BREVIARY, use of the Austin Canons Regular of the Windesheim Chapter. Breviarium Canonicorum regularium secundum ordinarium Capelli windesim. Outside Schoonhoven, Canons Regular Monastery, [23 June] 1507.
8° (220 x 165mm). Woodcut on title with early hand-colouring (torn and repaired without loss, rather soiled), 24 four- to eight-line initials in blue and red penwork scrolls, other one- to four-line initials in red or blue, double-column, gothic letter. (M4.5 misbound between O2.3, a few small marginal tears very neatly repaired, dust-soiling on a few pages.) Brown morocco, two gilt double fillets with small leaf cornerpieces on covers, spine similarly decorated in compartments, by J. Wright (slightly scuffed), g.e. Provenance: Mount Stuart bookplate.
A fine complete copy of the third Windesheim Breviary, however the quires have been misbound as follows: A-C8 D4 c-n8 .a-.c8 .10 a.-k.8 M-N8 O4 A-H8 I4 mm.4 aa.-ii.8 kk.6 ll.4, as well as the bifolia mentioned above. The press situated in the monastery of the Canons Regular outside the walls ('in den Hem') of Schoonhoven, a small town not far from Gouda, completed their first book, a Utrecht Breviary, on 28 February 1495, and continued printing into early the next century. Their output, some forty to fifty works, was mainly liturgical and devotional books using a common Lettersnider fount. Bohatta 975; N-K498.