Incunabula

Page of a Bible with Gothic writing printed by J.R. Grueninger in 1497 (Strasbourg)

The incunabula (from the Latin incunabula, "in the cradle") is a book printed during the XV at the start of the press. This term is attributed to Hadrianus Junius, who called these books "prima artis [typographicae] incunabula" in 1588 in his posthumous work Batavia. It was possibly Cornelis van Beughem who popularized the term thanks to his catalog Incunabula typographiae (1688).

In this period the typographic industry had not yet specialized: the printer was the owner and manipulator of the press, type foundry, paper maker, bookbinder, publisher, bookseller, craftsman, artist, and scholar. Some of them left a "watermark" or watermark on the paper they made, that way we know who edited it; but there are many that lacked signature and date. Today, scientific studies that analyze the types of foundry used have helped to catalog most of the existing editions. These editions are historical documents that, for the first time, made culture available to everyone.

The term «incunabula» refers to the time when books were «in their cradle», that is, in the first «infancy» of the modern technique of making books through the printing press. Thus, the books printed between 1453 (date of the invention of the modern printing press) and 1500, coming from some 1,200 printing presses, distributed among 260 cities, with an approximate release of 35,000 different works, are recognized as incunabula.

Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz is credited with inventing cast movable type. The first incunabula came from his printing press, and among them stands out the Gutenberg Bible (1453-55), in Latin, with 42 lines. During the first thirty years, the printing press spread throughout Western Europe and began to divide into different specialized activities. At first, the books did not have a cover, they used characters based on Gothic script and the words had numerous abbreviations, imitating the codices. But already in the same century other types of letters were being adopted, especially the round or Roman, the Venetian or Italic and the cursive, much more legible than the first ones and which finally prevailed over them (except in Germany) from the beginning of the following century.. Towards the end of the 16th century, the elzevirian type (from Dutch Elzevir) was introduced, thinner than the previous ones and later other fantasy characters followed, until reaching the great variety that we know today.

Types of incunabula

Before movable metal types, fixed wooden plates were used, which gave rise to the xylographic incunabula, among which the Biblia Pauperum or stands out. Bible of the poor. As indicated above, an incunabula (from the Latin incunabulum, cradle) is any printed book with movable characters, from the origins of typographic art up to and including the year 1500 (December 31, 1500). The Latin term applied to a category of books, was first used by the Dutch bibliographer Cornelis van Beughem (Cornelius a Beughem) in the repertoire he titled Incunabula typographiae (Amsterdam, 1688).

The first surviving printed Spanish book is the Sinodal de Aguilafuente, printed by Juan Párix of Heidelberg (Johannes Parix) in 1472, which contains minutes of a meeting held in Aguilafuente, Segovia. Spanish incunabula of great value are the Bible (printed in Valencian in Valencia in 1478), The Twelve Labors of Hercules (originally written in Valencian, with the title Los dotze treballs de Hèrcules) by Enrique de Villena (Zamora, 1483), Tirant el Blanco (originally written in Valencian, with the title Tirant lo Blanch) by Joanot Martorell (Valencia, 1490), Grammar of the Castilian language by Antonio de Nebrija (Salamanca, 1492) and the first edition of La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas, attributed to Fadrique de Basilea in 1499, a famous printer who worked in Burgos for thirty years and who left behind an important line of printers in the city.

Among the most important editions of incunabula are those by Gutenberg, Nicolas Jensen, William Caxton, and Aldo Manuzio.

To know the incunabula, especially those that do not have a date, you have to look at other particularities that distinguish them:

1. the lack of title in separate sheet at the beginning of the work, since only in 1479 was that the title of the work began to be printed in a single sheet, in the Epistles of Cicero and Plinioprinted in Venice by the brothers Juan and Vindelin de Spira, an edition that earned them a privilege for five years granted by the Senate of Venice;
2. the lack of initial letters, because the printers of that time left a gap at the beginning of a work or chapter, which the illuminators then filled, putting beautiful initials adorned with arabesques of gold, silver and colors these ornaments were generally fine and very varied in color;
3. the few divisions that had the text or content of the work, since the matter was run and compact, without titles and without separation of chapter or paragraphs;
4. the lack of punctuation marks, because it was used only the two points and the final point, the latter at times square, other times round and other times as a star;
5. the low equality and thickness of the characters, which is visible in some editions;
6. the omission of colophon, because in the first editions it was abstracted from them at all, in order not to disclose the new invention of the printing press and to be able to sell the copies of those editions as manuscripts.
7. the lack of pages.
8. generally the types are coarse, irregular and imperfect, except for some reputable printers.
9. At the end of each volume, in the colophon, the typographical notes are placed in the likeness of the manuscripts: Explicit liber qui dicitur...Here ends the book that is called...author...printer...year... month...day...
10. chapters and paragraphs together, without blood. Signs called calderones are used to separate paragraphs.

