A RARE PASSAU BREVIARY
[BREVIARY, Use of Passau.]
Breviarium s[ecundu]m chorum alme Ecclesie Pataviensis.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Petrus Liechtenstein for Vienna, Lukas and Leonhard Alantsee, 25 May 1515.]
Part II only (of two), 8vo, ff. [xii], ‘382’ (recte 394); printed in red and black throughout, title-page with woodcut portrait of Saints Stephen and Valentine incorporating the Alantsee device with letterpress name of Leonhard Alantsee within the frame, full-page woodcut of the Crucifixion, four other full-page woodcuts with historiated woodcut borders on facing pages, smaller woodcut illustrations throughout; upper margin of title-page excised and repaired, marginal wormholes to first 3 ff., marginal paperflaws to a few leaves, small stains to x8, the odd mark, else a very good copy; bound in contemporary Austrian blind-stamped sheep over wooden boards, front board lettered ‘BREVIER E’ in blind, spine blind-tooled in compartments with an eighteenth-century giltpaper lettering-piece, traces of nails from bosses at centre and corners, remains of two clasps, index tabs , sewn on 3 split tawed thongs, spine lined with manuscript waste on vellum; somewhat worn and rubbed, spine defective at head and foot, endpapers renewed; late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century notes on m2–4, inscription of the Augustinian Canons Regular of Klosterneuburg to title dated 26 May 1656.
A rare Passau breviary with numerous woodcut illustrations in a contemporary Austrian binding, printed in Venice for the Austrian market.
This volume contains the summer part of the breviary (aestivalis or estivalis); the winter section was issued by Liechtenstein on 26 July 1515. The calendar (in the first twelve leaves), however, covers the whole year.
The diocese of Passau (now in eastern Bavaria) covered much of modern-day Austria, and its liturgy had an even wider spread, so it is not surprising that its liturgy was in use hundreds of miles away in Klosterneuburg, just north of Vienna. The first Passau liturgy was printed in Passau in 1481, and the first Venetian printing was in 1499. Petrus Liechtenstein of Venice specialised in liturgical printing, in particular for central European dioceses; this is the fourth small format Passau Breviary he printed between 1505 and 1515, on behalf of the Viennese bookselling brothers Lukas and Leonhard Alantsee. The title-page depicts two of the patron saints of Passau, St Stephen and St Valentine, and was used in other Passau liturgies, including the 1517 Passau Breviary in folio, which was printed by Luc’Antonio Giunta rather than Liechtenstein.
OCLC records a single incomplete copy in the US (Illinois), and Library Hub adds copies in the British Library (summer part only) and Cambridge University Library. Bohatta located copies in various monastic libraries in Germany and Austria (including another at Klosterneuburg, with both parts, and in a pigskin binding; it was added to the catalogue on 3 December 1656, and had the ex-libris of the abbot Thomas von Ruef; see Ludwig, Klosterneuburger Altdrucke (1501–1520), 140).
EDIT16 CNCE 36443; USTC 846986; Bohatta, Breviere 2580; VD16 ZV 28324; Sander 1315 (all for both parts); cf. Mortimer, Harvard Italian 86 (the 1517 Giunta/Alantsee Passau Breviary).
