Astesanus De Ast, d. 1330?

Summa de casibus conscientiae

c.1473

1473

HC(+Add) 1889*; BMC I 56; Goff A1161; Kaplan 38; ISTC ia01161000; GW 2750

Shoults (Special Collections) Gd/1472/ A

Strassburg: Johann Mentelin, not after 1473

Calf covers detached. Spine title reads: Corpus Juris

First page of text proper; f.252 with inky cat's paw.

Johann Mentelin was the first printer in Strassburg. He was a former illuminator and episcopal notary who set up a printing press about 1458. According to J.P. de Lignamine's Chronica Summorum Pontificum (Rome, 1474) Mentelin was at that time (1458) printing 300 sheets a day. He printed the editio princeps of Virgil and printed the first German Bible, issued in 1460-61. He continued to print at Strassburg until 1477-78. He died on 12 December 1478.

Little is known about Astesanus. He probably came from Asti and died in 1330. He was a theologian, moralist and Franciscan friar. Summa de casibus conscientiae (Cases of Conscience) is divided into eight books and deals with the Ten Commandments, virtues and vices, questions of civil law, the Sacraments, the ordination of priests, matrimony, &c. This is a second edition copy; the first edition was printed by Mentelin, not after 1469. The BL copy has a rubricator's date of 1473.
Mentelin's printery had a cat. On l. 252 two inky paw marks run across across the text.

Paper. 433 leaves; 396 x 255 mm (fol.)
Gothic type; double columns, 62 lines per column.
L.403 and 424 are blank.
Lacks initial decoration; first folio leaf framed.
There is no colophon or printing date.

1. Canon William Ardene Shoults
2. Selwyn College; Otago University Library