Introduction to the incunabula selected for the project

4

The church father Albertus Magnus (13th c.) was also on excellent terms with the secular sciences, and preserved this knowledge for his contemporaries in written form.

The “Catholicon” of Johannes Balbus de Janua (Genoa), likewise a 13th c. Dominican monk, is a comprehensive lexicon which even in the 15th c. was considered so important that it was one of the very first works put into print by Johannes Gutenberg after the bible.

In 1235, the Franciscan monk Bartholomaeus Anglicus compiled an encyclopaedia of the natural sciences which was to gain widespread popularity. 

The principal work of the bishop and church father Isidor of Seville (died 636) is the “Etymologiae”, an outstanding encyclopaedic compendium of classical and christian culture which also includes medicine, geography and navigation.