medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: Csaba Nemeth <[log in to unmask]>
> let me share with you something distracting. If you open the first
edition of PL vol. 16 (Ambrosius) at the very end (coll. 1543-44), just
below the inscription FINIS INDICIS RERUM, you will find there an image
of a three-mast steamboat sailing under French flag. One mast shows
another flag with letters "CT". You certainly find this image in the
first /1845/ edition of PL 16 (reimpressions not checked).
> Begging for your guesses,
> what is that and why is here?
i don't have the book to hand, but from its position at the end of the book i
would guess that it is a kind of "printer's mark" or "publisher's device".
in the earliest printed books (which were without title pages) these were
found below the "colophon" (a statement of the title, editor, publisher and
date of the publication) on the very last page of the book.
when title pages were "invented" in the early 16th c. the printer's mark was
moved to the title page, usually placed near the center of the page, between
the title/author lines at the top and the place/publisher/date lines at the
bottom of the page.
16th-17th c. books usually kept the tradition of a colophon as well, sometimes
with the printer's mark, now redundant.
your "three-mast steamboat sailing under French flag" puts me in mind of a
magnificent early 18th c. "printer's mark" (in this case actually a
"publisher's device") which i have seen from time to time.
it is a magnificent two masted ship, under full, billowing sail, plowing the
waves in a most courageous fashion, with the inscription "Lutecia Parisiorum"
(note that a mere shadow of that ship as part of the coat of armes of the city
of Paris is still to be found today).
somewhere on the page are the words, "Society of Parisian Bibliopoles" (in
Latin which i won't try to reproduce), "bibliopoles" being
publisher-booksellers.
the most striking example of this publisher's device i've seen was on the
title pages of a fine, Maurist edition (Mabillon's, i believe) of the Opera
Omnia of St. Augustine, circa 15 volumes, In-folio.
unencumbered by any real knowledge of the subject, i assumed that this
massive, costly publication was a joint enterprise undertaken by a consortium
of several major Parisian publishers, who had come together as a "Societé" to
spread out the very substantial capital outlay and risk required for it.
the copies of this edition which i saw when i was living in Chartres in the
mid-1980s were magnificently bound in full contemporary calf, with panelled
gilt spines, really DeLux pieces of work.
they were at a kind of Salvation Army sale which i used to go to one Saturday
morning every month.
also on the title page was the delicate, pale blue little ownership stamp of
the Chapter of the cathedral of Chartres, with the heraldic device of the
Camisia of the Virgin.
there were only about 8 volumes there and all those had been severely
water-damaged, the pages stained (and mildewed), the boards very badly warped,
more than a few completely detached.
needless to say, i bought all the volumes they had --@ about 10 francs each,
as i recall-- and took them home to see what could be salvaged.
not much, as it turned out.
the mildew (particularly) was so bad and widespread that only one volume could
be saved, more or less in tact --the rest i had to disassemble, saving
whatever i could.
which was quite a few text pages, several of the title pages and some of the
fine gilt tooling on the spine.
the title pages were so magnificent, full folio in size, printed in red and
black, with that large woodcut of the Ship of Paris in the middle of the page,
that i was going to matt them and see if they would sell at the Kalamazoo
conference, which i was then setting up at every year.
but i never got around to it and they are still in my storage building,
somewhere.
anyway, given the subject matter, the provinence and the circumsstances under
which i acquired them i figured that i had a kind of role in the
End of Platonism at the School of Chartres.
Migne's steamboat *might* be a dim echo of this earlier tradition, i suppose.
but the story of it wouldn't be nearly as interesting, i should think.
c
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