More special than others

Incunabula in the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences

Each incunabulum is unique, each is important, each is accounted for. This is especially true of libraries that count their 15th-century printed books in single units, tens or hundreds. The libraries that possess collections that contain several thousand books or more usually only mention their most important ones. Perhaps the best-tallied book is the aforementioned “42-verses Bible” by Johannes Gutenberg. Institutions that possess an edition are not only pleased if they have perfectly good, or maybe even defective copies, but also with single pages or even quarters of pages. The Wroblewski Library holds 67 incunabula (as known at the time of the preparation of this exhibition), and here we will mention some of the more important ones, significant for the Library, and important not only in Lithuania, but also worldwide.

Oldest in Lithuania

A few years ago, the last book out of seven in a composite volume was finally identified. The other six had been catalogued long ago, but it was difficult to determine to which book the last three bound sheets belonged. As there was no beginning of the work, it was difficult to predict, how many sheets were missing, and there was no colophon. Digital collections of foreign libraries helped to identify the book. The digital copy of the incunabulum revealed not only that the book was almost complete, with only the first page of Johannes de Aragonia’s texts missing, but also that it was the oldest known printed book in Lithuania at the time. It was printed in 1471, after 19 December.

LMAVB RSS I-25g
ISTC ia00939800, GW 02309 

The preparation for this exhibition was a good opportunity to revisit the incunabula and to check whether any new information about them had come to light. After all, the research on these books is never-ending, the information is ever-growing, as we gain additional knowledge about these books: the place or date of printing, the publisher of the book. Sometimes, with new information, books are recognized to be older, other times younger than thought before. That is what happened this time. The sixth book of the same volume, a speech by Bernardo Giustiniani to Pope Sixtus IV, that was given on the 2nd of December 1471, was printed not around 1472, as had previously been thought, but in 1471, after the 2nd of December. Since Johannes de Aragonia's speech was printed in the same year, only after the 19th of December, the speech against the Turks appears to be about two weeks older than previously mentioned book. So now it is the oldest printed book kept in Lithuania. At least some other of Lithuanian institution identifies an older incunabulum among the books in its possession or acquires one. 

LMAVB RSS I-25f
ISTC ij00605800, GW M15532

Uniques

The Wroblewski Library houses two incunabula, of which only one copy is currently known. One of them, the Regulae cancellariae, is bound together with other ten books. This document of Pope Alexander VI, which has been updated and supplemented several times, has been reprinted many times. 20 of its editions (1492–1499) are known today. Most of them, perhaps due to the practical purpose of the document, survived in only one or a few copies. One of them ended up here in Vilnius.

LMAVB RSS I-12j
ISTC ia00379250, GW 00918 

Another unique document was identified a few years ago. It is one of the earliest Czech legal documents, the “Artikule snĕmovní z roku 1497”, printed in 1497. The discovery of this small print was also important because it proved once again that even the books that were thought to be lost can re-emerge: the last mention of its existence was in I. B. Rakowiecki's Prawda Ruska, published in Warsaw in 1820. For almost 200 years thereafter, the book was considered to be lost. This document, which is only 6 pages long, is bound with the “Zřízení zemské Vladislavské”, published in 1500. 

LMAVB RSS KJ5301 Jabl
GW M52125

"Newest"

During the preparation of this exhibition, another incunabulum was identified in the Wroblewski Library – a collection of sermons by the French theologian Petrus de Palude (c. 1275-1342), printed in Strasbourg in 1497. This is the second incunabulum of the same sermons in the library. An earlier known edition was printed in Strasbourg in 1484 (LMAVB RSS I-31, ISTC ip00520000, GW M41794). Petrus de Palude was a popular author in the 15th century and his sermons were printed many times. His sermons for Lentwere reprinted 9 times, and his Sermones thesauri novi de tempore was reprinted as many as 22 times, 17 of them in Strasbourg (the Wroblewski Library has copies of two of these editions).

LMAVB RSS I-2
ISTC ip00527000, GW M41789