The First Delft Printshop:
Jerome Read in England
[JEROME, Saint.]
Obitus beati iheromini. [Delft, Jacob Jacobszoon van der Meer, (colophon:) 27 October 1486].
4to, ff. [75]; a6 b7 c–i8 k6 (b1 blank, cancelled); gothic letter, first initial added in a later (?sixteenth-century) hand in brown ink on a foliate ground, other smaller initials in brown ink; first few leaves slightly soiled, slight staining to inner upper corner of first few quires, but a very good copy; early eighteenth-century English mottled calf, boards panelled in gilt with badge of Charles, 4th Duke of Buccleuch (BAR stamp 3) later blocked in gilt, edges speckled red, marbled endpapers; rebacked to style with spine lettered directly in gilt, corners slightly bumped and neatly repaired; first leaf with small sketches of a head, other early manuscript notes, underlining, sketches, flourishes, and manicules to c. 10 pp., early inscription ‘Ricardi Wyott’ below colophon with two lines of Latin text (see below), armorial bookplate of John Vertue to inside front cover, small paper shelf label to front board.
Rare incunable edition (first printed in Cologne, 1470), from the first printshop in Delft, of a devotional account of the life of St Jerome; a copy with early English provenance.
Jacob Jacobszoon van der Meer established his printshop in 1477, initially working in partnership with Mauricius Yemantszoon before continuing alone from 1480 until 1487; from 1488 his typographical material was in the possession of Christian Snellaert.
This devotional text on the life and passing of St Jerome sees the thirteenth-century Life of Jerome augmented by three apocryphal letters, purporting to be by Eusebius of Cremona, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Augustine of Hippo. This group of texts was widely circulated in Latin and vernacular languages from the early fourteenth century onwards, surviving in more than four hundred manuscripts.
Provenance:
1. One of this copy’s earliest owners appears to have been an Englishman, Richard Wyott, who pens his name at the end and adds a distich of exhortation to the reader:
Si cupias anime morbi vulnus medicari
Inspice que dicit hec tibi Jeronimus
If you desire to be cured of the wound of a diseased soul
Consider what Jerome says of this to you.
A Richard Wyot was master of Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1506, rector of Wigan until 1519, dying in 1522. He seems to have had connections with Thomas Linacre, who took over his Wigan living in 1519.
2. Charles William Henry Montagu Douglas, 4th Duke of Buccleuch (1772–1819).
3. John Vertue (1826–1900), appointed the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth in 1882.
ISTC records two copies in the US (Morgan, Yale) and only three in the UK (BL, CUL, Ushaw). We have not traced any copies of this edition at auction since 1938.
HCR 6722; Campbell 710; BMC IX 19; GW 9452; Goff Suppl. H243a; ILC 1190; ISTC ih00243500.