been trimmed down.
A Bible Concordance is essentially an index of every word in the Bible, carrying a citation to each use by chapter and verse. The ambitious Dominican friars of the 13th century, working in Paris at St. Jacques', began the process between 1280 and 1330. Achieving this goal required many thousands of hours of detailed and exhaustive work. The text published here was the most successful of three attempts, and comes down to us in over eighty manuscript examples, and in this first edition to appear in print. (For more, see Richard and Mary Rouse's "The Verbal Concordance to the Scriptures,' Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 44 [1974], 5-30; and Paul Meyvaert & Serge Lusignan's review of Novae Concordantiae Bibliorum Sacrorum by Bonifatius Fischer in Speculum, vol. 56, No. 3, July 1981, pages 611-613.)
