A Saint Gall Fragment?
[STRASBOURG GYMNASIUM.]
Educationis puerilis linguae Graece, pars altera, pro Schola Argentinensi, et correctior et cum indice. Strasbourg, Josias Rihel, 1568.
Small 8vo, pp. 304 (recte 308), [27], large woodcut printer’s device on title, woodcut initials; early drawings of a barking curly-tailed dog (p. 3) and a small head of Christ (p. 110); some light soiling and staining, but a very good copy; contemporary vellum wrapper formed from an eleventh-century manuscript leaf (see below), sewn on two leather thongs; soiled and rubbed, small hole in upper cover and in spine, lacking front free endpaper; some early scribbles and notes (including musical notation) on endpapers.
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Educationis puerilis linguae Graece, pars altera, pro Schola Argentinensi, et correctior et cum indice.
Extremely rare early edition of this Greek grammar compiled for use in the Strasbourg Gymnasium; once in the abbey library of Saint Gall, one of the most important monastic libraries in the world, bound using a fragment of an eleventh-century missal.
Editions of this grammar are generally attributed to Theophilus (or Gottlieb) Golius (1528–1600), a teacher at the Strasbourg Gymnasium (from 1566 an Academy). The first part originally appeared anonymously in 1541, printed by Wendel Rihel, and was regularly reprinted thereafter; in 1552 Rihel published the second part. The 1565 pars altera contained a verse preface by Kaspar Grasperger, the first name associated with the book, but it is not until 1580 that Theophilus Golius’s name appeared on the title-page as responsible for the expanded text of that edition (VD16 G 2622). His name is now seemingly attached to all editions of both parts, from 1541 onwards; it is most likely that Johannes Sturm (1507–1589) was in some way responsible for its original composition.
Manuscript fragment:
The binding preserves part of a leaf (c. 210 x 145 mm) from a missal (Southern Germany or Switzerland, first half of twelfth century), with readings for the second week of Lent; text in a single column (of two?) written in dark brown ink in a bold and slightly sloping Caroline hand, 21 lines remaining, ruled with a hard point, double vertical bounding lines in left-hand margin, two initials in red and a single rubric (‘fer[ia]’); soiled and worn, but almost entirely legible, a few small holes, trimmed at foot and down one side, other side of leaf obscured by the paper pastedowns of the printed book but a few words visible where the paper is lifting.
The parent manuscript may once have been in the abbey library too, being dismembered in the sixteenth century to bind this volume and doubtless others.
Provenance:
From the abbey of Saint Gall, Switzerland, with sixteenth-century inscription on p. 290 (‘Liber Sancti Galli atq[ue] Othmari’), erased sixteenth-century inscription at head of title, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century inscription on title, and twentieth-century bookplate (with cancellation stamp; deaccessioned in the 1960s).
VD16 G 2616, recording a single copy only (Munich, Bibliothek der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität). OCLC finds no copies of this edition in the US or the UK.