07/14/2026
Yet More Fragmentology: Identifying this fragment was a bit tricky but I was finally able to locate the text from which it comes. This is leaf 64r in the German version of the Aurea Biblia (Die güldene Bibel) printed by Ludwig Hohenwang in Augsburg ca. 1477. We have this book in our collection but what makes this fragment so exceptional is that it is a proof sheet (nothing is printed on the reverse side of the leaf). That makes this an interesting and very rare survival from the first period of European printing.
But it is even *more* interesting than that as this leaf was pasted together with the leaves of Capellanus's Art of Courtly Love (Augsburg: Anton Sorg, 1484) and once lined the cover of a book. How these leaves from two different books and printers ended up together is an intriguing puzzle, but their bibliographic lives almost certainly joined together in an Augsburg bindery.
