Our Growing Collections

KENNETH A. LOHF

Gifts

Cary Trust gift. To our collection of early printing the Mary
Flagler Cary Charitable Trust has added three fifteenth-century
works of great typographical interest. The first of these, Peter
Stefan's Schatzbehalter der wahren Reichtiimer des Heils, pub¬
lished in Nuremberg in 1491 and illustrated by Michael A\'olgemut,
is the subject of an article elsewhere in this issue.

The second work presented is a splendid copy of Lucius Lac¬
tantius's Opera, printed in Rome in 1470 by the German printers,
Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz. This is the third
edition of the first work printed in Italy, the first edition having
been printed in Subiaco two years earlier. Lactantius was often
called "the Christian Cicero" because of the influence of the classi¬
cal rhetorician on the author's writings on Christianity. The first
page of the text of our copy is beautifully illuminated in gold and
colors, surrounded by a scroll-covered border, and the volume
contains ted and blue rubricated initials throughout. The volume
is bound in velvet over boards, and all edges are gilt and gauffered
a la pointille with the emblem of Diane de Poitiers. Of special in¬
terest and rarity is the proof leaf of folio seven which is bound in
at the front of the volume.

Finally, the Cary Trust has also presented a copy of the second
volume of Paulus Orosius's Historia Adversus Paganos, printed in
Paris in 1491 by Antoinc \^erard, one of the most important fig¬
ures in the early Parisian book trade, who spread the renown of
Parisian typography both in France and abroad. The volume con¬
tains seventy-two fine woodcuts, mosth' battle scenes, as well as
the magnificent initial on the first page of text showing the trans¬
lator, Alfred the Great, at his literary work. Also present in the

35