Incunabula and the Keio University Library Collection

Johannes Heynlin (c. 1492-96) was a German-born humanist and theologian. He was active in German- and French-speaking countries, and his name is known in various forms (Johannes Heynlein, Henelyn, Henlin, Hélin, Hemlin, Hegelin and Steinlin; also, Johannes Lapideus/de Lapide). On the completion of his academic studies in Germany, he went to Paris to study philosophy and theology. There he became acquainted with representatives of the Realism movement, of which he subsequently became a leader. In 1464, Heynlin went to the University of Basel and applied for admission to the professorial faculty of arts, where he became dean. Yet in 1466 he returned to Paris, and became professor of theology at the Sorbonne. In 1478 he was invited to teach theology in the newly founded University of Tübingen, where he met with opposition from the Nominalists and was forced to leave. He entered the Carthusian monastery in Basel, where he spent his last years in prayer and writing.

Heynlin is well known for having introduced the first printing press into Paris. Around the end of 1469, or early in 1470, he established a printing house along with several printers (some of whom had received a higher education) in a corner of the University of Sorbonne. Their main publications were the works of the Church Fathers.

The Keio copy is an edition of one of the last works written by Heynlin, and is a basic manual for instructing ecclesiastics on how to conduct the Mass. ISTC Online records that there were about thirty editions in circulation by the end of the 15th century; there are only nine surviving copies of this edition, however. The Keio copy is bound with two other manuals, one of law and one of canon law, and bears the autograph of the owner, whose writing seems contemporaneous with the publication of this book (See also IKUL 041).

[Bibliography]
  Catholic Encyclopedia [accessed 27 January 2007]
  Claudin, Anatole, The First Paris Press: An Account of the Books Printed for G. Fichet and J. Heynlin in the Sorbonne 1470-72 (London: Printed for the Bibliographical Society at the Chiswick Press, 1898)
  Veyrin-Forrer, J., 'Aux origines de l'imprimerie française: l'atelier de la Sorbonne ...', in L'Art du livre à l'Imprimerie Nationale (Paris, 1973), pp. 32-53

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