Collections of incunabula

The most important catalog of incunabula is possibly the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, begun in 1925.

Europe and the United States

Guido de Monte Rogerio, Manipulus curatorum. Incunable printed in Zaragoza by Mateo Flandro on October 15, 1475.

The largest collections in the world, with the approximate number of incunabula they possess, are guarded in:

Library	Population	Country	Volumes
Bavarian State Library	Munich		18 550
British Library	London		12 500
National Library of France	Paris		12 000
Vatican Library	Rome		8900
National Library of Austria	Vienna		8000
National Library of Russia	Saint Petersburg		7000
Lander Library, Stuttgart	Stuttgart		7000
Huntington Library	San Marino, California		5600
United States Congress Library	Washington		5600
Bodleiana Library	Oxford		5500
Russian State Library	Moscow		5300
National Library of Naples	Naples		4600
University of Cambridge Library	Cambridge		4600
John Rylands Library	Manchester		4500
State Library	Berlin		4400
Harvard University Library	Harvard		3600
Bamberg State Library	Bamberg		3550
National Library of Spain	Madrid		3300
Yale University Library	New Haven		3100 and 425
Library of the University of Salamanca	Salamanca		2800
Koninklijke Biblioteek	The Hague		2000
Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen	San Galo		1650
Colombina Library	Sevilla		1300
Illinois University Library	Urbana-Champaign		1130

Latin America

Places of printing in the 15th century

The following is a list of Latin American institutions that have collections of 'universal incunabula,' that is, prints made between 1450 and 1500. Post-incunabula (1501-ca 1530) or the popularly called "Latin American incunabula", that is, the first prints made in the American continent, which would always be after 1501.

Library	Population	Country	Volumes
National Library of Mexico	Mexico City		169
National Library of Brazil	Rio de Janeiro		150
National Library of Peru	Lima		17
National Library of Colombia	Bogotá		50
Luis Ángel Arango Library	Bogotá		37
Biblioteca Mayor de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba	Córdoba		29
National Library of Chile	Santiago		29
National Library of Argentina	Buenos Aires		21
Historic Library José María Lafragua de la BUAP	Puebla		17
Historical Archive of the College of Our Lady of the Rosary	Bogotá		13
Francisco de Burgoa Library	Oaxaca		12
Library of San José Major Seminary	Bogotá		8
Palafoxian Library	Puebla		9
Biblioteca Cervantina del Tecnológico de Monterrey	Monterrey		7
Public Library of the Michoacana University of San Nicolás de Hidalgo	Morelia		7
National Library of Venezuela	Caracas		5
Mexico Library José Vasconcelos	Mexico City		5
Ramón de Zubiría General Library, Universidad de los Andes	Bogotá		5
University of Guadalajara Library	Guadalajara		4
Library of the National Institute "Don Juan Nepomuceno Espejo"	Santiago de Chile		3
General Library of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana	Bogotá		12
Biblioteca Central Luis David Cruz Ocampo de la Universidad de Concepción	Concepción		2
Julio Pérez Ferrero Public Library	Cúcuta		1
Luis Alberto Acuña Museum	Villa de Leyva		1
Public Library of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí	San Luis de Potosí		1
Library of the Benedictine Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity of the Counts	Santiago de Chile		at least 1
Library of San Buenaventura Cali	Santiago de Cali		at least 1
National Seminar of Our Lady of Angels	San José		1
National Library of El Salvador «Francisco Gavidia» in the Lambruschini Collection	San Salvador		at least 1
University of Montevideo Library	Montevideo		1
Jalisco College	Jalisco		2
Eduardo Budge Library, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso	Valparaiso		1

Diagrams

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  Distribution by language

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  Distribution by region