This book, printed in Gothic font over two columns of fifty-six lines each, is an elegant incunabulum containing the second edition of Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Book IV, which was printed in Venice in 1481 in the workshop of Johann Herbort (also known as Magnus or Grandis), who began his typographical career in the lagoon city as a printer with the firm founded by Johannes de Colonia and Nicolas Jenson on 29 May 1480.¹ The copy in the Cerruti Collection, which can be added to other identified copies of this edition found in 169 collections (ISTC it00171000),² features a large penflourished initial “M” at the beginning of the text (fol. 2) added immediately after printing. An inscription in the lower margin of the same page indicates the presence of the manuscript in the Franciscan convent in Bolzano in the 16th century. In more recent times, it found its way into the collections of two important American collectors: John Fleming and Abel Berland, who purchased it from the former on 16 April 1985. 

Giovanna Saroni 

¹ On printed production and the book market in Venice at the dawn of the modern age, and on the two printers/ businessmen Johannes de Colonia and Nicolas Jenson: Lowry 1991; Coppens 2014, pp. 113-120; as well as the recent publication Dondi 2020. 

² Eighteen of these exemplars are described in detail in the MEI database: https://data.cerl.org/mei/_search?query= data.hostItemId%3Ait00171000&size=10&- mode=default&from=0.