37. ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (d. 407). De reparatione lapsi. [Cologne: Ulrich Zel, c. 1467-72].

St. John Chrysostom was considered the finest preacher of the early Greek church. In this work, he exhorted a lapsed monk to return to ascetic life. The blank leaf preceding this early Cologne edition features a table of contents added by the fifteenth-century librarian of St. Mary in Königstein, northeast of Mainz. Founded in 1466, this community of devout laypersons was affiliated with the “Brethren of the Common Life.” This brotherhood’s precepts for simple Christian devotion are best known from the Imitatio Christi of Thomas à Kempis (see next item). The librarian’s inscription lists Chrysostom’s De reparatione lapsi as the first of five publications, all formerly bound together in one volume. On the evidence of the folio numbers indicating the length of each work, we are able to identify the missing editions, each of which was printed c. 1467-73 in Cologne:

1. Chrysostom, De reparatione lapsi. [Cologne: Ulrich Zel, c. 1467-1472], folios 1-39.

2. Chrysostom, Dialogi de dignitate sacerdotii. [Cologne: Zel, c. 1472], folios 40-117.

3. Chrysostom, Sermo super Miserere mei Deus. [Cologne: Zel, c.1467], folios 118-147.

4a. Thomas Aquinas, De corpore Christi. [Cologne: Printer of Augustinus, De fide], 8 April 1473.

4b. [issued with]: Nicolaus de Lyra: Dicta de sacramento, folios 169-175.

4c. [issued with]: Thomas Aquinas, Expositio orationis dominicae, folios 176-183.

5a.  Disputatio inter clericum et militem. [Cologne: s.n., c. 1473], folios 184-196.

5b. [issued with]: Compendium de vita Antichristi, folios 197-199.

Such evidence allows modern researchers to better understand the selective reading habits of the Brethren of the Common Life.