Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/56

 44 THE CHUR BREVIARY OF 1490 AND ITS PRINTER, ADAM VON SPEIER. I. HEN in the year 1520 Bishop Paulus of Chur commissioned Georg Ratdolt of Augsburg to print an edition of the Breviary according to the use of the diocese, he contributed to Ratdolt's handsome folio a preface containing some interest- ing statements as to an earlier edition which had by that time nearly disappeared. ' The books of the Canonical Hours,' he remarks, 'which were printed at the instance of our predecessors, hand- somely and carefully enough according to the standard of that time, are now disappearing, partly through wear and tear, partly through age (as does everything on this earth), and but very few copies, and even these few soiled or torn, are procurable to-day.' If this was the sad plight of the editio princeps as early as 1520, it need cause us little surprise to find that it should have remained pradtically a lost book until quite recently, and that even now only one copy, and that only com- prising the 'pars aestiualis,' should be known to survive. This copy, which appears from two inscriptions to have belonged to the capitular