Incunables

The Dombibliothek Hildesheim counts roughly 800 incunables in its collection. Brought together from the three biggest main collections of the Dombibliothek - the Beverina, the seminary’s collection and the Josephinum’s library - , they now form their own subcollection. This explains the wide variety of provenances, both private and monastic, of which about 250 have been identified so far.

 

 

The collection is mostly accessible via the catalogue by Conrad Ernst (1909).

"Incunabula Hildeshemensia":

  • Fasc. I [pdf]
  • Fasc. II [pdf]

From the 41 places of printing, Cologne, Basel and Strasbourg are the most prominent. But cities like Venice, Speyer, Nuremberg, Mainz, Magdeburg or Leipzig are also represented with a number of prints.

 

 

The first Hildesheim missal from 1499, printed by Georg Stuchs in Nuremberg, or Jakob Wimpfeling's famous humanistic commentary of Hrabanus Maurus' De laudibus sanctae crucis, printed in 1503 by Thomas Anshelm and containing about 30 woodcuts, are just two examples of the collections riches.