Breviarium romanum

Median folio (330 x 233mm.), 404 leaves, double column, 48 lines, Gothic letter, printed in red and black, 3-line illuminated initial at start of calendar, a1 with thin gold and green border and pink and blue acanthus-leaf decoration in three margins, roundel containing portrait of St Peter in centre of gold border at foot of page, two further roundels at foot of page containing a portrait of the owner (with the letters IO. BA., i.e. Joannes Baptista) and a coat-of-arms, with 5-line illuminated initial and 9-line illuminated initial containing a portrait of David with a stringed instrument, 1- to 2-line initials supplied in red and blue, 2- to 4-line illuminated initials in pink, blue and green with marginal flourishes, e1 with marginal decoration and a roundel at foot of page with a portrait of St Paul, aa1 with marginal decoration, A1 with marginal decoration and a roundel at foot of page with a portrait of St Narcissus, early sixteenth-century Italian decoration with later pen tracery, eighteenth-century vellum, several leaves at start repaired in gutter, some marginal tears (those on [rum]5, ee3 and pp7 affecting text), occasional slight staining, cc4 torn with loss of a few letters, A6-8 torn (A7 crudely repaired), small marginal burnholes in B6-7

H 3896; GW 5101; BMC v 179; Goff B1112; L. Armstrong, "Nicolaus Jenson's Breviarium Romanum, Venice, 1478: decoration and distribution" in Incunabula and their readers (London, 1999), pp. 421-467

This was the first "general" breviary to be produced, preceded only by a few for specific monastic orders. It contains the Calendar, Psalter, Temporale, Sanctorale and Common of Saints. This edition is in a much larger format than the average breviary, indicating that it was designed to rest on a lectern.

Both ISTC and Armstrong list 45 copies of this edition (not including the present copy), of which 24 are on vellum, representing a substantial proportion of the original print run. Almost all copies, including this one, have the 1- to 2-line initials added throughout the text, which leads Armstrong to opine that the copies for sale in Italy must have had the initials supplied by Jenson's firm.

The Sanctorale contains (in quire aa¹⁰) the Office of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, authorised by Sixtus IV in 1477; some of the earlier copies were printed without this text, with quire aa in 8 not 10.