The Passau Missal of 1505 with a Canon on Vellum and Three Illuminated Woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair
Missale Pataviense. [Augsburg], Erhard Ratdolt, 1505.
One of the great masterpieces of early sixteenth-century liturgical printing: Erhard Ratdolt’s magnificent Passau Missal of 1505, printed in Augsburg in black and red with musical notation, a Canon section on vellum for constant ritual use, and three splendid contemporary coloured woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair, the leading Augsburg artist of his generation.
Preserved in a remarkably complete contemporary binding with intact clasps, bosses, and wooden boards, the volume survives with an almost miraculous sense of material presence despite the intense daily use such a Missal necessarily endured.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Π14 a-[q]8 [r]6 s-z8 A-D8 E-F10 Π6 A-E8 = 13 [instead of 14] leaves, 224 numbered leaves, 15 [instead of 16] leaves, leaves 225–263 = 291 [instead of 294] leaves. The three blank leaves removed. Double-column printing throughout in black and red.
Illustrated with two full-page woodcuts depicting the patron saints and the Crucifixion, one very large historiated initial, and one small medallion, all in woodcut and contemporary colouring; additionally with a half-page computistical woodcut for determining the Sunday letter, a large printer’s device in red and black at the end, one ten-line and twelve eight-line decorative initials printed in red and black, further initials on black grounds, numerous lombards in red, and musical notation printed in black on red four-line staves. Folio (360 × 226 mm).
Contemporary brown calf binding over thick wooden boards on four broad raised bands, decorated with blind fillets and roll tools, with pierced and chased central and corner bosses and intact clasps with original leather straps; remnants of leather page markers preserved. Binding wormed; minor losses along edges; clasps with small tears; occasional staining and traces of use at lower margins; internally remarkably fresh for a heavily used liturgical volume.
Erhard Ratdolt and the Art of Liturgical Printing
“Augsburg may be proud of him,” wrote the early book historian Georg Wilhelm Zapf of Erhard Ratdolt, calling him the “ornament among the printers of his native city.”
Born probably in Augsburg around 1447, Ratdolt established himself first in Venice, where he became one of the most technically innovative printers of the incunable period. After returning to Augsburg in 1486, he increasingly specialized in large-scale liturgical books for southern German and Austrian dioceses. These commissions were among the most technically demanding productions of early printing: black and red typography, musical notation, calendars, canon sections, and large illustrations all had to align with extraordinary precision.
Ratdolt mastered these challenges with unmatched elegance. Josef Bellot later concluded that “almost all his works are unsurpassed in technical craftsmanship.” The present Passau Missal belongs to the mature culmination of that achievement.
Hans Burgkmair and the Augsburg Renaissance
For the illustrations Ratdolt secured the collaboration of the finest Augsburg artists of the period, above all Hans Burgkmair.
Burgkmair had already created the full-page image of the patron saints for the Passau Missal of 1494, but for the present 1505 edition the composition was updated with the arms of Bishop Wiguleus Fröschl, who assumed office in 1500.
The deeply affecting Crucifixion woodcut, with its unusually open and restrained composition, likewise derives from Burgkmair, as does the magnificent historiated “T” beginning the Canon prayers. Unlike the mechanically printed colour experiments Ratdolt had pioneered in Venice, the woodcuts here are rendered in rich traditional contemporary hand colouring, preserving a more devotional and painterly atmosphere.
The Ritual Life of the Missal
The structure of the book reveals its intensely practical liturgical purpose.
Unlike later Renaissance books, the Missal opens without a formal title page. Instead, the reader encounters a blank opening followed by the brilliantly coloured patron saints Valentinus, Stephanus, and Maximilianus, while the reigning bishop immediately begins to speak in the first person:
“Wigelinus dei et apostolicae sedis gratia episcopus Pataviensis.”
The effect is not bibliographical but ceremonial. The book evokes episcopal presence before it presents publication data.
The Canon missae, containing the Eucharistic prayers most frequently recited during Mass, was printed on vellum rather than paper in order to withstand constant ritual handling. The surviving leather page markers in the present copy still testify to this repeated devotional use.
Printing at the Edge of the Reformation
The Missal also stands at a historical threshold.
Ratdolt’s liturgical productions represented a highly conservative and ceremonial branch of printing, preserving late medieval devotional aesthetics even as Renaissance forms spread rapidly elsewhere. Yet beneath their splendour lay the growing institutional exhaustion of the late medieval Church itself.
By the very year of this edition’s appearance, Ratdolt’s activity had already begun to decline noticeably. The Reformation would soon transform the religious culture that had sustained such monumental liturgical books. Luther’s Wittenberg reforms redirected priests away from repetitive Mass reading toward pastoral care, while the elaborate Missal tradition itself increasingly came to appear symptomatic of deeper ecclesiastical problems.
Ratdolt’s workshop finally closed in 1522.
What remained were some of the greatest typographical monuments of the late medieval and early Renaissance Church.
Provenance
German private collection.
Literature
Adams L 1190; Bellot 26; BM STC German 951; cf. Davies, Fairfax Murray German 291; Dodgson II, 60, no. 2; cf. Geisberg 821–823; cf. Graesse IV, 547; cf. Panzer I, 121, no. 124 and IX, 210, no. 162b; Proctor 10644; Schottenloher 1922, XVII and plates 51–56; Städtische Kunstsammlungen Augsburg 4 and 9; cf. Van Praet, Bibliothèques I, 142f.; VD16 M 5607; Weale/Bohatta 771.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 12a:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
