The word "incunabula" is found periodically in the catalogs of antique shops and auctions, as well as in books of fiction. This, if literally translated from Latin, is the “beginning” or “cradle”. But in the modern explanatory dictionary, books printed before the end of the fifteenth century are designated in this way. What makes them different from other old books? Why are they so valuable? Let's sort it out in order.
The very first printed book in history
Incunabula are, of course, old books. But in history there are more ancient printed copies. It is believed that the first such edition was the Chinese "Diamond Sutra". Even the exact date of its appearance is known - May 11, 868 AD. The authorship is attributed to a certain master Wang Chi (or Jie), who undertook to print a book translated from Sanskrit into his native language by a group of Buddhist monks.
It is a thin pamphlet (by modern standards) in the form of a scroll, consisting of only six leaves and one illustration depicting the Buddha. The manufacturing process lasted a very long time, since the master himself, manually, cut out stamps with hieroglyphs and fired them in a kiln. Consideringthe number of signs in the Chinese alphabet, the work was truly colossal. In addition, the clay was quite brittle, and the stamps often had to be redone, which also took time. But perseverance and diligence allowed Wang Chi to finish his work.
Subsequently (already in the twentieth century) the book was acquired by the Hungarian archaeologist and traveler Stein Aurel from a Taoist monk who looked after the library of ancient manuscripts in the Mogao caves. More than 20,000 woodcut books describing the history of China, popular sciences, religious texts and collections of folklore were also found there. Now these ancient monuments are kept in the National Library. They are digitized so that everyone can read them.
The history of the incunabula
Incunabula are books of the transitional period between manuscripts and mass stamping. It all started in the forties of the fifteenth century, when Gutenberg invented his machine tool, developed a special paint for it, a set of fonts and other devices.
At first, incunabula looked like handwritten books. After all, the Gothic font, the decoration of capital letters and hand-drawn illustrations were preserved. Gradually they began to use engravings made of copper, which were much stronger than clay stamps and made it possible to make a greater number of copies. There was no title page in the books, all the necessary information about the printer, author and time of creation was indicated at the end of the text, and only at the end of the fifteenth century did they move forward.
The term "incunabula" itself appeared onlyone and a half centuries after the beginning of printing, in the work of Bernard von Malinkrodthom "On the Development of the Art of Typography". It is curious that the bibliophile chose an arbitrary date - December 31, 1500, to separate the period of creation of incunabula and other printed books.
The largest collections of incunabula
Incunabula are extremely valuable ancient monuments. Not only do they keep history, but they are history in themselves: materials, inks, fonts, design of drawings - everything reflects the art of their time. It is a great fortune to have such a book in a private collection or in public museums and libraries. There are even entire collections.
The Bavarian State Library has the largest number of incunabula. There are about 20 thousand copies collected here. It is followed by the British French, Vatican and Austrian libraries, which store almost 12,000 books each. The leading libraries in the United States can boast only 5,000 authentic incunabula, and their quality copies. There are about 3,000 books in the UK and Germany.
Most of the publicly available copies have been published in Latin, but there are also English, Dutch, Greek and French. They were bought by doctors, scientists, lawyers, we althy nobles and clergy.
Are there incunabula in Russian libraries?
The National Library of Russia houses one of the most amazing collections of books. Incunabula play an important role in it, since according to information about officially registered specimens, the Russian collection is the largest in the world.
It started in the Załuski library, which was taken from Warsaw to the Russian Empire in the 18th century. The collection was expanded by buying books from individuals, as well as at international auctions.
Most often among the incunabula there are copies of German and Italian printing houses, less often of France and Holland. Single books in the collection came from Spain, and there are no samples of book printing from Foggy Albion at all.
Gothic font was gradually replaced by simpler types, as it was necessary to make a large number of stamps, and there was less and less time to create a blank and ebb. Later copies are already more modestly decorated than the first incunabula.
The most famous incunabula
Books published in Europe from the beginning of printing, accumulated over time in such quantity that it became necessary to account for them. The first catalogs originated in the 19th century in Germany and Great Britain.
One of the first books printed by Guttenberg, besides the Bible, was Donut. This is a Latin textbook, which was used by all noble and we althy people in the Middle Ages. But no complete copies have survived to our time, all 365 copies of the book are heavily fragmented.
In addition to textbooks, in the fifteenth century, the works of great scientists such as Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy and others were often published. This allowedpopularize the natural sciences and improve the education of society.