EUSEBIUS CAESARIENSIS (c.260–c.340). Chronicon. Translated by Hieronymus, with continuations by Prosper Aquitanus, Matthaeus Palmerius Florentinus and Matthias Palmerius Pisanus. Edited by Johannes Lucilius Santritter. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 13 September 1483.

Second edition with early reference to Gutenberg and manuscript addition of the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Erhard Ratdolt used Eusebius’s Chronicon, ‘the ancient world’s first systematic universal history’ (Bedrosian), to devise a successful system for notating chronological time in print, in a time when printers around the Continent were experimenting with what this new form of presenting information on the page could accomplish. It is the more fitting then that the third printed attribution of this invention to Johannes Gutenberg, described as ‘solerti ingenio librorum Imprimendorum’ (skilled in the genius of printing books), occurs on the verso of leaf 3v of this edition. Ratdolt uses the same phrasing, ‘solerti vir ingenio’, to describe himself in his opus’s colophon. Soon after this book was printed, a reader wrote the death of the Prophet Mohammed into this copy of Eusebius’s history of the world, acting in the spirit of those who continued updating the annals. H *6717; Bod-inc E-040; BSB-Ink E-109; GW 9433; Goff E-117; ISTC ie00117000.

Median quarto (215 × 162mm). 180 leaves (of 182, without 2 blanks). Printed in red and black. Woodcut white-vine initials illuminated in gold or silver on a blue or burgundy ground, ms. foliation (occasional marginal dampstaining or spotting, a little decoration smudged, occasional marginal repair). Modern vellum. Provenance: contemporary marginalia, including the addition of the death of the Prophet Mohammed – Augustinians of Arpe in Apulia (16th-century inscriptions on first leaf) – Bibliotheca Consolatio (stamp on first leaf).