466J Balthasar de Porta (fl. 1487- 1499)  

Expositio Canonis Missae. (Canon sacratissime misse: unacum expositione eiusdem: ubi in primis premittit pulchra contemplatio ante missam habenda de christi pulcritudine. Et quo mo[d]o  ipsa in sua passione: ab eo o[mn]ino fuerat ablata.  Qualiterque quilibet celebrans debeat esse dispositius incipit foeliciter.)

[Leipzig : Gregorius Böttiger (aka Werman), about 1495.                Price: $12,000

Chancery half-sheet Quarto: 18.5 x12.5 cm. Signatures: aa-dd6, 24 of 24 leaves. Editio princeps, text in gothic letter, including a set of large caps, large woodcut initial and display face on title page, long list in a contemporary hand beneath printed title is a contemporary sacristy inventory has been added in a neat late-15th-century German hand, headed Instrumenta bei unserm altar (“Items kept at our altar”).

Handwritten inventory of liturgical items, including salt, holy water, vestments, and altar cloths, written in a late-15th-century German hand.

The list, written in twenty-five lines with “Item” marks in the margin, reads as follows:
Instrumenta bei unserm altar
Item Salz
Item das heilige Wasser
Item ein Kessel
Item Wachs do mit man das Taufwasser macht
Item allen Ornatstücken Hemd oder die Gürtel
Item die Ampullen zum Wein und zum Wasser
Item ein Tüchlein bei der Opferpforte
Item Hostien und Becken dazu
Item Wasser und Wachs
Item neue Pfännlein mit Salz
Item Liechtlin bei dem Altar
Item Öltöpflein, Ampullen, Kellen und Pötte
Item Wein und alte Tücher für den Altar
Item Becken und Fläschlein zum Altar gebrauch
Item Tücher und Decken zum Altar bedecken.


This inventory of liturgical implements—wax, salt, holy water, ampullae for wine and water, vestments, altar cloths, basins, and flasks—records the working contents of a late-medieval parish sacristy, giving the copy notable research value for the study of material religion and Eucharistic practice ca. 1500.

This copy is bound in antique parchment . 

Balthasar de Porta’s Canon Missae, also contains the proposal of the Exposition of the Eucharist before the celebration of mass . This commentary on the Mass, has verses taken from the Jesuida of Hieronymus de Vallibus, which are used in the appropriate context to illustrate or emphasize the author’s meaning. We know very few facts about the life of Balthasar de Porta , a Cistercian monk who served as Provisor at the order’s College (Saint Bernard) at Leipzig until about 1499. In the same years, he also published another work about Mass, the Expositio mysteriorum missae (Leipzig: Kacheloven, 1494) and a work on the heretical Bohemian Brethren, Conclusiones contra quorundam Bohemorum errores (Lepzig: Böttiger, about 1494), in which Balthasar refutes specific “errors” of the Hussite beliefs.   Balthasar de Porta was Provisor of the Cistercian College of St. Bernhard in Leipzig (fl. 1487-1499).

Image of two antique books resting on a wooden surface, with the spine of the left book showing the title 'Expositio Canonis Missae' and the year '1495', while the right book appears to be in a plain cover.

Goff B39; H 2345*; GfT GfT: Gesellschaft für Typenkunde des XV. Jahrhunderts. Veröffentlichungen. 33 parts. Leipzig [etc], 1907-39. 521, 522; Pell 1753; BSB-Ink B-25; GW 3216; ISTC ib00039000. US copies: Huntington Library (2), Southern Methodist Univ, Yale University  https://data.cerl.org/istc/ib00039000