Gratian. Decretum. Basel: Michael Wenssler,
5 September 1482.

Folio. [381] leaves. 406 x 295 mm. Gothic type; 76 lines per page with 2-column inset text surrounded by commentary. Printed on paper; initial letters added in red and blue; hand rubricated.

Gratian's Decretum, more properly known by its full title, The Concord of Discordant Canons (Concordia discordantium canonum), was the most important resource for the medieval student of church law. The compiler was a twelfth-century cleric in the Italian university town of Bologna who digested a sprawling array of ecclesiastical and civil documents into an organized compendium of legislation on specific topics. Gratian was deeply influenced by the emerging "Scholastic" method of analyzing divergent viewpoints through lively conversation. The Decretum was indespensable and widely copied in the manuscript era, and was first printed in Strassburg in 1471. The book consists of almost 800 pages of legal texts surrounded by notes and commentary. The page shown here is the discussion of rules of evidence. The design and typesetting was a complex achievement, and the colophon at the end of the book emphasizes its production "by the ingenious craft of printing rather than by pen and ink." This copy, formerly in the library of a Premonstratensian monestary in Europe, found its way to Saint John's by 1900 and is one of many holdings in our significant collection of incunabula, books printed before 1501.